Green Tree Frog... and a Lesson on Anthropomorphism

Last week, our lesson was on Reptiles and Amphibians. I decided to study the Green Tree Frog:

Orthographic Drawings:

Wildlife Illustration:

Character Design (Lilly the Tree Frog):

Lesson Learned: Pay attention to the details when anthropomorphizing animals. When designing the ballerina tree frog, I first asked myself- what do I need to include that will define this character as a tree frog? I decided that the essential elements to make it look like a tree frog are the skin and eye colors, the structure of the head and placement of the eyes, and the toe webs and pads. Then I asked myself- what humanlike characteristics does this animal have that can help me to anthropomorphize it? I decided that the hinged elbows and knees, humanlike muscular structure of the arms and legs, and the ankle bones are all aspects that I could work from to help make this frog more human-like. 

Martina Koala... and a Lesson on Preliminary Sketches

For my first Children's Book Illustration 2 assignment this semester, I was assigned to interview a classmate and then come up with an illustration that somehow relates to 3 bits of information that I gained from the interview. I interviewed my lovely friend Martina, and from her responses I decided to illustrate these three points:

1. If she were an animal, she would be a koala.
2. Two words that describe her are: ridiculous and dramatic.
3. If she could go back in time, she would go back to when she was 5 years old, because she loved it.


So, here is my illustration of a ridiculous/dramatic koala in kindergarten:

Lesson Learned: Even after you have chosen the final narrative and composition for your illustration, sometimes the concept development can go even further. When I was refining my original sketch for this illustration, I placed a sheet of tracing paper over the original so that I could re-draw the koala's head in a different position and make the blocks look like they are starting to tumble. As I was drawing, I accidentally shifted the tracing paper a bit to the side. With the original drawing visible underneath, this created the illusion of animation- like the koala's head was moving and the blocks were falling. This sparked the idea to create this illustration as vector art, so that later I can go back and animate it in Flash! I plan on creating simple buttons (the blocks tumbling, Martina roaring, her classmate's head turning) that will transform this into a fun, interactive illustration! 


So next time you start working on refining your sketches and other technical aspects of preliminary work, don't put your brainstorming to rest. You never know when a new idea might come up if you stay in a creative mindset throughout the entire process.

Largemouth Bass... and a Lesson on Animal Anatomy

Well, I have finally entered into my final semester at the Academy of Art University! I can hardly believe it.

For the first assignment in my Wildlife Illustration class, we had to study and draw a specific species of fish. I chose to illustrate a largemouth bass (Greg's favorite fish). I had to do 3 orthographic drawings in pencil (skeletal, muscular, and exterior), a size scale illustration, a realistic illustration in the fish's natural environment, and an illustration of a character I created based on the fish I studied.

Close-ups of the color illustrations:

Lesson Learned: Understanding the anatomy of an animal can really help when drawing it in poses that you do not have exact reference for. If you understand the way an animal's body moves, you will be able to depict it more believably from viewpoints that you do not have exact reference for.

A Tribute to Britta... and a Lesson on Writing for the Soul

I am so glad that I decided to take Creative Writing over summer semester. I learned so much and it was by far my favorite liberal arts class that I have taken during my entire college experience. For the final project in this class, we were instructed to write a piece of creative non-fiction... a memoir. An earlier writing exercise had asked me to write about a person who has influenced my life. I decided to expand on this exercise for my final essay, and I wrote about my lovely friend Britta.

Britta

“If you start me up… if you start me up, I'll never stop!”

I sat cross-legged on the carpet in my bedroom and covered my mouth with a Trigonometry textbook, attempting to muffle my laughter as I watched my neighbor Britta belt the Rolling Stones classic into the karaoke microphone. She was so intensely focused on the lyrics flashing across the screen that she had not noticed my little sister join in as her back-up dancer or my little brother using a pair of pencils to drum along with the beat on the side of the bed.

She was a sight to see from head to toe. While the cancer was slowly and painfully invading her vital organs, Britta refused to let it take the life out of her. She was not the slightest bit embarrassed by the weight gain that her chemotherapy treatments had caused, and she saw the loss of her hair as an opportunity to buy some fabulous new headwear that she had been eyeing at the local thrift store where she volunteered. Where her hair had once been a perfect mess of silver spikes, she now donned a brightly flowered scarf tied pirate-style over her bald scalp.  She confidently displayed her bronzed, sixty-something year-old body in homemade denim cut-offs and a neon green bathing suit, which she accessorized with a bejeweled leather belt and her signature red cowboy boots.

When the lyrics became too confusing, Britta began to make up her own words, at which point I dropped my textbook, jumped up, and grabbed the other microphone. I danced alongside her as I sang along, “You make a grown man cryyyyyy! You make a grown man cryyyy!” My mom soon joined in, and the combination of her thick Peruvian accent with Britta’s strong Danish accent left my siblings and I with tears streaming down our suntanned cheeks as we laughed so hard that we couldn’t sing or dance or drum at all anymore.

The next six years skipped by as quickly as the karaoke lyrics had flashed across the screen that afternoon. My older sister returned home from college and got married, my parents divorced, my little sister started middle school, I left for college, my dad remarried, my brother entered high school, I got married, my older sister had a baby, and Britta was there through it all.

And suddenly I was wearing my best black dress and sitting at a circular table with my family, sipping lemon-flavored water out of a clear plastic cup. We listened as one-by-one a room full of people went up to the microphone and shared their fondest memories of Britta. Each of the stories was sweet, hilarious, shocking, and inspiring all at the same time- a perfect tribute to the angel who lived next door.

As my dear neighbor warmly smiled at me from the picture frame on the table, I thought back to the last day that I had spent with Britta. Just weeks before her body finally succumbed to the illness after battling it vehemently for almost a decade, I had fought back tears as I held her shrunken hand in mine. She had been too weak and too heavily medicated to speak, but as she looked intently at me with those piercing blue eyes, she used all of the energy she could muster to give me a wink and a smile. And in that moment I could hear her singing at the top of her lungs, “If you start me up… if you start me up, I'll never stop!”

Lesson Learned: Writing about past events is a great way to remember those experiences. If you really let your mind and heart return to what you were feeling at that time, the writing experience can almost transport you back to that moment, and the memory becomes so clear. While writing this essay, I could feel and hear Britta there with me. Writing this essay was an experience I will never forget.

Experiments with Watercolor... and Why Two (or More!) Mediums are Sometimes Better Than One

I have been so busy this summer working all day and doing my classes at night and on the weekends, so I have not been keeping up my blog like I usually do. It was a great semester, though, and I just got my final grades: A in both classes! Yeahoo!

Here are some of the assignments that I did in my Watercolor for Illustrators class this semester. It was a really great class. I learned so many cool watercolor and mixed-media techniques that I am really excited to continue experimenting with in the future.

Watercolor with white pastel pencil:

Watercolor with white gouache and black ink:

 Watercolor with white goauche:

Watercolor with watercolor pencil and black ink:

Watercolor with colored pencil:

Lesson Learned: Try different ways of using watercolor and combining it with different media for a variety of textures, moods, and styles. I learned in this class that watercolor is the most versatile artistic medium out there. It can be combined with almost any other medium to create different textures and effects. Applying the paint to different surfaces, with different brushes or sponges, and layering different wet or dry media on top or underneath the watercolor can result in so many interesting effects. I learned this semester to test different techniques on scraps of paper and to take risks by trying out new mixed media combinations that I had never tried before. You never know what result you might get until you give it a try!

Perfume, a Pink Powder Puff...and a Lesson on Painting Glass

For this still life assignment, I had a hard time finding stuff around the house that was pretty enough to paint with watercolors. I wanted a still life that was high-key and colorful, and I eventually found just the right items in my makeup bag!

Lesson Learned: Clear glass reflects all colors around it! Do not paint clear class as a monochromatic object! At first glance, I thought I would just need to use a gray color in different values to paint the glass perfume bottle, but when I looked closer, I saw so many different colors in the glass. The glass picks up bits of all of the colors around it, as well as colors it creates when the light shines through it. Going into this painting, I had no idea that the clear glass would end up being the most colorful part of this painting!