WIP on Final Assignment

Bad Kim!! Can't believe it's been over a month. In my defense, I have been sick with some respiratory bug that put me in bed for well over 2 weeks. But I'm up and running again and trying desperately to catch up with my assignments. Here is one that is for an Art Director next week. Many know him as the head of Art Order, a wonderful art blog that issues challenges to artists. I've never met Jon Schindehette but those who have consider him one of the nicest people. He is currently the Creative Director for Treehouse Brand Stores. Among many things, they provide fine art prints for gaming fans. He gave 4 assignments to choose from. I picked the one for Morrigan from Dragon Age. Here's the sketch, photographed and then played with in Photoshop. The last one has some corrections from Rebecca. Have to work fast on this one.

Final Smart School Assigment

Our final lesson for Smart School is this Friday. We will meet with David Saylor from Scholastic. He was the AD for all 7 US Harry Potter books illustrated by the wonderful Mary GrandPre. His assignment was for us to do either a book cover or poster for Harry Potter. He challenged us to show him in a different way. I ended up building on sketch I drew awhile ago with digital textures and color. This assignment challenged me more than any of the others. Here is the result. Thanks for all the instruction and guidance, Rebecca. We'll see how it goes on Friday.

Harry Potter

"The Boy Who Lives...On"

Little Red Riding "Snood" Finished

Due to time constraints, (and because I want to improve in digital painting) I decided to paint over my sketch in transparent, multiplied layers. As you can see below on the right, I quickly started getting too opaque and lost my sketch and gesture. Rebecca brought me back and showed me how to punch the jewel tones slightly so I didn't get too dull.

Started again (oh, the beauty of the "undo" button) trying to keep the sketch present. Oh, I also ended up adding a little to the top of my page...felt the wolf needed a bit more ceiling and brought the branch in from the foreground.

As I was playing around with layers, I accidentally tweaked to the blues and ended up quite liking what it did to the  mood. Had to desaturated the reds a bit and unify the mid-tones in the background. It was starting to look like two separate environments. Tried to subtly bring in the sun rays  and dappled light.

 I might light box the sketch and try an ink painting later but this was certainly a learning experience for me with the computer and Wacom tablet. I doubt I will ever get confident sketching on the tablet but painting certainly eliminates alot of the fear I experience with traditional paint.

Little Red Riding "Snood"

IMC Report - The Assignment

Wednesday, my daughter and her son returned to faraway and with heavy heart, I ventured down to the studio to unearth all my IMC trappings. As Fate would have it, the day before she left, an email from Rebecca Guay announced that our assignments from IMC were due at midnight on Thursday if we wanted to be considered for ImagineFx's article. (Each year, they select 5-10 IMC students to be highlighted in their awesome magazine). Needless to say, I was facing an all-nighter if I was going to finish. As I have posted before, the assignments were divided into three catagories: fantasy, comics, and children's books. I picked the latter. I chose to do a page from an idea I've had floating around about children's blankets and all the things kids do with them with their imagination. My illustration is about the blanket becoming butterfly wings.

I began with thumbnails and selected this one.

Developed it further and reversed it.

Here's the development of the little piggie.

Reworked some more, especially the little girl and here is my final sketch. I darken it here but when I printed it out on watercolor paper, I put a ghost layer over it in Photoshop to lighten the pencil.

First and second wash of watercolor.

Third and final pass on assignment. This was as far as I got at IMC. I felt like I was losing something in her expression (especially her eyes). The initial color on her wings was too dark and I discovered that Lanaquelle wc paper doesn't allow for the lifting of color too well. I figured I would start over at home, although I was fairly pleased with the flowers.

But I didn't get a chance to begin again. I tried to fix the major problems. Added more watercolor throughout and then started with the colored pencils on top of that.

And, the final piece.