Spring 2013 Semester

This semester is just getting over and it has been a fantastic one! I feel like I've been pushed so much in all of my studio classes and have done so much work that I have really improved within these last few months. I've been posting pieces from my Digital Painting class taught by Will Terry, but this other class has also pushed me hard. It's a lower division class: Media and Techniques 2 taught by the infamous Perry Stewart.

Perry gave us a ton of homework this semester (like he does every semester)-- 4 paintings a week, a minimum of 2 hours spent on each. Usually they were heads and took more than 2 hours. But you can definitely see my improvement. The semester before I took "Head Painting" and you can tell that my heads this semester are a lot better than the ones from last semester. You can see those here:http://www.kristylenderillustration.blogspot.com/2012/12/round-3.html and here:http://www.kristylenderillustration.blogspot.com/2012/12/end-of-school.html . The pieces in this post are all done in acrylic. I'll post my final for the class a little later when I have it completely finished.

I feel like these are my pivotal pieces; the pieces where I recognized I was getting better. So without further ado, here are my pieces: the older ones are at the end of the post and the more recent at the beginning:

High Key 

Low Key

Painting on a collage of materials

 This one isn't great, I know that, but everyone in the class decided to do a painting of Perry. It was pretty awesome so I decided to post mine :)

Anne Hathaway

Jaslene: Winner of ANTM Arbitrary Color

 Amanda Seyfried Caricature.

Mushrooms

Drybrush on Napthol Red background

Drybrush

Flat shapes with circles to soften edges

Ron Weasley, only painting the shadows

Flat value, hard edges

Happy Easter!

This is a little late for Easter, but hey Easter's the season too right? But we know (adults, or at least we think) that the Easter Bunny might not really be exactly what we think he is. Imagine, every time you ever sat on his lap or when you put your child on his lap...Is that really a bunny? Anyway, HAPPY EASTER!!!

So, I am really bad at updating my blog with all the work I'm doing. I get caught up in doing different assignments and my own things that the pieces I want to post get forgotten about. Here are some digital paintings I've done using Photoshop.

Abominable Snowman

Made with perfect circles and straight edges

Robot Saving Human in Desert:

This was a completely new technique for me. I started out with a good line drawing

Next, I transferred the drawing to watercolor paper, lightly just blocking in shapes with graphite. This next part is what was new. I'm not very familiar with watercolor, but I painted my piece quickly letting the natural watercolor texture show. 

Finally I put the piece into Photoshop and painted layers digitally in between my watercolor layer and my line layer.  You can see that I added mountains in the back, but you can still see some of the water color texture shine through the digital paint. Even though this was a new technique for me, it's one that I actually really like! It gives me a process to follow and allows me to add cool effects to my piece. Lemme know what you think!

P.S I have to say this because I'm pretty excited! I got into the BFA Program for Illustration! 

MORE NEW YORK

Beautiful piece we saw in a small gallery

Burt Silverman

Look! We're just like Wicked!

Marshall Harrison's Monkey

Donato's sketches

NYC

I went to New York City last week during Spring Break with some people from the art department at UVU. It was such a fun trip, not to mention inspiring. We visited with some amazing artists: Donato Giancola, Burton Silverman, Brad Holland, and Marshall Harrison. They were each so different and I learned a ton. Here are some photos of the trip. 

Burton Silverman- He's an 84 year old man who still paints. Most of his pieces are regular joes and portraits. 

Marshall Harrison-He had a ton of sculpted monkeys all around his studio. He also does oil crayon drawings that are inspired by cave paintings...drawings on top of drawings, with rainbows thrown in. I'll try to post some more when I get the pics with me.

Awesome street art!

Lord of the Rings-Donato Giancola

Donato's home. What I love about Donato (other than his artwork) is the fact that he has a family and still is a family man. It seems like so many artists are so married to their artwork that it consumes their lives. Donato had toys in corners at his house and drawings done by his children. He spoke in a lecture at BYU last year, and he told us that he treats his art as a regular job, which I really expect. He works from "9-5" but after 5pm he puts away his art and he spends time with his kids and wife. 

Dead Mermaid-Donato Giancola

Me and my friend Natalie in Donato's Studio.(PS that's Donato in the yellow)

Donato's workspace

This is the mural on the ceiling at the Rockefeller. I thought it was awesome because it's got men using the pillars as their stepping stones.

I have been wanting to do this painting forever! It's something just for myself. I did the sketch last summer and have been waiting to have time to work on it, and then finally time to finish it. I just submitted it along with 16 other pieces to the BFA program at UVU. Hopefully this piece will help me get in. 

This was an assignment for my conceptual illustration class. We chose an article and then had to conceptually illustrate the issue. The article I chose is about protecting animals. The animal humane society is trying to pass a law to make it illegal to sell puppies, kitties, or other animals out of parking lots or on our own. They want to pass this law to protect the animal because so many pets purchased this way are brought to the vet with diseases or other problems, and without knowing the animals origin the vet cannot always help.
At the same time however, if it is illegal to sell animals as the AHS is trying to prohibit, this won't stop people from letting their pets breed. This only means people will have to find some other way to get rid of the animal which in the end doesn't protect the animal at all.

Happy Valentines Day!

I've been really bad at posting since school started back up after the Holiday Break. I'm in a conceptual illustration class this semester which is all new for me. I've only ever done narrative illustration. It's interesting thinking conceptually and trying to create an image with deep meaning hidden behind metaphors. These keys are a part of our first assignment. Each key has to represent a different mood. We had to choose from the following list: Humor/Levity, Foreboding, Despair, Age/Decay, Rebirth, Loneliness, Authority, and Trustworthiness. We could only use angle, color, and perspective to show our meaning...no other objects. Can you guess which ones are which?

And the answer is....#1 Foreboding.  #2  Humor/Levity. #3 Decay. #4 Loneliness

Christmas card for Trent

So I made Trent an awesome Christmas card...well, I love it (and I think he did too :) ) Here are some pictures of it. It opens to show presents in his belly and then opens again to the actual card. Don't try to read what I wrote on it and be all snoopy though because that was for Trent's eyes only so you won't be able to see anything anyways :)

Round 3

Here a few paintings from the final round for my head painting class. I had to do 18 for this round but only a couple are here:

3 bears

This was an assignment for Digital Painting. We had to do something with the '3 bears'. Because it was getting close to Christmas I wanted to do something in the spirit of the season.

End of School

The semester is finally over! There was a lot of work this semester so I am so glad for the Christmas Break. Anyways, here's some stuff I've done this semester. Most of my classes were study classes so we spent the entire semester practicing. Here you go:
Head Painting:
These are all speed painting except for the self portrait

This was from the first 1/3 of the semester

  

 Final Project:

Some practices from Round 2 the 2/3:

History of Illustration:
      Our assignment in this class was to choose an artist and create a piece of art copying that artists style and method. I chose to do Carl Spitzweg. Spitzweg is a romantic German artist who creates pieces showing everyday life with charming characters. Here's is my project: