Rhino Princess

Happy Friday! The UVU Illustration group does a sketchbook friday where we're given a theme and everyone shares what they've done. This weeks theme was a Princess Rhino. Here is mine. Enjoy!

Grandpa & Grandma

Okay, so here is the second project I was working on this summer. (the first one is really long so I haven't figured out how to scan that one in yet.) This is a surprise painting for my Grandma. My Grandpa died about 10 years ago, and my grandma has begun struggling a lot with her health. She is in an assisted living home and I hope this will make her happy.

I know a lot of artists use this technique, but I learned it from Donato Giancola. Although I am not really "into" fantasy art, I think  he is probably one of my favorite artists; he is amazingly talented, successful, and really nice guy.  So here are the steps I took.

Drawing: I drew the picture on Reeves paper (it's nice and soft and erases pretty easily)

Next, I made a photo copy of my drawing onto Mi Tientes toned paper. I then used mat gel medium and mounted it to my piece of board. Then, I painted a value layer with acrylic

Done! I finished it off with oil paint!

Rhinos love Balloons

Sometimes I get inspiration at the most random times! A couple weeks ago I was teaching my class at Creativity Art Studio about Surrealism. They were having a hard time understanding them and one of the basic examples I gave was to do something you wouldn't normally see. The first idea that popped into my mind I spurted out "a rhinoceros on a balloon". Immediately that sparked an image in my mind and I LOVED it!!! So I've been waiting weeks to get the time to do this sketch and here it finally is! Enjoy!

Work Drawing #3

This is another work drawing. It's of a girl named Linda Lomelino. She owns a cupcake shop, I think. PS for all you pinterest fans out there...I found her on pinterest looking for portrait reference and when I went to the link where the picture leads it took me to an awesome website where she just gives out tons of recipes. 

Anyway, here's the drawing:

Another Work Drawing

Here is another drawing while I've been at work. I really want to practice my portraits and make sure I get better not worse from lack of practice. This was just done in pencil and it's a reference from the internet.

Art Date

Trent and I are always looking for fun things to do, and we're also looking for time to do art. So last night we combined the two and did an art scavenger hunt. We went to the University Mall and each came up with 5 categories. They included: kids gone wrong in today's society, flirty/too sexy, heaven sent, stoner, working punk, boy or girl (as in "we can't tell, is it a boy or a girl?"), 300+ pounds, out of this world, animal, and odd couple. We didn't get all of them, but here are some that we did do. We met  up in the end and decided who won each one.
I got distracted and drew  multiple for a few of the categories because I really liked what I saw, so I didn't have as many. Trent won the scavenger hunt because his were awesome. Take a look:

 My first page 

 My second page

 Trents first page

Trents second page

He is an awesome artist. Here is more of his stuff if you're interested:

http://mrtoastedtoast.blogspot.com/

Sketching at work

The quality of this drawing isn't the best, so I'm sorry for that. This drawing is one I've been working at while work has been slow at both my jobs. This was done as practice from a photograph on the internet. I think this grandpa is so cute (really they all are!) . But because I'm working on it at work, I am using an old scanner and "paperport" to try and crop it and it's just not working. So sorry for the low quality but I hope  you still enjoy!

Banshee

I just got a job at the Creativity Art Studio in Orem by the University Mall movie theater. It was pretty amazing actually. Trent and I went there for a date and I brought my resume and the owner, Chris, hired me right there. Okay okay, so it's a second job...I don't get great hours so I'm still working in insurance, but Chris is having me teach some of the Kids Summer Camp classes...which is great!! I've taught my own classes the last two summers and thought about renting a space this summer, but decided against it with other stuff going on. (ps. here's their website http://creativityartstudio.com/ : I made the coolest milk and cookie cup btw! I'll post it when I get it back) Anyway, this first week for the summer camps is "Legendary Creatures"; so I was looking up different characters, researching what I wanted to teach when I came upon a banshee. I was interested because I always wondered what the difference was with a banshee and a witch besides a wailing scream and moan.
The definition I found described a Banshee as wailing (of course) mournfully at death but also described her as having silver white hair and carrying around a white comb which she'd use to stroke her locks. Anyway, I felt inspired so here:

I thought the one below was interesting. It just looked a lot different to me in black and white rather than toned.

So, I'm trying to not let myself slack off this summer. During the school semester's any free time I have is spent doing hours and hours of work on my projects, but then as soon as summer comes and I don't have actual deadlines I have a hard time staying productive. I'm currently working on a painting for an art show that's coming up in July. I have a piece that will be in the Covey Center for the Arts Summer Showcase, and am going to enter some in American Fork's Steel Days Art Show. But, while I'm working on the painting for this upcoming show, I still want to be doing some smaller pieces to show. So, here is a quick sketch I did. It hints at what this painting will be that's coming up....wait and see if you can guess the connection :)

Venus Fly Trap

My goal on this piece was to illustrate the deadly sin of "lust" conceptually. Concept Illustration has  been hard for me but I think this piece turned out nicely. (Not to mention that it could make a good children's book illustration about a fly too).

Boy Meets Girl

So here it is, the final from my acrylic painting class. The project was to do a city scape or landscape that was keyed with a cool color and something warm in the front. Of course that sounded a little boring to me so I decided I wanted to tell a story. Let me know what you think :)

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