Fairytales and happy endings?

This is the last one of the series I had to paint for my class, the assignment was to take something and recreate it with your own vision. It could be a famous painting, iconic image, fairytale pretty much whatever you wanted. There were some very creative ideas presented at the final critique there was a satirical painting of the last supper but with Jesus sitting at a table alone at McDonald's under a fast food sign.

I had a few different ideas that I wanted to work from so decided to combine two of them I always liked the stairs to heaven image and I wanted to incorporate a fairytale. I saw the play Wicked not to long ago and decided that I would make my stairs a brick road before Glenda has gone to the Emerald city my story is she walking along the brick road and the leaves are falling around her and as she walks along the road her magic turns the lave on the road to gold and it becomes the yellow brick road. Haha well its a bit of a stretch but its my little story to meet the assignment.

I was thrilled with how this one turned out I ended up abandoning Painter for this painting I was short on time and getting frustrated so this is completely painted in photoshop. Ill keep hacking away at painter but its definitely going to require more time and patience. There are a couple areas that I may go back and rework on the girl but overall I'm satisfied with the result. The original is 11 by 17 150 dpi done in photoshop.

My happy ending is I got an A in the class yayyy! Hope you have enjoyed seeing these.

Dualities and some more meandering

Deep in the forest

A few posts ago I mentioned I had an assignment to create a diptych (technically these are 2 paintings or panels that work together) of dualites. Most times these are a continuation of a theme or a story and relate to each other, however our teacher decided that he wanted two images were opposites of each other but had some kind of link, Some examples would be life, death, young, old etcetera. It took me a long time to come up with a concept for these mostly because I didnt really want to do opposites, I wanted to do something along the lines of the panels you see in the iconic russian art, that what came to mind when I thought of drawings that are panels of linked image or some of the beautiful Japanese art prints. Needless to say I dawdled and dawlded cause everything seemed to be either to cliche, blah or not fit the assignment criteria.

Finally out of desperation I ended up settling on doing landscapes that were opposite in location, feeling and technique. Deep in the forest was mostly done in photoshop this time I did it after I did the LightHouse at sea. I love how this one came out with the dark moody feeling of the deep dark forest it makes me wonder what is lurking out there in the woods.

Lighthouse on the Ocean

The light house painting was done entirely in Painter and to be honest is not a finished as it should be I spent so many hours on those darn clouds and I am still not happy with them, by the time I got to the light house I was fed up and wanted to be done so I rushed through and did a very loose painting of the light house and rocks.

What I discovered from this is Painter is hard! I can move so fast in photoshop and painter takes me so much longer, I am sure this is still lack of familiarity of how to get the tools and brushes to give me the results I want, I have seen some beautiful work done using painter but I am a long way off from what I would call competent. The second thing I discovered it so sucks to paint things you arent interested in. I really didnt want to paint a lighthouse lol so that probably made it so much harder. I think its important to try to do things out of your comfort zone to help you grow and develop as an artist (but its probably better not to on a deadline for your final projects).

Both paintings are 11 by 17 300 dpi- Kinkos does a great job printing on color stock by the way if anyone needs a place they also do calenders and all kinds of fun things you can print your own art work and photos on.

I have been able to get som gowns done but not in all their colors I tried to get them out for Christmas but that just want happening this time, hopefully Ill get them out this weekend.

Let them eat cake!

Another one of my school projects. I was so stuck on this the assignment was to create a surrealistic painting every thing I came up with seemed to fall more into the fantasy category rather then surrealism. After alot of whining and moaning about it and some help from my fellow fashionistas I was able to get a firmer grasp of where I wanted to head with this.

Once I let go of all the preconceptions of what it couldnt be and just let it go it really started to flow on its own and the problem ended up not being what to do but what not to do in the amount of time I had to finish it.



The Orignal print is 11by 17 and was created using Painter and photoshop. Im still finding painter to be a bit frustrating but Im going to keep kicking it for a while see if I can get it to bend to my will.

Line and texture

The semester is finally coming to a close thank goodness my arm feels like its going to fall off this week but I'm down to the last few paintings for my final hurray!! These are a few of the beginning projects that we had to do to show line, texture, shape, contour, gesture and negative/positive shapes. I love the fashion pose one each of these was done individually as a contour drawing, I actually had a few more poses done but they wouldn't fit on the page once I added the negative shapes. I was disappointed at first cause all the work that didn't get included, poor pre-planning the lay out on my part but I think the negative shapes give the final lay out more interest.



This next project we had to do a panel for each of the topics the contour was hard for me as I really wanted to add shading and some shadows into the face the second portrait we could use line as value along with contour, again I really wanted to shade her face but I felt might not meet the project goals. I lost points for not using cross hatching on it :(. Doing cobblestones was kind of fun I experimented with using a few different techniques and think the end result turned out pretty good.


This was our very first assignment on shading, volume and light sources I actually decided to challenge myself and used Corel Painter to do these instead of Photoshop. I have only used painter a few times it has some great paint tools but I'm still not understanding some of the tools like the blenders they worked great on these but later as I moved into the color paintings I had trouble with it picking up the canvas colors.

If anyone knows more about Painter I'ld love to hear from you none of my searches turned up the answers I needed. Lost points on the cone and abstract shape cause my shadows were too hard "cry" I tried softening them but still not good as needed to be I guess, oh well try to do better on the next series.

Castle in the Clouds - my meanderings...

Its been a chaotic few months, a couple weeks ago as I was arriving in the school parking lot a huge suburban decided to go full speed in reverse into me and my car. Needless to say my car was smooshed but thankfully I was ok other then being a bit rattled.

 

This semester I am taking a digital drawing class along with driving down to the valley for a 3d modeling class. Its really interesting how some teachers are so very different, my modeling teacher on Saturdays is very intense the moment the class starts he is off lecturing barely taking a breath the class is supposed to end at 6:00pm sat night but quite often we are there till 7 or 8. Its really interesting but at times all the information can be mind numbing.

 
On the other side is my drawing class I seriously think my teacher has this twisted little streak that wants to see us squirm. He doesn't lecture quite as much but he gives us a drawing assignment nearly every week and he wants them 11 by 17 inches matted! When your used to doing things 1024 or 512 for SL 11 by 17 inches can be quite daunting if not down right intimidating.

 
The drawing above is my assignment for class we were given the title Castle in the Clouds and the objective was to use multiple points of perspective. After a few really bleh printings and then going back and reworking my levels of contrasts and colors I was reasonably pleased with it. I ended up printing at Kinkos on 80 pound card stock. The first printing was really dark so they had to increase the lightness a lot, it is something I will need keep in mind when prepare for printing next time

 

Our next assignment is a diptych in dualities, for those of you that said huh like I did a diptych is 2 panels or a series of 2 panels of paintings in this case (see I told you he wanted to see us squirm). I'm not quite sure what to do for these and as usual I dread starting. I think that I'm always worried what if its not right or not good enough so I wait till I have no choice but to start, usually then I get completely involved and obsessive about it. That being said there really is something different to seeing your work in print, I am hoping I can overcome my phobia about it so that I look forward to it and be a bit more prolific.

 
When I got home late saturday night my router was dead, dead, dead so I ended up having to get a new one today and arguing with ATT support trying to get it workin properly. So I'm back online hopefully everyone had a wonderful Halloween.