Guess Who!

Let's play a game! Guess what girl once again tried to stay up late to finish her project, slept in, and missed critique day for her Senior Studio class, and has now attended a total of zero critiques?
I think the answer is apparent.
And I'm double-bummed because my makeup class at 9 today was practicing trauma injuries for a mock disaster on Saturday. I really love making fake bruises and blood!

So, here is what was supposed to be done at 8 this morning.I once again just want proof that I finished it sort of on time:
My folktale piece, The Little Mermaid.
I'm very happy with how far it's come in the past 24 hours, but I'm not very satisfied over all. I'm not saying why, because I'm doing my best these days to not point out my flaws and make excuses for them.

Feelin' Emotionaaallll

These are some emotion expressions for my character design of Eilonwy. 

Even though I can think of other emotions I wish I'd had time to draw, and there are a couple I did that don't fit with the others too well, I'm actually really pleased with how these turned out. 

Mostly because I've never done anything like this before! My hope is that you'll be able to tell what emotion it is without a caption... but maybe I'll put those on just in case. :)

Sniffle-y sad

"Aw, how cute" kind of happy

M-m, no that's gross

*Gasp* WHAT?! Johnny Depp is in this very same building?!

*Fuming*

Meh

Wait, what? kind of scared

Just came back from the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. Never again....

Tough worker

Uncertain, biting her lip

"I'm disgusted with you" angry and shouting

Completely exhuasted. Should be my profile picture right now.

Skeptical

Bottled-up happy...
Looks a little too similar to "demon who will murder you," but oh well.

The adventurous spirit I imagine most often being on Eilonwy's face.

So which one is your favorite and why? :) I'd love to hear which ones came across the best/worst.

Also, this is how they all look together in my sketchbook....

in case you wanted to know. I kind of like being able to compare them all at once.

Mr. Grumpy Gills

*WARNING: Rant Post Ahead* It's just one of those days, and I'd like there to be proof that I did at least some of the work I was meant to do.

Stayed home sick today, and missed yet another critique this morning while I writhed in pain. Here's most of what I was supposed to turn in for my art classes today:

"Poison Buffet" for Project one. I'm worried that it's too colorful,
that the atmospheric lighting isn't apparent enough.

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid"
obviously not done. It took forever to do the mermaid's lines, and now they're  thinner than I wanted,
the perspective on the lighthouse is wrong, and I may not be able to turn it in now since it's late.
Uuuuugh.

 And then I didn't have time to make actual sketches for my next project about "Samhain"-- basically the original Celtic version of Halloween-- which I'm super bummed about because Halloween is tied for first of my favorite holidays and I'm really excited to work on this one. At least I did some research and have a couple of ideas. Yay for convenient Pinterest boards where I can quickly gather reference.

The one thing I kinda finished today: my character design for Hen Wen. But I'm thinking
that she was supposed to look a little more like an animated cartoon than so realistic.
But at least she's cute. :)

Hans Christian Andersen

The Little Mermaid: Value composition and Color roughs

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Oh, the thing we hate and call busy work: practice.
(Cue the shrieking violins from the soundtrack of Psycho.)
But it's so essential! I'm on a hypocritical soap box in saying that for artwork, but I took 12 years of piano lessons-- I know practice makes things easier and better. (Shout out to my piano teacher, Connie, and Mom for making me learn this.)
The key is to get past that point of intense hatred for it, so that you've just resigned to give in, put in the numbers, get it over with and check it off the list. But after a while of that, you start to realize that you've come a long way since the beginning, and practice has changed from "I have to play this 10 times in a row pretty well," to "Ok, 10 times in a row with no note mistakes. Done! So let's see if I can try it 5 more times with no hesitations. Cool, it worked! Maybe I could try playing with my eyes closed now..." (That last one is just something I did for fun, and it didn't often work, haha.) It's suddenly more of a game that's really exciting-- like, it's ridiculous that practicing like that can make me smile so much. The only competition is yourself, and the only way to lose is to do nothing at all.

So, I assume, it is with drawing figures or whatever you want to be better at. I was astounded last year when I whipped out a male and female figure completely from my head, and they weren't too shabby! And all because I had spent hours filling up my sketchbook with figures for my figure drawing class.

This post has taken a turn from where I thought it'd be going, but it's a good one, so I'm keeping it. Just know that this great video tutorial a friend of mine posted on Facebook (thanks Jordan!) was supposed to be related to something I was going to say. :) It's a great video about structure, shape, anatomy, and expression in caricature drawing by John Kascht. Find it HERE. :)

And for good measure, here are the heads for the characters Doli and Dallben I had to do for class. I got really into that first page of the dwarf, Doli! Numbers 5,6,8, and 9 are my favorites for him. Dallben was a little more drab, but I like numbers 1 and 11 best.

Character-istics

Hellos again. I don't have anything real exciting this time: just some silhouettes and characters I worked on for class...
Taran and Eilonwy from the chronicles/series involving The Black Cauldron.

Never mind the bucket... I sketched it as one of his props, decided it was too small,
and was too lazy to take it out of the colored version.

I know they're not the best (nothing remotely like the wonderful Glen Keane's work), but I'm in the middle of learning. And I'll re-do them soon, hopefully.

Also, Jake Parker came last night to tell us a bit about his experiences and such, and did a little demo while we asked questions. His work is awesome, but I especially LOVED his sketchbooks!! They were so fun to explore. I took down some good reminder notes, tried to sketch Jake as he talked, and didn't take the opportunity to show him any of my work. I honestly have no idea what I even want to do, I didn't have anything really great with me to show him, so I figured it'd be embarrassing for me and a waste of his time. Though on second thought, I think he was a little put out that I didn't at least try. Sorry!

Bottom Right head is supposed to remotely resemble Jake, minus the line interrupting his hair.

Artist level: NINJA
Hahaha

New Design!

Heyyo folks!
I've just entered a little design (really, very simple and a little quicker than I would've liked) into the Threadless Loves Clever challenge! It's based off of a favorite joke of my family's:
Two cannibals are eating a clown, and one turns and says to the other, "Hm. Does this taste funny to you?" What a knee slapper, right? But the cheese makes it so funny! :) So I just replaced cannibals with something more easily recognized and loved these days. (Who doesn't love them some raptor?)
Besides, we all know that raptors are clever...

So please, if you have a moment, share the link via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or otherwise and vote for it if you can!

(Tee templates via Threadless.)