End of the semester

For the last assignment of the semester, we had to do a book cover of our choice. I chose the young adult novel "The Luxe" as I figured it was a subject matter I had not yet attempted (as in teenage girl books)! Needless to say, I feel like it is one of my most successful images of the semester and I am really pleased with the overall feel of the painting as well as the typography. It basically solidified my happiness with doing books and portraits for my thesis.

Speaking of thesis, I might as well let the cat out of the bag. I will be doing book covers of "classic/popular" literature as well as illustrations of the authors. So far the list of the books is as follows:

- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

And other possible but depending on time possibilities:

- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

So as you can see, I have quite a bit of reading/drawing/conceptualizing ahead of me. Not to mention one final fact about this project. That I will fully design the dust jackets for the covers (including the typography) and rebind paperback editions of the books to have the dust jackets wrapped around at my thesis. It's going to be a lot of hard work but damnit, I am determined.

And here's a grouchy typewriter lady for giggles. Hope everyone had an amazing holiday. One semester to go!

The Black Cat

For Halloween we had an open assignment so I decided to read some good old fashioned Edgar Allen Poe. I bought an entire collection of his work and got to reading. After perusing his short stories, I finally picked The Black Cat, one of his darkest and most sadistic stories, rivaling that of the Tell Tale Heart. So here is the result. He really likes hiding people in walls.

Self Portrait

The obligatory senior self portrait. I wanted something unobtrusive but that represented my style and personal aesthetic.

Sketchbook

Some scans from the old and now new sketchbook.

Illustration Academy pt 2

Figured I should post some of the stuff I did during Academy this past summer. Here we go.

Back in school

The beginning of the last school year.



Back in the swing of things with less than a year left to go. The first assignment was to deal with anything political, so I chose the subject of gay marriage and went from there. The piece deals with the beauty of a union (marriage or not) and the hurtful and slanderous things people will say about and to others. We should not be afraid of what's different and see the beauty within any bond, regardless of gender. Hopefully I captured that in this piece.



This piece was in response to a chapter in one of David Sedaris' books. Titled appropriately "The Smoking Section," Sedaris travels to Japan to try to finish his dirty habit off for good. He is an outsider, struggling to understand their language, and prefers to visit a local Western cafe to enjoy some shotokeku. I hope I captured the solidarity and gloom of his experience, albeit the positive nature of the stay there.

Illustration Academy

I'm already almost done with the first week of Academy and it's just been an incredible journey and learning experience already. Here are a couple of figure drawings from last night's session.

A new journey

So I decided to start a whole new blog. Well, it's not completely new, really. This location has been in existence now for quite some time, documenting the past three years I've spent studying at Ringling. I've grown so much and the direction of my art and interests have changed so much that I felt it was necessary to start anew. A self-cleansing process, so to speak. I have come to terms now more than ever with my strengths and weaknesses as an artist and though I still am unsure of my desired career path, I'm determined to succeed in whatever I pursue. Hopefully I'll find out a little bit more about myself through this process and can find my strongest passions within myself.