So I started to collect water in my apartment this afternoon starting around 2:40, here is a little drawing of how this went down. I’m not gonna lie I have been waiting for my first real apartment mishap. That’s why I fanatically check my locks and make sure my sister doesn’t leave on her straightener or curling iron. I was not prepared for a 3rd floor flooding hence the random assortment of containers.

Apparently there was a busted pipe on the third floor. They had to rip up a section of our carpet and now we have a machine drying the floor.

On a bit of the bright side they said that once they have that part of the floor fixed  they will clean all of the carpet in the apartment.

I am starting to regret choosing miniature food as my next quirky collection. Originally I was inspired by really simple mini food but then I saw the detailed ones and was all “ooooh aaaaah”. And now the food is in a weird in between place. Sigh. 

Still in the moving stuff around and adding items phase. I am also trying different ways to portray the size difference, a hand, something else on the wall or on top of the shadowbox. We’ll see. 

Here are more of my prints from class. I posted a few of my jean prints a while back but  thought I would put up a quick photo of the rest. The same jeans block print is used for both series with the line work done with trace monotype.

I also did some collage in the top ones with some Japanese paper (mulberry to be exact) that I glued on with some matte medium. A few different adhesives were suggested to me but had the matte medium at hand it worked out just fine.

By the way please ignore the mess on my table in the first picture. It is slowly being taken over by the materials of my next project.

So here is the real final of my terrarium collector portrait. I posted this guy a few days ago but I made a few changes and didn’t see any reason to have two versions so similar posted so I deleted the other one.

Also despite my nervousness and a few hiccups in the setup my grad committee meeting went well yesterday. Its always nice to see how people from different disciplines view your work. I got a lot of good critique/feedback and a list of artists to take a look at in relation to my work. Overall a positive experience.

These are options for my picture frame collection with portrait. The girl is still not quirky enough but I’ve got grad review tomorrow so I think I’m gonna just stop here. I’m having a hard time deciding which one of these to show tomorrow so opinions are welcome.

I just noticed I haven’t posted anything from my printmaking class this semester so here is bit of what I’ve been working on. My theme is street fashion, specifically prints of everyday real women and their fashion (good and bad). 

These are small 4x5 prints. I carved the pants out of a lino block and the line work is trace monotype. 

These are the finished portraits for my terrarium collection. I ended up doing two different portraits because I was having second thoughts about the sweater guy and I liked the sketch I had for this girl.

I like both of them but I’m leaning more towards the guy I think.

Also even though I said I was going to fix his wonky hand it has grown on me so its staying as is. 

Hmmm. Further ideas for the portrait. 

1. At his worktable with his terrariums around him.

2. Surrounded by various terrarium plants 

3. Or instead he collects dinosaurs (or godzilla items because for some reason I drew mothra in there)

Still thinking.

Terrarium beard guy portrait coloring -take two.

So I’ve decided to do portraits of the people that own the quirky collections.

I ended up drawing this guy on a whim. I saw a man wearing a sweater like this one the other day and it stuck in my mind. There are still things that I need to work on like the hand and some other stuff but I’ll get to it.

Does he look like someone who would collect terrariums? Is the sweater too busy?  Does his style fit with the terrariums, should he be more realistic looking? So much to still work out. We’ll see.

Quirky Collections-Terrariums

Originally it was suggested to me that I scan in my original sketches and color them rather then redraw them. I tried that and it wasn’t bad but something about something was just bugging me. In the end it was the lack of line variation that made me start over and redraw everything with a brush and some ink. Much happier with the results. 

So here are my scanned in brush and ink drawings (and after being arranged and rearranged numerous time) ready to be colored in.

This was the song that I used for the sequential illustration challenge.

My three illustrations for the group blog challenge. The song is Location by Freelance Whales. I just went straight off what the lyrics said and the girl is supposed to be a ghost. Slightly changed from my original entries but not too much.

Based off these lyrics:

I am starting to sense your location

In in an old abandoned mansion
In a country side of England
Spirits trapped inside the linens
And you’re feeling quite at home there
Also feeling somewhat lonely
No one sees you in your pixelated fish nets
And your black and orange beret

So even though I told myself that I wasn’t going to do the latest group blog challenge (because of class assignments) I finally gave in and started working on it today even though its due tomorrow. The challenge was to put your music device (ipod, pandora etc) on random and illustrate at least 3 sequential drawings based off the lyrics.

Be aware these are all going to be quick works with a lot of guesstimation in perspective, lighting, and what old abandoned mansions in the countryside of England look like.

I’ll say what song they are based off of when I post them all together tomorrow.

So I just finished my second week of classes for the MA program at csun.  So far the hardest has been my art+philosophy class where we had to read an entire book and write a 4-6 page paper the first week. I have a feeling that class is going to give me trouble all semester long.

Anyways in my studio classes we choose our own focus for our work throughout the semester. For my illustration class I have decided to do a series of quirky collections. First up is terrariums. Here are just a few of my sketches so far.

This was another idea I had for the olympics related challenge. Just doodling and trying out different fish tails.

Done for my groups blog. The challenge was to do something Olympics related.

The only time I ever watch synchronized swimming is during the olympics. The girls all look so alike and I always wonder what they look like on their down time out of the pool. So this is kind of what I imagine.

This is like Glee meets Bring it on.