Color II - Triptych Final

So, this is my final for Color II.  It turned out much better than I could have done on my own.  It is the product of best efforts, wise counsel and critique, and grace.  Because considering stuff and things, and how I handle such stuff and things, there's no way these could have become what they are without my Heavenly Father's help.  I know that my insignificant efforts and pursuits in the grand scheme of things are important to Him because they are important to me.

I hope you enjoy these three pieces as much as I did.  What would make them more enjoyable for you?

Sheesh, did you know it's really hard to line up pieces horizontally?  Give us an inch of really nice features and we whine and cry that we didn't get a mile.  Thanks Blogger for nice updates for putting images in posts. :)  And thank you for visiting my blog.

Color II - Pallet's Final

So these are the final pieces.  They aren't extremely different from where they were in the last post, but I've got to put up the finals because I'm so happy with them.  I've gotten a lot of great feed back on these.  It makes getting to class late ok, and make makes me excited to keep going.  The process was such great learning experience.

Note: they are a bit desaturated upon upload.  Weird.

Prints Available

Prints Available

Prints Available

.....I hope you enjoy the finished product!....

Color II - Pallet's WIP

Due to a wonderful break to celebrate Thanksgiving holiday, feed back on current projects is painfully limited.  Such is life.  So, if you see this and have a few minutes to appraise what I have done so far and comment your suggestions I would be ever so grateful!  It's good for digestion. :)

This assignment was to find 3 pieces of art that had inspirational color.  We then broke the color in those pieces into simple ratios to more easily see how they composed the color and why it was so attractive to us.  The final part of the project is to create our own pieces with the color ratios of our inspirational pieces.  It's a great process that I'm going to have to practice more.  Being inspired by others is a great way to learn from them.

Here is what I have so far....

I am at a work in progress stage with these, some more than others.  I have things I plan to do, but I'd really like to hear from you.  What do you think are the most important things for me to adjust, fix, and refine on these pieces?

.....Thanks!.....

ps: that took long time to get to look good in the post!

Illustration for spread 3 in WATERCOLOR!!

I finally did it!  I did one of my BFA illustrations in watercolor!  I really enjoyed the planning and painting process.  It was really nice to be able to see the whole painting, step back, and focus in to work a little smaller.  On my previous digital pieces I'd have to zoom way in just to see anything at full scale, and then I could only see a small part of the whole.  It was really nice to see the whole thing progressing at the same time.  It makes me wonder just how big a difference a nice big screen would make in my

 . . . . . . . . . . . . .digital work. . . . . . . . . . . . 

Interesting way to end a paragraph. :)

When I painted it I didn't want the saturation to get out of control because watercolor can be very vibrant and I wanted the piece to harmonize.  Now that it's finished I want to do some touch ups to saturation.  Mostly in the sash, flowers, and the hat.  

I did do some tweaking to the darker darks, but I'm not sure if there is enough to get a good sense of perspective in the foreground.  Your thoughts?

PLEASE CRITIQUE!

Trust me, I like it. :)

Watercolor Gifts

For my most recent watercolor assignment I made gifts for my friend who got married this past weekend and another friend of mine who had her baby shower.

This was for my friend who got married. A cute quote with my first experiment with masking fluid. It was fun to try a text piece, especially the negative positive play with the flower shapes. Silly me, I forgot to scan the final before I framed it. Sorry for the discoloration of the photo under warm light.

These were for my friend to decorate their nursery. I found out her favorite animals are hawks and falcons so I made a Mama falcon, Papa hawk, and baby chick. The parents look at each other with the baby below in the middle.

Over all they were enjoyable, but I definitely got what I paid for in the cheap-o paper. Arches would have been much better, but it was a good learning experience. Maybe good for little studies. I'll find a use for it, but not the best for finial pieces.

Color II - 3 Contrasts

The assignment was to create an image in a square format 3 different ways. First, using only contrast of value to create a focal point. Second, create a different focal point using only contrast of saturation. This one was a little trickier because you can't exclude value, but the contrast of saturation was supposed to overpower any contrast of value there might be. Third was to basically have no contrast of value or saturation, but of hue. So a "blue" object would be blue in all three, but the hues in the third would be grouped so closely it would seem like there is no contrast at all.

These are my revisions from my first go at the assignment. Sadly, I didn't get them printed today, so this beauty of a project probably won't see the Spori display wall. I'm happy with the first two pieces, but the hue exercise might still be a little too close to be discernible. No contrast, yet still discernible. What a challenge!

The process of production for this project was executing each painting in watercolor, scanning them, and manipulating them in photoshop. The hue exercise was the most heavily photoshopped because the watercolor paper had so much variation of value due to the tooth of the paper. Beautiful, but not appropriate to that specific exercise.

Spread2

This is the second spread of the Lithuanian fairy tale I've been working on for my BFA. This illustration has come so far! It wouldn't have been nearly as good without all of the wonderful critiques and advice I've received on it so far. Critiques, comments, and educated and explained opinions are so powerful in helping me improve in my work. I'd very much like to hear/read your thoughts about the basically finished product. My one disclaimer is that the spot illustration is only a rough place holder. I'd even like help on the text; design and writing. As far as the writing goes, I want it simple and to read like a classic fairy tale. I haven't addressed it much as far as the finished text goes. English majors, GO! :)

Thanks!

Wow, this washes out online. Going much more saturated in photoshop I'm going to melt my lappy from the radiation of the pixels, but it looks so blah here! Pixels, such defiant little creatures.

Color II - Analogous/Aaron Douglass Emulation

Prints Available

This assignment was an analogous color scheme. A simple assignment which gave lots of freedom for making the assignment fit the students' purposes. My purpose with this piece was to emulate Aaron Douglas' depression era/harlem renaissance style. Disney emulated his style also in the "Almost There" scene from "The Princess and the Frog." That scene made me so happy!

This piece also serves the purpose of illustrating how I sometimes feel as a art student and mother. It had potential of being a very emotional process, but I didn't cry at all over this piece. Which, if you know me, is a bit of a feat. Actually, this semester I have been tremendously blessed with answers to fervent prayer and aid in times when I do feel like this illustration. What you don't see in this illustration is the beautiful white ship that carries me through the turbulent waters that is the merciful, tender, and gracious love and power of my Savior.

Spread1 Critiques Please

Here is the first full illustration and text page for the Lithuanian fairy tale I'm illustrating for my BFA project. The spot illustration is still in progress. I plan for it to look like the sheaves of wheat in the illustration with color and line. I want the scythe to look sharp and metallic too. That will be the hard one for me I think. I made certain words colored to emulate illuminated texts that similarly colored important words in the text. The traditional color in illuminated manuscripts is red, but it didn't seem to harmonize very well with the yellow/purple of the illustration. But now I wonder if the purple is too harmonious and if a more red violet would work better. If I change the color of the colored text on this page to fit the illustration, I'll have to do the same for all the other illustrations, and it may not work as well. Should I stick with the traditional red? Or should I ditch the colored words all together? I think they're kind of fun myself, but I just want them to be a bit more varied.

Your comments and critiques on the illustration, the design of the text, the in progress spot, or anything else will be greatly appreciated.

Revised Monochromatic

Prints Available

Here is the revised version. I like it much better. Going back and revising helped me get more control over my values and saturations. I like it better without the hearts.  Thanks!

Color II - Monochromatic / IF: Mesmerizing

This assignment was to create a piece of art in any media that was monochromatic, or in other words one color plus black and white. To prepare us for this assignment we made three 10 step value scales. One was purely black and white, one was our favorite intense color value scale, and one was a chromatic grey value scale. Chromatic greys are pure neutral with a tiny touch of color. With all those colors, you actually get a rather dynamic pallet. This monochromatic illustration is meant to be using what I approximated as cadmium red light. The medium is digital, though I had a fellow illustration friend think it was traditional acrylic for a second. What a compliment! I'm rather happy with the finished product, but I already know at least three little details I would change. The drawing was way fun and painting monochromatic is so relaxing. I normally have such a hard time choosing color, but just working in one color all you have to worry about is value and intensity. This class is, and will continue to be a great learning experience for me in mastering the BEAST that is color.

Two birds with one stone, yes? I think he looks pretty mesmerized. :)

I am open to and would appreciate your critiques.

Egle and her family

This is a piece I'm working on as a part of my BFA. It's a family portrait, if you will, of the main character of the story. She's the one getting her hair braided. Those familiar with my other BFA work may note some changes to her character.

What would you like to see more of or different to make it better? Thanks for the help!

Such is life and logos

So, it's kind of depressing being away from the creative process for awhile. It's been two months since Kyler was born and I still have a pretty shaky handle on managing my life. I wish that I would just do the things that I know I should. I know there's some amazing potential inside of me, it's just sad that I feel like I can't even reach the next rung on the ladder let alone climb it.

I know that my biggest problem is that I want to do it on my own. I know that I can't reach the potential that I feel inside me without my Heavenly Father's help. It's painfully hard to relearn how to do that as a wife and mother of two. "I've studied the scriptures everyday before," I tell myself, "I've gone to bed and woken up early so I get enough sleep before, I've sketched and drawn and painted for pleasure before, I've felt the Holy Ghost move me in my life on a daily basis before. Why can't I now!?" My response to myself is that it kind of took my awhile to figure all that out. Like all of my single life. So, unfortunately for my impatience with myself, it's just going to take awhile to figure out how to have all of that again in my new life of fabulous family and frequent fluctuation. The joy of alliteration has thankfully never left. :)

It is a blessing that I've had opportunities to exercise and expand my talents in this time when what I normally do and what I want to do have been difficult for me. Those opportunities have come in the form of logo design and other more graphic design type services. I say services because they've been for my family.

The first has been helping my dad redesign my uncle's website for his chiropractic, physical therapy, and massage practice he runs in Idaho Falls. I'm not trained as a graphic designer, so I've just been feeling my way through all of this, and working in Illustrator.

Advanced Health and Physical Therapy - logo -

- website banner -

The second was the logo and business card design for a business my dad wants to start up.

MoLocal - logo -

- business card development -

He went with the two star design.

It's been quite fun to do and I feel so artistically and creatively rejuvenated after working on them. Now I just have to figure everything else out... Patience Shara, patience.

Valentine Sweater

Prints Available

This little watercolor is for the Illustration Friday topic, "sweater." I just love big chunky knit things, as many hours pursuing etsy would attest too, so that's what I decided to illustrate. The drawing was really fun to do. It was nice to exaggerate and simplify the figure once I finally let myself. As I was working on the drawing, I knew that I wanted to make it a monochromatic painting in the end. Once it was finished it took me what felt like forever to actually decide what color to make the monochromatic painting. I thought of blue, probably because of the cold. I thought of green because I like green a lot, and it seemed a challenge. I finally decided on the pink-y red of quinacradone rose because it seemed ever so appropriate for Valentines Day. Seems like her favorite sweater is her valentine this year. :) My biggest self critique is that where I started to make the wash for the sweater a graded wash I got way too much water too fast and it didn't make the gradient I was going for at all, but it still works for me. It was good practice and fun to do anyway. Hope you like it!

It's not Friday but...

Prints Available

This was for the last Illustration Friday topic, "surrender." It was a fun little watercolor illustration. I used quinacridone rose, manganese blue hue, and azo yellow as my color triad supplemented with quinacridone sienna(which I LOVE!) and the littlest bit of pthalo blue. Thanks to Sister Sally Ellis for suggesting manganese blue hue for me. I haven't done greens with it yet except for a quick little color wheel for the triad, but I really like it so far.

Here's the little color wheel I did for my color triad. You can see put a little swatch of quin. sienna next to the oranges for perspective. I think it fits in with the triad colors. And those beautiful strokes are from Sis. Ellis showing me quin. sienna for the first time. I like it a lot! I got a tube of mang. blue hue and quin. sienna for Christmas and I'm excited to keep experimenting with this little family of color I've found.

Project of a Lifetime

Several months back, my husband and I decided to start this life long project. It's our second actually. I've put a lot of time and energy into it so far, and Jamin has been working hard to help too. All of our hard work has paid off big time and we finished phase 1 of the project. Here's what we've got so far.

His name is Kyler Lamar Mills. Isn't he beautiful.

Delicious vs. Disgusting

The idea behind this piece is to use color to show the same food in the two different conditions; delicious and disgusting. The idea was to use color to demonstrate statements and reaction of color. The top one needs darker darks for contrast and I wish the kernels were smaller, and the bottom one needs more saturation to make the reaction more shocking. I just didn't know how to go about it without reaching for the Hue/Saturation slider, and I tried to just paint the whole thing rather than using shortcuts to help me understand the colors better.

For BFA critique

It's just the left page that is ready for critique. I'm saving text treatment for later.