illolifeRPG - Beastiary 1 - ToDo'sa

One of the quests for illolifeRPG is to illustrate your own personal beasts that beset you along your journey.  This is my first and one of my more frequent foes.

Ever since I've started identifying this particular beast that haunts my thoughts, I've seen her effects on me so clearly. It's pretty frustrating when you know what's happening and feel powerless to stop it. ToDo'sa is Medusa's nasty wraith-like cousin. Once one of the most productive illustrators, but because of her pride and lack of direction was cursed to live of the productive powers of others. Her end effect and goal is to petrify the productivity of those she latches on to so she can feed on the productive powers they do have. We all have the time and power to be productive! This little beastie just gets in my way sometimes... a lot of times.

We all have the power and the time to be productive and to progress.  Sometimes, I feel like I have one of these little beasties leaching my productive energies from me.  Many a time I've been in the depths of Productivity Petrification.

Introducing...  the dreaded... 

ToDo'sa

SVS Thurd Thursday - Kaia's Secret

I just submitted this illustration in a contest on the School of Visual Storytelling facebook page. Submissions close the 21st this month.

Here's the prompt for the competition...

"Kaia was diving in tropical waters when she discovered it! It shimmered and glistened in the light as she wondered how to get it up to the boat before anyone discovered her secret."

This was such a fun illustration! The challenge of illustrating reflective, shimmering, and luminous lighting was a fun one to tackle. I did my best to take a more unexpected take on the prompt than the light hearted, surprise treasure discovery. A feisty ocean poacher stumbling upon an entangled mermaid seemed like a much more interesting story to illustrate. Enjoy!

illolifeRPG - Character Sheet - Level 4 Illustrator Mama!

You know how kids are way more motivated to work if they're having fun?  Why do we forget that handy trick as we get older?  It works when you're 5.  It works when your 25. I'm proof!

This is my first character sheet for a new FB group called illolifeRPG alpha. The idea is that you get XP and level up as you set goals and achieve them. Participating has really helped me be more motivated and productive in my life and my art. It feels so great! If your a creative body, I highly recommend checking it out.  Especially if you have a bit of a fantasy or gaming streak.

Interesting to note: This is the first piece where I used several layer masks so I could freely paint and still keep a clean silhouette.  I've used masks before, but I usually paint the negative space around the outside of the whole subject.  This time I blacked out the whole mask and painted back in the space I wanted to keep.  I also had a few separate layers like skin, hair & clothes, and sword.  I also had fun using colored line.  I just locked the pixels for that.

Things I love about this: My first self portrait I actually liked as I worked on it and as a finished piece; Aladdin pants! I'm so getting a pair for real; The idea of flying by means of riding clouds; and that I turned my Wacom pen into my two handed foam sword. Now I can conquer my foes and my projects!

Fear of Repetition?

So here's number two of the ABC speed paintings.  It's good that tomorrow isn't a favorite snack fruit that we're currently out of, because the boys were begging for apples and bananas all yesterday and today.  What a compliment!  :)

On today's painting I wondered about how to choose background and shadow colors.  I started with an idea of a different background color, but it wasn't working.  It's pretty tricky to build up a nice Y/YO banana on a sky blue background.  I fiddled with it as I went and wound up with a background very similar to the apple speed paint's.  This kind of worried me.  I don't want to have all my work be the same.  Instead of dwelling on these kind of fears and concerns I decided to put them aside and look at the pros of what I was doing.

     -I'm actually finishing little paintings for practice!  WOOHOO!!!

     -If I end up practicing the same thing for the whole alphabet then I might be getting onto something that I really like and would be starting to get familiar with. 

     -I don't feel like my work has had as much of a consistant feel as I'd like it to.  Doing the same/similar thing might help me find a groove that I can work with in any application. 

     -I won't actually be doing the same thing every time even if it may look like that.  I'll be learning and applying new things every time.

     -These little paintings make me feel really good.  

As long as I'm working to get better, even if it all looks the same, I'm still moving forward.  

Take a hike fears.

:)

B is for Banana

Speed paint ~2hrs

Photoshop CS5

Feeling Inspired!

I did this speed paint in about 2 hours.  That may not seem very speedy, but for me to get something "finished" that quick, even a little study of an apple, is pretty sweet!  I got inspired after watching a video Hollie Hibbert put up on her blog of a study she did.  I still have some questions about specific parts of her process, but it was a great exercise for me.  I even made an ABC's list of subjects that Brandon helped me choose for further speed paint exercises.  

PS: if you haven't seen Hollie Hibbert's work, you can check it out at her blog here.  She graduated a few semesters before I did and her work has always been very inspirational to me.  Thanks Hollie!

A is for Apple

Speed Paint ~2hrs

Photoshop CS5

Crazy Bunny Story - Line Illustration

This is my most recent commission.  It's of an experience a friend of mine that wanted to remember the story visually to share with another friend, but he didn't have a picture to go with it.  Thus the illustration commission was born!  It was a great story and I had a great time illustrating it.

Share and Enjoy!

Final 12"x12" Line Illustration

Closer....

I love this little guy!

Hooray for illustrating 

and hooray for fun stories to illustrate!

Sketches

Just a few sketches that I liked.  The circus horse was inspired by my dear friend, Emily Davis, who recently did a circus horse of her own.  Circus subject mater is so fun!  There is no over the top in the big top. :)  The girl in the corner is the drawing on watercolor paper that I'm going to paint.  It was meant for last week's Illustration Friday topic, lonely.  It's an interesting feeling to reflect on, because it seems like most of the time, even though we can't tell, we're the one holding the trowel.  I've recently been trying to learn about myself and make changes so I can be a happier person.  Loneliness hasn't really been my main struggle, but it's the same basic story.  You develop bad habits or attitudes, which lead to actions and feelings that build a wall.  Taking it down and keeping it down takes time and effort. Then the tricky part is not picking up the trowel again and falling back into old patterns.  A bit of a personal work in progress story to go with some work in progress illustration.  Fitting.

What do you think about the sketches?  My hubby, Jamin, got a kick out of the house pet circus sketch.    Any comments on the lonely drawing before I get into watercolor would be great!  I'm planning to put wooded boards over her brick box and have some light sneaking in through the cracks, despite her best efforts.  I just haven't decided what direction the boards should run along the roof, and what direction the light should be coming in at to get just the right mood.

IF: Refresh

This is my take on the Illustration Friday topic of Refresh.  It's about time I posted something new.  It feels great to get something ready for IF.  I did it in about three hours, so I don't feel like it's something I'd call finished.  But I do feel like it was a good exercise and practice.  It feels so good to sneak in some illustrating!!  Even though it's not truely finished, and there are still things that I would refine, how do you think it could be better?  Even if it seems obvious?

I also tried a saturation adjustment to see if I liked it better.  I think I like the contrast of saturation in the first one that emphasizes the heat.  Then the contrast of temperature in the cools bring you to the glass of water.  What do you think?

Thanks for looking and hopefully there will be more to come!

Announcements!

I helped make the High School graduation announcements for the two beautiful exchange students that live with us.  They were so fun to do.  Very refreshing and fulfilling.  It's nice working creatively with photos every so often.  Most of the work is already done for you; color, value, lighting, proportion, likeness, etc.  It's all just fun finishing and composition work.  I also liked flexing my meager graphic design muscles working with the text.  I like how they turned out.

With Caty's announcement I had complete creative freedom because I made it while she was at school as a surprise.  She loves it, and so do I.

 With Sharon's announcement, she first wanted me to just do the back of the announcement because it was just text and she saw what all I did with Caty's.  She had a version of the front similar to what you see.  She wanted the back to match up with her original front.  But after she saw the finished back we decided to let me re-do the front in the same basic design so it matched up with the back.  She's very happy with it too.  I learned some things about photo editing and practiced some photoshop techniques. Those decorative scalloped edges are just a brush I made.  I felt cool. :)

So... really fun and refreshing!  How much could one charge for making announcements for wedding, high school, college announcements?  :D

IF: Height + Watercolor

I usually center the images in my blog posts, but with such an extreme vertical format, this seemed a little more appropriate.

I did this little watercolor piece while one of the exchange students that is living with Jamin's family was doing her art homework in watercolor.  Her photo reference inspired me and I had a scrap of long watercolor paper from something, so it worked out great!  It was so great to work with my watercolors again!  It only took me 30min tops to do, but it was so much fun and therapeutic.

Purely watercolor!

IF: Return

This Illustration Friday topic was awhile ago, but I took it as an opportunity to do a few little studies to try a technique where you paint a painting in guache, really THICK.

Then comes the scary part... you pour waterproof ink ALL OVER IT and let it DRY!  It's a pretty freaky process.  Oh, I forgot to mention that you leave all the areas that you want to be black free of guache so the ink will adhere to the working surface rather than the paint, like everywhere else.

Then comes the Magic part!  You run tap water over the whole thing and the ink will fleck off of the painting wherever there is thick paint.  The magic of this process is in the nature of guache paint.  Because it reactivates when there is wet medium, or water, over it the ink on the paint sloughs of as the top layer of the guache painting reactivates.

You can do an entire finished painting underneath or more of an underpainting to set the stage for the finished product.  This is kind of what I did.  I did a rough, simple underpainting, did the guache-ink wash off technique, then did some refining in Photoshop. It was a really fun little painting.  It was even more fun because Jamin, my husband, and I listened to "A Princess of Mars" the first book of the John Carter of Mars series, from Librivox.org.  We've had a lot of fun listening to them.

Before this happy resolution to this painting came a few "learning experiences."

Experience 1

This one was going to be a cute little painting, but it was not meant to be.  The paper of my illustration board was rubbing off before the ink was.  Confusing....

Experience 2

Same story, the ink wasn't magically washing off, so I stopped to preserve what I could.

After awhile I was able to carefully scrape off a lot of the ink, but it's still in process.  I learned that the problem was the ink I was using.  It was ACRYLIC ink.  Big, bad no no in the ink off process.  I'm not entirely sure why, but ye be warned!  Higgins india waterproof ink is the stuff to use.  It has been time tested by many in my acquaintance and they swear by it for this technique.  It worked on my 3rd Experience, so it made a believer out of me. :)

Excerpts from a Lithuanian Fairy Tale: The Queen of Serpents

It has been a wonderful experience working on this project and I'm excited to continue working on it until it is finished in it's entirety, not just excerpts.  Thank you to all of my friends, peers, teachers, and family who have supported me and helped me along the way.  My second greatest thanks goes to my wonderful, loving, awe inspiring husband, Jamin.  Surely his support and help in innumerable ways have kept me afloat and able to have made it this far.  The process of finishing will be slower because I'll be shifting my full time occupation from college to kids after graduation.  Illustration will go on, but on a slower, smaller scale.

My greatest thanks goes to my Heavenly Father, my Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost.  I know that my meager efforts with my weaknesses and short comings have been magnified far beyond anywhere I could have carried myself under my own strength.  I testify of the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know it has the power to heal, change, comfort, strengthen, and so much more.

My name is Shara Mills.  This is my finished BFA project, and I'm a Mormon.

Figure Drawings

I'm in an illustrative figure drawing class.  It's been so much fun!  It's been great exploration and it's so liberating to draw, express, and experiment with the lines, proportions, gestures and everything.  The models and costumes have been great.  It's so wonderful to work from such fantastic reference.  Our class has also started a blog to post the pictures we take in class for reference later on.  If you'd like to be inspired and work from some great reference, you can check it out here, advancedfiguredrawing2012.blogspot.com.   My favorite drawing I turned in before I took a picture.  It's a finished drawing I refined out of the fourth drawing in this list.  It was just such a great pose and gesture for me.  I hope you enjoy. 

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!