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.