The 12-week challenge begins!
April 5th, 2010
Today is the beginning of the “12 week challenge” over at the illustration blog zero2illo. It’s described as “an opportunity to make amazing progress towards your goal of becoming a full time professional illustrator” and will involve fun stuff like weekly assignments to help us along. You can even follow our progress on the zero2illo blog! I’m not doing this alone: See all the participants here. And now, since I can’t bear to post something without a picture, here are some swans inspired by H.C. Andersen’s “The Wild Swans”~~ click for a link to a larger version!
IF theme: "rescue"
March 31st, 2010
This is my 10th Illustration Friday entry! Woohoo! Not consecutive, though. I did miss “perspective.” No matter. Here’s a blimp to the rescue:
I kind of struggled with this theme. I really prefer adjectives to nouns or verbs… I can think of so many more applications!
IF theme: "expired"
March 26th, 2010
This one goes out to all those who hate to clean out the refrigerator. (Like me.)
Here’s a detail:
Here’s a sketch of the mold monster that I came up with first. It was smaller and cuter then:
they’re done!
March 23rd, 2010
I ordered some promo 5×7 post-cards, and just about completely forgot about them until a package arrived in the mail yesterday! The colors are slightly off, but even so they look much better than the home-printed stuff I sent out last time. Next step: business cards?
I was about to write about what a nice cozy rainy spring day this is, but as I type the rain has suddenly turned to snow!* Happy Tuesday everyone~
*Update:
For anyone who is curious, here’s how much snow we ended up with:
IF theme: "subterranean"
March 18th, 2010
(click for the larger version.)
For this word I decided to illustrate something from “The Subterraneans,” by Jack Kerouac. Here is Mardou, on some street in San Francisco 1953.
An excerpt:
Making a new start, starting from fresh in the rain, ‘Why should anyone want to hurt my little heart, my feet, my little hands, my skin that I’m wrapt in because God wants me warm and Inside, my toes—why did God make all this so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream—why the wild ground and bodies bare and breaks—I quaked when the giver creamed, when my father screamed, my mother dreamed—-I started small and ballooned up and now I’m big and a naked child again and only to cry and fear.
Here’s my current (temporary) camping-table workspace. I decided my illo should have some sort of spontaneous element in keeping with Kerouac’s prose, so I based the composition on the first sketch that came to mind. You can kind of see the sketch propped against the wall. Also present: Winsor & Newton watercolor travel sets—I got them as a gift when I was just starting with watercolor (2006) and they still haven’t run out yet. (With the exception of French Ultramarine and Alizarin Crimson.) Wadded up tissues always end up part of my process. Then there are various art supplies, my paper which I should have stretched first but didn’t, library book, computer with approximately 1000 tabs open so I can look up a lot of different images at once. (Like this one, of Alene Lee and William S. Burroughs. Mardou was based on Alene Lee.)
the birds
March 15th, 2010
These guys got rather quiet and watched me nervously while I drew them, as though they thought I was possibly planning to eat them. I can’t see why they would suspect me. I’ve never made any attempt on their lives. Amazingly, neither has the cat.
IF theme: "brave"
March 11th, 2010
Sorry I’ve been absent for so long! This week I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (an excellent book by the way,) and thinking of all the countless stories where the hero must go out into the unknown and face his demons. I have always liked the story of the Minotaur, and can only imagine the fear that Theseus would have felt wandering through the labyrinth, never knowing when he might round a corner and be faced with the monster. Maybe we all have a sort of minotaur lurking in our subconscious, some sort of fear or demon that we must conquer to be reborn?
IF theme: "propagate"
February 25th, 2010
(Click for a larger version)
I tried a few different ideas this week. Originally I was thinking of seedlings, as that’s the first thing that comes to mind with the word “propagate,” but for some reason none of my garden-related sketches struck me as very interesting. A more general definition, “to cause to extend to a broader area or larger number; spread” had more possibilities. The magician doesn’t seem to have an audience, so perhaps he’s at home, practicing his act? Concept sketches after the jump~
