Illustration Friday - "Star Gazing"

The star in question is a certain Hollywood blonde heiress...

Completed in Photoshop.

xx

Illustration Friday 13/08/2010

This week's topice was 'Caged.' I originally had a few very strong ideas for this illustration and my thumbnails were pretty good. Then I got sidetracked by a helpdesk call put in to India in order to get my wireless working and didn't have time to complete a good rendering from my thumnails... so, no final illo this week, but I felt I REALLY wanted to submit at least something. The below is a quick doodle I did at my desk at work with my ball point pen and highlighters. It's not about the tools, after all :)

Note: the scanner at work is CRAP and didn't capture the colours as I intended them... will upload again at home tonight.

Two new paintings

I had a dream of a fat ballerina who had nimble tree trunks for legs. Both paintings were done in a combination of water soluble wax crayons and markers on watercolour paper. I must make a note to study more anatomy so that the features don't turn into abstractions.

Illustration Friday - Confined

My entry for this week's entry at illustrationfriday.com. To see the other entries, visit their website!

Auction

I finally managed to finish the painting that I auctioned off before Christmas. I actually finished it nearly two weeks ago, but between the weather and my job and trying to have time for myself, I've just not been so productive...

It's based on the collapsed West Pier off the coast of Brighton.

Happy Christmas, y'all

Here's a quick painting I did in the spirit of the holidays. Perhaps next year I'll be more ambitious and send out physical cards, but for this year, consider this your official Christmas card!

I pray everyone is happy and healthy over the holidays and remains so for the rest of the year.

Much love,

Cody

Illustration - Working Methods FINAL PROJECT!

I had originally planned to do a set of illustrations that had the look and feel of an airline safety card, and the theme was going to be either How to Survive the Canadian Wilderness, or an instruction manual for building a bookshelf. After showing my instructor my initial sketches, and telling her that I wouldn't be joining the Narrative Illustration class next semester, she changed my project to a narrative project instead.

I've done it in a comic style and tried to keep my lines clean, but according to her it's still very 'sketchy.'

My original idea is the sketch at the bottom.

Doodles

As promised: something instead of nothing. My tutorial with my instructor this week was very productive. She said I was on the right track with my project, and then gave me a few pointers and a reading list.

The mushrooms is a doodle I did on the back of an envelope while waiting for Rob to get ready (he's so slow sometimes!!). The other one is a birthday card I did for my friend Charlie.

I'll have my finished comic strip done by the weekend, so we can look forward to that, yeah? So much work to do now...

I totally just remembered that I forgot to blog this week!

It's becuase I didn't have a project to hand in on Saturday, and therefore nothing to show. I'm currently working on the final roughs for my final project, and I'll try to post them this coming weekend.

I also have some irons on the fire as far as other work is concerned, and I'll keep everyone posted when I can share more...

xx

My family, and other strangers

I think I got a little carried away this week with my inkblot spraying. I discovered black ink on white paper does some amazing things when you blow it around with a straw. Then I discovered that using compressed air allows for even more flexibility and creativity (added bonus: not falling over from hyperventilation!). I loved it so much that I spent most of the week playing with that instead of paying attention to my homework. By Saturday morning, I realized I didn't have anything to bring to class and had to whip together something, fast!

The brief was focused on an article written by a woman with Asperger's syndrome. She focuses on the theme that we shouldn't use any known 'models' of normal to categorize her or others with autism, as well as her experiences with synaesthesia. I wanted to somehow incorporate her idea of 'among them, but not of them,' concept, and how she felt she was a stranger amongst almost everyone. I also wanted to use the concept of models and had the idea of dolls on a conveyor belt.

Using the same ink spraying technique from the week, I created four 'dolls.' Individually, I loved each of them, intact as they were on A4 paper. Then, as I began to cut them out and glue them into a sort of montage, they became disjointed somehow. Every time I cut, it hurt a little more, and with each cut I realized how far from the target of the brief I had strayed. The brief was supposed to be an editorial piece on autism and synaesthesia. Instead, I gave a 'disneyfied' piece that could have been an advert for children's art supplies, or characters from a kid's tv series, not at all usable in an editorial fashion.

It was a complete failure, and if this had been 'real' school, I would have received failing marks. Sue even said so. In the morning group critique, she actually finished with, "but thank you for at least bringing something to show us." How humiliating! Sometimes it's good to royally fuck up. In my arrogance I had become self-indulgent, and I am again humbled.

On a positive note, my instructor loved the dolls, loved the use of sprayed ink and thought several of the dolls were 'sexy.' She gave me some sound advice for where these images could appear as published work, and advice for my final project, which I have three weeks for, and is self-directed.

The long image of the four girls was the piece I submitted. The image of five pictures are the initial sketches and colour studies I did in the first week of the project. The others are doodles (hence the messiness).