More portfolio pieces.

Digital illustration executed in Photoshop with Wacom tablet. More of an exercise than a well-thought-out conceptual piece. The thing is, it was never completely thought out. So it stands as an exercise.

The concept was 'magic' and it was for a class, so we were restricted in some ways: no animate objects (so I used coats), monochromatic color scheme. I chose to show magic in a city scene, with chanting and an enchanted trash can. A very large enchanted trash can.

A botanical/nature illustration in watercolor, and I used a tiny bit of white gouache for the highlights on the berries in the middle. These are American beauty berries, two different varieties. I painted the wood grain background on watercolor paper first, masking out the berries, then painted the berries on top.

A screenprint on tea-stained paper. The whole class was assigned to make a print titled "The Most Offensive Thing Ever," and as you can imagine, most people took it literally, some did something like a mirror or something slightly more mysterious (a Virgin Mary with a bullet, for example) but I was the only one who managed not to show the Offensive Thing.

An illustration showing Life and then Death. Executed in colored pencil; type and border added digitally.

Senior Project

My intentions for this were so different. 20 credit hours during the same semester as the project, the thesis, and the portfolio show is... not conducive to anything getting the attention it deserves.
The Elephant's Child, by Rudyard Kipling. Read the story sometime. It's a bit long but it's a great story.











Hand-bound by Courtney Vaughan.

from the portfolio

From my Into to Illustration class, 2 years ago. Assignment was to do a self-portrait in the style of another illustrator (I chose Chris Van Allsburg). Executed in ink (pen and wash) on watercolor paper.

IN: Winthrop VCOM Senior Portfolio Show

Our portfolio show was a success! Adrian Shaughnessy, author of How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing your Soul, was our guest speaker. He spoke about three important qualities a young designer must cultivate: Cultural Awareness, Communication, and Integrity. Our program, Visual Communication, includes design and illustration, and in past years the speaker has not been as relevant to illustration as to graphic design, but Shaughnessy's words were applicable to many fields, even those not in the arts. Several parents were heard after the show saying how much they got out of the event. Many parents who didn't 'get' graphic design and weren't entirely convinced of the validity of their child's degree were feeling much better about it.
As far as feedback on our portfolios, I received a lot of positive feedback from mothers, grandmothers, and people who knew something about children's books, or at least appreciated them. I think my portfolio will change a good deal in the next year or so, but I'd certainly like for children's book illustration to be... something I do.

I'll post some portfolio pieces later. Right now Blogger is having an upload problem.

two down

Page 2 (second illustration, I guess it would be page 4)




Page 6? (third illustration)



All will be watercolor with minor digital cleanup.

elephants on parade

Sketches.



Second page of The Elephant's Child




Third page

From my portfolio

A not-quite-finished piece from Illustration II.




And oh my, how Blogger messed with my colors. Anyway, this was a cover for a children's book about reading. I don't quite remember the title, so that whole area- image behind title and type itself- is unfinished. I have to dig up the assigment sheet.

My process: develop sketch on plain paper, transfer to gessoed gatorboard (amazing, get some gatorboard and gesso it); watercolor (it naturally does that pattern/texture); scan and fidget with levels digitally; type on top.

First Commission

Collaboration with Mike Sudduth, whose illustration blog you can find in my links list on the right.

An education prof at Winthrop is writing a book about teaching, in which she has an exercise/worksheet on characterization for English or literature classes from elementary to middle school ages. The thing is called "Flesh It Out" and the students are to flesh out a character starting with the skeleton. She had been talking to a studio in NYC who was giving her exactly what she told them she didn't want- their skeletons were scary, ugly, and not right, and they just weren't taking the time to listen to what she wanted (which was a fun, non-scary, simplified, friendly skeleton with thick enough lines that it could be xeroxed many times without losing anything).

Light was your first love

"Why, if you are interested in the country only for the sake of painting it, you'll never learn to see the country."
"But that's just how a real artist is interested in the country."
"No. You're forgetting," said the Spirit. "That was not how you began. Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light."
"Oh, that's ages ago," said the Ghost. "One grows out of that. Of course, you haven't seen my later works. One becomes more and more interested in paint for its own sake."
"One does, indeed. I also have had to recover from that. It was all a snare. Ink and catgut and paint were necessary down there, but they are also dangerous stimulants. Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn't stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower--become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations."
"I don't think I'm much troubled in that way," said the Ghost stiffly.
"That's excellent," said the Spirit. "Not many of us had quite got over it when we first arrived. But if there is any of that inflammation left it will be cured when you come to the fountain."
"What fountain's that?"
"It is up there in the mountains," said the Spirit. "Very cold and clear, between two green hills. A little like Lethe. When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else's: without pride and without modesty."

-The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis