With toy design encompassing most of my life right now,  I haven't been able to paint.  When I was packing my stuff over the summer to go back to school, it was very hard to accept that I won't be needing my paints anymore for my major, but I couldn't just leave them behind. I took ultramarine, permanent rose, cadmium yellow, white, and some medium to school.  Yesterday I painted some pigs and it felt great to paint again! I almost forgot how exhausting it is...but so rewarding.

 Here are two more trading card paintings I did during the summer based on old pictures I bought from the Hell's Kitchen flea market.  I collaged in some scrapbook paper to make it more texturized.  Small paintings like this are very enjoyable for me.  It used to be just about how big I can paint something but now I have developed a liking toward small, delicate pieces.

Self portrait

This is a self portrait I did a few days ago.  The kids I was teaching at camp had the same project, covering their paper with a wash or two, using charcoal, and glazing in some highlights. Got an urge to do one myself.

 These are three tiny paintings I did at work a few days ago.  They are just random and fun and took a few minutes to make.  They are on 2 x 3 inch artist trading cards.  I'm going to start buying a bunch of packs because they are fun and they make it less likely for me to overwork them since they are so small.  It's a good way to experiment and build up your skill without it taking hours and hours on a large canvas.  I just thought of this but they're probably also good for testing out compositions before moving on to a final piece.  Also, I'm proud to say all three of these sold at a donation show benefitting Arts for Healing, a program at Vassar hospital to bring arts to ill children and their families. Wooooohooo!

There will be more small works coming up!

Illustration Friday: Gesture

I had a lot of fun with this one and it was kind of spur of the moment after receiving a graphic novel I ordered in the mail, called TELL ME, DARK.  It is brilliantly illustrated by Kent Williams and it gave me the excitement to create this piece.  I kept it pretty gestural and used a filed down chopstick dipped in india ink to get great line variation.  I would like to experiment some more with the chopstick.  It was fun!

illustration friday: midsummer night

A few months ago, I took a bunch of random pictures on the High Line of all different people.  I knew I wanted to do a painting based on one of the pictures because their gestures were great.  They were sitting on a bench in the picture but I made them lay on a make-shift raft made of mattresses and fabric for the painting.  I thought of putting lanterns in the sky because thousands of them were released a few days ago in Poland to celebrate midsummer.   Hernan Bas was my inspiration for this painting. I really admire his paintings for their elegance and color.

amy winehouse bird

This is Amy Winehouse as a bird called the Loggerhead shrike.  The bird has black around the eyes like Amy's eyeliner. Unlike the real bird, the Amy bird stores her eggs in her big hair nest.  It was my first time doing jagged edges on the side.  Since peeling the tape off  is one of my favorite parts, it was fun to make that "ripped look" which I thought represents Amy's personality more than a straight, crisp, edge.

Illustration Friday

                                                                                       Word: Launch

I took a picture of these 3 people on a bench when I was walking next to Macy's on 34th street.  At first I passed them and said, "that would be an awesome picture" but I kept walking.  Then, I walked back like a nerd and took a picture of them as I was walking so they wouldn't see me.  I decided to incorporate the people in this painting where they are launched by a fish boat across the tropical sea with a view of cotton candy sky.

asleep

Illustration Friday entry: ASLEEP

I decided to paint a leg with pins and needles that fell asleep instead of a person falling asleep. I had fun with this one but would still like to go back and fix a few things.

painting sketches

I kept it kind of loose and used red, black, and white for a few of them. It's good practice using a limited color palette and you really learn how to mix many different values with just a few colors. A problem I noticed I have with my own work is sticking to just a few colors. Maybe you could say that my "style" consists of a distinct color palette, but it would also be nice to experiment with colors I don't usually use, and a limited amount of them.

love and the city

This is my piece for illustration process about "love and the city."  I tried to make the background less detailed.  I think I am finally understanding that the background of a painting should be masses of color laying next to and complementing each other. Well, actually that depends on the look you are going for.  Sometimes it's nice to put small details in the background... but now I'm just confusing myself.  Lately, little detail and large monochromatic areas in the background have interested me.  Anyway, I think I'm getting somewhere.  Time for more painting

powerful women

making a painting + winning $250 to Barnes and Nobles= awesome!  I entered a contest on "powerful women" and thought that Michelle Obama, Oprah, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce were good representations of that....so checker out.  Ever since looking at David Klein's work, especially his paintings  interpreting Alice and Wonderland, I've been getting into bright, bold color and design elements. If you don't know his work, you should definitely look him up. They're mostly poster illustrations.

candyhair

Well, this is even more different than what I usually do but I really enjoyed making this piece and want to do a series of exaggerated big-hair girls.  I looked at a photo for this and just started going crazy with exaggerations and additions, that you wouldn't even think it was from the photo. This one is candyhair...which hair girl should I do next??

something new

Unlike most of my other pieces, this piece is pretty small (about 6 by 7 inches).  This painting only took around two hours and made me realize that working from good reference is very important.  If you take your own photos with composition and all of those different elements in mind when you take the photograph, it makes the painting process much easier because much of the work is already done.  From now on, I'm taking tons of pictures, even if I don't have an idea in mind for my next project.  Ideas start to form when you look back at the pictures and you find special elements that you like about them.  I'm also excited to take my photos and exaggerate certain things about them. Basically, it's taking one form of art(a photo) and turning it into another form of art(a painting).  There would be no point of making a painting of a photo that looks exactly alike.  In that case, why not just have the photo...sooooo..exaggerate to make things exciting!

Murphy the Mail Carrier

This was a project where I had to take pictures of objects I found that looked like a face. I chose this picture of a lock on a basket of a bicycle. Slowly, I developed it into my own character called Murphy the mail carrier. He delivers mail swinging from a whole network of cables in the sky (only rush deliveries). I made him out of clay and took some pictures. Here are just a few of Murphy in the big city!

THE WOODS

 These are two posters I created for a movie I made up called "The Woods."  The first one is the advertisement poster and the second is the movie poster.  These were a lot of fun, but when is drawing creepy stuff not fun?

finish

well I don't really like the finish, but I've moved on.  I learned a lot about color and realized that adding white to the color of the object your painting doesn't mean it's the highlight color.  It actually makes the painting more dull and lacks volume. I'm on to bigger and better things, trying to do more studies rather than full-blown pieces.