ELY

Done. Finally. 4 months of torture and the Ely is finally done.

My Ely is my own adaptation of the Led Zeppelin song "friends" into a children's book. The story is basically this : from the viewpoint of the main creature in the story. The creature finds a boy on the side of the road crying, lost, and literally blue. The creature smiles at the boy and makes him feel better and more comfortable. He carries the boy through the forrest on his back with the light from his tail making the boy feel safer and less scared. All of the creatures in the forrest comfort the boy as they travel through the wood. As the boy feels happier and happier, he starts to gradually gain his natural color back. Eventually the creature leads him home to his own neighborhood where the boy runs into his mothers arms.

For the whole story to be told there would have to be a few more illustrations, but these are the 4 for my Ely.

Ely poster

So here is my ely poster. It didnt win, but it got 6 votes which is pretty sweet considering the top 3 had 7 and 8 votes. They eliminated it because the bird is deadish and its kinda depressing I guess. But that was a part of the concept so I knew that mine probably wouldn't be picked. They wanted a representation of the Ely process, and this is how I feel about the Ely, hah. I'm just happy it got votes!

end of semester update

I'm only going to post a couple things, cause everything else is ely stuff and I'm not quite happy with all of those pieces so i wont post them until they're done. these are both pieces from children's book illustration.

first, alice in wonderland spread:

now the final for children's book. i decided to do the greek myth about the sirens cause i felt like drawing mermaids:

ta da.

Illustration Friday

This weeks illustration Friday is "afterwards". I chose the book cover I did last week because this is after the "the misfit" kills the entire family. 

They ded.

first off, this is my second assignment for portfolio class. the assignment was "inventor and invention" so I did Theobald Boehm who  didn't invent the flute but perfected the modern flute and the modern fingering system. The flute is supposed to be a bone flute, but I didn't really push that enough. It's not really close enough in for me to really make it look boney. He is also surrounded by animals because flutes were originally made from animal bones. well anywho, here it is. it came out okay i think.

Next, my book cover for the Flannery O'Connor short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find". The type is hand done also, but I'm not happy with it. One day type and I will be friends, I just have to figure it out. 

Here is an in class assignment we had 20 minutes to complete.

And here is my halloween card for Bob Byrd's class! It folds up and the two outer monsters become one. I also drew the type myself on this one, but I actually like the type on this one. It ain't so bad!

Folded, it looks like this:

It doesn't meet up exactly, boo. But it was really hard to plan out. I'll know better for next time to even check during the painting stage and not just the drawing stage. 

boopbeepboopbibi.

Sketchbook pages and an experiment

First, a couple sketchbook pages:

now an experiment I did after Sterling Hundley came and did a demo and a lecture. It was amazing and really inspiring. I wanted to try using the unbleached titanium white that he uses. Also, he said he uses FW ink which is acrylic so it is waterproof. I can never find waterproof sepia ink so I wanted to see if FW had sepia and they did! So I tested it out with some calligraphy pens. It was okay, it is too messy for me to use on a finish unless I get a lot better at it. I also tried to paint a little looser and rougher. Well, here it is:

Meh. there we go. I'm tired so im gonna nap.

Children's book spread

This is for my Ely class. The last project before the Ely, gulp.  I drew this little creature in my sketchbook:

So I knew I wanted to do something with that, babies, and a city. So I made up a children's book spread. They're supposed to be like stork creatures fetching the babies out of the water and bringing them to the city. It's not a real story, but Ralph didn't mind. Here is the finish:

I also plan on scanning a bunch and doing a major scan dump soon. It's just hard because we don't have a large format scanner in our studio and I have to go to one of the other ones.