THREE ANIMALS TRAVELING (unfinished)

For "Children's Book Illustration" we were to do "three animals traveling" and I decided to do animals escaping the circus together by way of cannon!

Will Terry was more concerned about the design and composition than rendering to finish, so a lot of the class didn't finish this one, and spent more time on the planning and design.  This is how far I got!

The Rooster who Longed to DANCE

This is a story idea about the Rooster who was expected to SING (it's his duty to wake up the farm) but he really longed to be a dancer.  So at night he would dance til the sun came up.  Living his real dream!

My own MURAL is finished! And in the paper. :)

Had awesome help with the painting part.  Here's the link if you wanna see the article!!

UVU Press Releases » Blog Archive » UVU Art Students Create Mural For Orem City Fire Department

Story Idea: My Pet Hippopatamus!

In "Advanced Illustration" we get to choose our own assignments.  This was my first idea.  :)

This kid wants a PET HIPPO (of course Mom and Dad musn't know--hippo is top secret) and this is where he hides hippo at night.

IN CLASS Head Models

In class we have 3 hours and I paint much larger.  

 I know.  His hat-hair was awesome.  And his sunburn.

Head Painting at Home!

So we have to paint FOURTY EIGHT, yes 48, practically 100 (feels like it), heads OUTSIDE of class as homework.  Yes yes yes it's good for me.  Worth it.  Valuable.  All those words that mean good for me.  But... seriously.  48!  That's 96 hours!  

So here's a handful of the paintings I've done with the help of many friends who were kind enough to come sit and watch a movie while I painted them in my living room!  Yeah they're pretty awesome.  Thanks friends!!!

(below) Denise comes to paint with me almost every time.  It's much easier with a painting buddy.  Thanks Denise!  She's getting quite good.

PAINT BLOTS!

So sometimes when I'm done painting I look at my pallet where I did all my paint mixing and think... "Ooooo, pretty!"  Totally art!  Can you imagine if I cropped in on a single part of one of these?  Hey why don't I try it real quick... awesome.

And now cropped:  (pretty eh?)

My fav:

These remind me of my fav chinese artist:  "Chu Teh-Chun."  (look him up right now!)

From "PAINTING THE HUMAN HEAD" class--this was my painting pallet at the end of a day.  My friends and I made a game where to fold it, SMOOSH it, open it... and go, "Oooooh... I see a bunny!  I see a crazy face!  I see bears fighting!"  Here is one example:

Starting to GET it!!

These are the last two days of in class model paintings.  Amy gave us a demo the time before these, and I think it reeeally helped.  Look look!!  They look like people!  First one has jaundis.  Poor guy.  His name was Boris.  Today we painted Ryan!  He's looking much more healthy.  ;)

"Bugs"

Bugs

I like bugs.
Black bugs.
Green bugs.
Bad bugs,
Mean bugs,

Any kind of bug.

A bug in a rug,
A bug in the grass,
A bug on the sidewalk,
A bug in a glass - 
I like bugs.

Round bugs,
Shiny bugs,
Fat bugs,
Buggy bugs,
Big bugs,
Lady bugs,
I like bugs.

- Margaret Wise Brown

Still needs a lot of touching up.  Lady bug still has no spots.  But here it is!  First assignment for Will Terry's class.  One of the most AMAZING children's book illustrators I know.  How did I get so lucky to have him teach me this class!

Lee be my art friend (see her awesomeness here), among many other wonderful things, and she lets me come to her and her hub Tyler's house to do homework.  You know those days where you have to paint aaaallll day like until midnight even? ...You don't?  Oh.  Anyway, it's WAY easier to keep going when you wanna poke your eyeballs out... when someone is suffering next to you.  Thanks to lots of laughs, jokes, stories, movies, music, Tyler entertaining and encouraging, while we paint, it all helps me to just keep swimming... just keep swimming...

Painting the HUMAN HEAD

Fall Semester has begun!  Ah my lovely "Painting the Human Head" class.  That's what I love to do on a rainy day.  Paint human heads.  Lots of them.  Oh GOOD THING because looks like Amy, our teacher, wants us to paint 48 heads outside of class by the end of the semester.

Oh... sorry let me make sure you understand.  FOURTY EIGHT HEADS.  In ONE semester!  OUTSIDE of class.  Did I mention we are spending TWO HOURS on each of them?

If I can't paint an amazing portrait by the end of this semester, well... you just don't wanna know what's gonna happen.  ;)

This should be good!  Truly though, this is really good for me!  And... maybe by the end I really will love to paint heads.  ;)

So these are done IN CLASS from a live model:

And these are a few of my outside class 2 hours paintings:

(painted from PHOTO reference... not as good as you can tell... live models are much better)

Grapes!! Mmmmm

This was for my parents' "Mother's Day" and "Father's Day."  My high school drawing had been in the kitchen a LONG time and that was pretty cool but I finally decided they might like something other than a huge shark on their kitchen wall.  ;)  This is watercolor.

My Own Story Illustrations!

My friends and keep inspired artistically with a monthly themed "creative challenge."  It's been fun to try different categories of the arts.  Poetry, music, writing, etc.  This was part of my July submission.  The theme was "poppies."  As in the flower.  I wrote a story, and these are the quick illustrations I did for it.

 

Service and Humility

My friend commissioned me to do this painting for him since school was out for the summer, and I had some spare time.  He wanted this image within his home in order to remind and inspire him of the example of Ammon, an ancient missionary of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ .  Ammon performed a mighty and heroic feat in an act to protect the people of King Lamoni, and directly after this display of bravery, he did not gloat or visit the King to declare his mighty work, but instead was found in the stables feeding the horses.  His humility and desire to serve touched my friend and so this painting was born.  Thanks Dave!