The Past Few Months of My Life

This semester I worked like mad on my BFA show. The idea for the project started winter semester 2007 when a couple of us decided to pull some grant money together and head out to New York City that summer for internships. This then evolved into a mentoring project that included two other illustration students plus our professor as a mentor. We stayed in New York City and interned with illustrators for a month and a half. Ten of those days were spent with our professor going around the city gathering influences by sketchbooking, painting, taking photographs, going to museums and visiting illustrators. These pieces are the final product of that experience, and the actual exhibit includes work done by each participant.

In this series I focused on food and the people that eat it in the city. One of my main goals for this series was to push my process and further develop my style. I experimented A LOT throughout this series with color, texture, line, media and painterlyness. Overall, I feel like something is working. I'm really excited to keep going down this vein and developing things even further, oh it's been so much fun!

Right now I only have two pieces photographed, and the other two are currently hanging in the exhibit so I won't be able to post them until later next week. If you're in Provo and want to drop by the exhibit, it will be up through December 14th in the HFAC B.F. Larsen Gallery (the main floor) at BYU.

"Lunch at Cha Cha's"

"News for Company"

Brandon, this one is for you

Here are a few oldish/recentish/this semesterish head paintings. The first two are of my friend Brandon, who ever so kindly took the time to pose a couple of hours for me, and who has been waiting patiently to see these, and who doesn't actually have a lazy eye...I just painted it that way...I don't know what happened.

The third painting was done in-class. Usually I see my colors too hot, so this time I decided to help my colors come out cooler by thinking of really cold thoughts while painting--like Antartica, streaking during a blizzard and pistachio ice cream...mmmmm, pistachio ice cream. Apparently I should think colder thoughts more often, because it worked.

If I'd have know you were coming, I'd have baked you 44 cupcakes

I like to bake, especially when I'm stressed out and need distracting. When I work at home my growing mass of recipes are as good a distraction as any. Tonight I left the studio early and, yes, I got distracted to a ridiculous degree when I entered my apartment. I've made 20 gluten-free chocolate cupcakes, 24 cherry-chocolate cupcakes and I have yet to make the almond-flavored cream cheese frosting to put on top. This is why I don't work at home; the potential of gaining approximately fifty gazillion fat rolls in one week is not worth the risk. Guess I'll be taking a plethora of lovely cupcakes to the studio tomorrow. Happy days for all.

Sleep is Overrated

Sometimes I'm so tired that I don't want to paint or draw anymore and all I want is sleep, so I sleep. Sometimes I'm so tired but all I want is to paint and draw all night, even if I could go to bed on time, so I stay up ridiculously late. I love those nights, and tonight is one of them. Lovely.

All You Need is Love, and Art

Today was one of those days that made me love being an artist. I was painting a piece for my senior show when I suddenly got this crazy-excited feeling inside about art; about experimenting, and developing, and peddling my art skills to publishers, and new inks, and the smell of watercolors, and the blinding hue of cadmium orange, and the feeling of my quill pen on illustration board, and the sound of my palette knife against my board, and the way paint covers my hands and cements itself underneath my fingernails (which is why I painted my nails today...), and the progress I see in my work, and the possibilities I see for it to progress even more. Basically, I absolutely love being an artist.

Here are a few recent pieces. Most are from my head painting class (wait, they all are...). I'd put up some work for my BFA show, but I want that to be a surprise come December.

My friend Brandon, who entertained me for 2 hours while I drew him.

Usually I don't draw people smiling, so I gave it a try.

In-class drawing

You know a true friend when they model for you at least 5 times; Amy has surpassed that number by at least 50. What a pal. One day I'll make it up to her in Sour Patch Kids.

Life as of Late

This semester is full of drawing and painting bliss. I've loved it so far, even though I'm still trying to figure out the whole balance thing. Between class, homework, BFA/senior projectness and work, there doesn't seem to be much time left for other things I enjoy, like sleeping, eating, socializing and running. Such is life. I'm taking a yoga class though, maybe it will help me achieve some sort of balance in my life while centering my chi twice a week.

p.s. I love drawing in ball-point pen.

Sketchbook Stuff:

Not Sketchbook Stuff:

La Fin

The opera poster is finished. Good feelings for the most part.

I was recently commissioned to do a piece of the Christ child and Mary. They wanted it to look along the same lines as some of Da Vinci's "unfinished" drawings. It was a fun experiment involving graphite, gouache, ink and my cousin and her baby as models. Good times.

Dabbling in Opera

I'm in the middle of a project for an upcoming BYU opera, The Tales of Hoffmann. It's still a work in progress but I should start painting this week, hooray! Here's a comp and color study.

When the Road Runs Out

Life is an interesting thing. Sometimes it guides you down well-lit streets with signs directing your path; other times it shoves you down roads that may be a little bumpy and unfamiliar, even roads that may seem like dead ends. The beauty about these untraveled paths is that they spurt (or maybe force) new levels of growth, deeper sensitivity and greater appreciation for life's beautiful things. It's no wonder that when our paved roads turn to gravel, we have to slow down a bit and watch our footing. I suppose my current slow-traveling time down rough roads may explain why I've been extra slow at producing artwork, but possibly might also explain why I feel as if I am on the verge of something incredible; new ideas are born and creativity is inspired on these roads where we are forced to slow down just a bit and see life for what it really is. That being said, I have nothing to post for now other than that thought. I do feel like creating something awesome though, so here I go. I'll keep you posted.

Winter Craziness

Here are a few illustrations from this past winter semester, both new and reworked. I feel like the semester was overall fairly successful, especially since I have started experimenting with a look and process that I'm excited about. The piece for A Little Princess is another experiment done in basically the same process as the piece from the last post. It's mixed media again, with acrylic, ink, gesso and charcoal. There's something about mixing media that makes me happy inside. I almost feel as if I'm reconnecting with my childhood when I would mix fingerpaints, playdough and crayons together to create something awesome.

Rapunzel

Book cover for A Little Princess



yoga magazine article



magazine article

New Stuff

Here's a recent experiment. I kind of like it, a lot actually. It was fun to do and a direction that I'm going to look into.

Escapage from Burn-Outage

Here I am only weeks away from scholastic freedom and--bad news--I can feel myself burning out. This tends to happen from time-to-time; usually I blame late nights, mounds of projects and not enough power in caffeine. This time the main problem seems to be a lack of confidence and satisfaction in my work. That is the problem with being a perfectionist I suppose. Often I tend to be far too critical of myself and have a hard time seeing anything good in my work, which leads to a dangerous level of burn-outage called "I quit for no good reason other than this is hard and I can't do it perfectly right now." Pretty lame eh?

Lately I have felt myself reaching this stage and have, for the second time in my life, seriously considered dropping out and becoming a beach bum, or at least bumming at my parents' house and dipping my feet in the kiddie pool from time-to-time. Fortunately for both me and my parents, it didn't take long for me to scrap that idea. Instead of pooping out, I have decided the only way to fight through this pathetic burn-out stage is to do exactly what I don't want to do right now: work harder, work smarter and love every minute of it (or at least every 30 minutes or so). This means I need to spend more quality time with my art, which, whether I like it or not, I seem to have a little more time in my life to do just that. So hello to finals and peace out to burn-outage! It's time to take it like a man...er...a strong woman.

Sketchy

I splurged on some new pens the other day and it was pretty much the best decision of my life...or at least the best decision of the week. Here are a few pages from my sketchbook.

Recent Developments

The past few days have been crazy-busy and fairly sleepless (big thanks to my mad procrastination skills). It seems as if some good came out of them though.

These are both illustration assignments, the first Rapunzel and the second a nappin' cowboy. I used acrylic ink with acrylic paint on both illustrations, and on the cowboy also added a touch of goauche (pronounced "gwuash," took me forever to figure that one out...).

This acrylic ink stuff is fantastic. I just bought the sepia-colored acrylic ink and LOVE it like the child I don't have. Everything I've touched in the past week has been covered with the stuff because I can't keep my hands off of it. The inks come in lots of different colors, which means I will be buying many more bottles of this beautiful stuff. I think the cadmium red is first on my list...