Head study (2nd part)

This was a confusing assignment. I'm still not sure if I got it right. I'll have my class critique soon so I'll know what to fix. This was very interesting. I had to colorize my last black and white head study with a single hue and only vary the level of saturation. 

Version 1: Orange hue with warm light and cool shadows.

Version 2: Orange hue with cool light and warm shadows.

Version 3: Blue hue with warm light and cool shadows.

Version 4: Blue hue with cool light and warm shadows.

It was a great learning experience. I  learned about warm and cool and how that relates to saturation  and to see how much color variation can happen by only changing the saturation. 

If you want to try it here are the steps that I used:

-Open your black/white picture into Photoshop.

-Create a new layer- change settings to "hue" and select orange from your color palette.

-New layer should be selected. Click command + e to combine both layers

-Create a new layer. Change settings to  "saturation"

-Only use the orange hue to select new color. If you go closer to the left, it becomes cooler. If you use colors from the right, it becomes warmer. 

-Repeat the same steps for all versions. For the blue ones, you need to change step 2. Select blue instead of orange. 

This is the last study. I used version 1 (orange hue with warm light) to create this piece. Instead of playing with saturation, I played with hue.

My professor said that the importance of this exercise is to realize how important it is that my values work correctly and that if my values are relating correctly, and my warm-cool relationships are working, then I can do whatever I want with color and it will probably work. 

Hopefully that made some sense. I'm still not very good at it, but I learned lots  from it. I feel like I struggle with warm and cools sometimes, so this was very helpful for me.

Head study

I've been working on this project since last week. It's been pretty fun. This is a head study I did on Photoshop. All three pictures are the same. The first one is a line dominant study, the second one is a mass dominant, and the last one is form. 

I was pretty happy with this. I think I could have done a better job with the mass dominant one (middle). My line study was easy because but I usually don't use lines to create my pieces. It's just not my style but I enjoyed doing it. The last one was wayyyy fun! I had so much fun woking on it even though it took lots of hours.  This project is not done yet. Now the next step is to use the form study and create 4 versions of warm/cool light. I will explain this better once I'm done. I just started working on them yesterday. I'm still very confused lol so we'll see how those turn out. 

Character Design

I've never really done character design before so this is very new for me. I am taking a class which has been very helpful. I've learned to think about shapes a lot. I think it is very fun! I love it. I just need to practice lots so I can be good at it some day. 

My first assignment was to draw a character (Cap'n Bill Wheedles) from a written description. We had to do 5-7 exploration sketches and one final design. 

Description: "Cap'n Bill Weedles is an ex-sailor with a wooden left leg from the knee down. His head is almost bald and what little hair he has is grizzled. His eyes are pale blue with a gentle look to them, and his face is round, rugged, and bronzed"

I tried to create a "cute" character because my audience are little kids. I tried to play with proportions. It's hard to get used to playing with the human body. I had a critique from people from my class and my professor. Very helpful. I love feedback. I need to keep working on it. 

My second assignment was to design silhouettes for 2 characters (male and female). We had to pay attention to positive/negative space; big, medium, and small shapes; play with dominant masses, costumes, gestures, proportion and shape variation. We were only supposed to design the outside silhouettes. No details inside. My professor gave us a list of circus characters: Ringmaster, Lion/beast tamer, Fire eater, Sword swallower, Juggler, Buffoon, Strong man, Snake charmer, Acrobat. 

I picked The Lion tamer for the female character and The Juggler for the male character. It was really hard to do this assignment. I was trying to pay lots of attention to the positive and negative space, but I felt like I couldn't play with a lot of things like costumes or gestures. I was having a hard time. I was very tempted to put details to help my character read better. Overall I learned so much about the importance of silhouettes. I still need to improve these characters.  

My third assignment was to design a head. We had to draw faces for the circus characters that were assigned on our 2nd assignment. We had to experiment with shapes, proportions, personality, etc (Not focusing on facial expressions). We were aloud to create heads for the same characters that we designed on our 2nd assignment or to pick new circus characters. 

I picked "Strong Man" for my male character and "Snake Charmer" for my female character. Some difficulties were trying to only play with big shapes for the male character because he didn't have a body to show that he was strong so I felt like all his facial features had to reflect that. I felt very limited. The female character was a little easier but when I was trying to exaggerate her facial features I felt like she didn't look like a girl anymore. haha. It was fun though.  

As you can see, these characters are not the best. In fact, I should probably spend more time on my practice ones. But I have been trying to push myself- playing with the human proportions and not letting them look like real humans. It's so fun. I also used http://www.pinterest.com/ to search for more ideas. 
This is my Character Design board if you are interesting in checking it out. You are welcome to follow it and get ideas from it. It's been very helpful for me :)

http://www.pinterest.com/kellylopez21/character-design/

Jay Fleck - Digital Illustration Q&A

A couple of months ago I was asked to give a report on an artist. This was an assignment for a digital illustration class. I had to look for a digital illustrator and email/call him/her to ask a couple of questions. These questions were mainly about their work and process. At first I felt a little uncomfortable trying to email people that I didn't know. I didn't think they were going to answer me back. Surprisingly most of them did! I looked for artists on society6.com. It was hard to pick which artist I liked the most. It was very interesting to see how their styles were so different, yet they were very appealing to my eye. 

Today I want to post the questions that I asked to one of the artists and his answers. The answers that everyone gave me were very inspiring to me. So I would like to share that with anyone who is reading this blog. I contacted Jay Fleck. These are a couple of links that I found: 
http://society6.com/jayfleck
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theflecks/
http://www.threadless.com/profile/870220


1.  How do you create your art? What process works for you? Do you use thumbnails, compositions, etc?

- I come up with an idea, then create a very rough sketch.  Just basic shapes, placement etc.  Then I typically go on the web and look around for reference images- styles, colors, etc that I think fit my idea.  And the remaining 90% of work I do on the computer.  I create the base illustration in illustrator and add textures and other finishing touches in Photoshop.

2.  What medium/software package do you use?
- Illustrator and Photoshop.

3. What are some of your influences that help you develop your art?
-  I find inspiration pretty much everywhere.  Children's books that I read to my children, images that I find online, ideas that pop into my head seemingly out of nowhere.  Probably half of the work I've done comes from ideas that I've thought up lying in bed in the middle of the night trying to fall back asleep.  I can get a bit obsessive.

4. What future do you see for illustration?
-  I think illustration is at a high point.  People are still working with pencil/paper, traditional media will never be abandoned, but now computer-based tools are so powerful and varying.  And we can all share, ie deviantart, threadless, etc.  It's amazing.

5. What advice would you give to young artists that are trying to develop their own skills?
-  Keep working and looking for inspiration.  Find a style you like and stick with it.  If you don't feel comfortable working at a computer then don't.  Get out your pencil and paper and draw.

 6. How did you start getting your name out there? Any recommendations? Why did you choose Society 6?
-  I started by submitting to Threadless.  I worked on submissions for tee designs for a couple of years with no luck and then was finally chosen.   Then everything just started to fall into place, I was printed by Threadless multiple times, then pretty much regularly.  I decided I wanted to try other things, not just tee designs, so I joined Society 6 and have been submitting there since.

 7.  For someone interested in working as an illustrator, what do you recommend not doing?
- Never do something you dislike no matter trendy it might be or if you think it will help get your work noticed.  If you don't like illustrations with concentric circles,  talking food, whatever happens to be en vogue, then just don't do it, stick to what you enjoy.  That's all that matters.  


Well I hoped you enjoyed that. It's always good to feel inspired by someone else. Let's keep up the good work :) Thanks Jay Fleck.

PS. I will be posting more answers from other artists in the future. 

Monochromatic Painting

This was my first home assignment for my Illustration 2 class. We had to place two fruit and one mug in a triangular composition against two black walls and have one light source coming from the front. We used oil paint as our medium on a 12" x 16" canvas (we were supposed to used a 16" x 20" canvas but I didn't have that). We were only allowed to use three colors: Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, and White. It was a monochromatic assignment.

I chose an apple, a pear, and a green mug. I thought they had interesting shapes. I put a thin coat of Burnt Sienna to my canvas. I don't like starting with a white background. I started by deciding where the top of my cup was going to be and placing a mark where the bottom was going to be. I measure point/angles with my brush. As you can see in this picture there are some random little marks around the pear and the cup. Those are some of the marks I made to measure different things. I make a quick sketch of where everything is first. It is very important to have a good sketch of everything. I always measure everything because my eye can see something different than what it really is.

(PS. This pictures where taken with my phone so the quality is not the best. Sorry)

After I have a quick outline of my apple, pear and cup, I start putting my darks (shadows) in my painting. For the darkest parts I combined Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue (Ultramarine blue is so dark- it replaces black). Then I just put a little bit of Burnt Sienna to the other parts of my painting to define the values. At this point I haven't used any white yet.

I start adding white to the lightest parts. Always thinking about values. Sometimes is hard to define values when you are making a monochromatic painting. I was having a hard time figuring out what was darker and what was lighter. I added some highlights to help myself differentiate my values.

At the end I just start molding things a little more. As you can see, I have having a hard time molding that apple lol. I put so much paint that I feel I changed its shape on the bottom right part of the apple. The highlight of the cup is a little too strong. I need to go back and make the cup a little lighter so that highlight doesn't give the wrong information. This is my "finished" piece. 

I took it to class and we had critiques. I need to add more blues to my painting. The Burnt Sienna overpowered the whole painting. I also need to apply more white to define better values. It was a fun assignment. I have to keep working on it as soon as I can. 

I haven't worked with Oil Paint too much and it's been a long time since last time I did a painting. I'm super excited to improve my technique during this semester :)

Welcome to my blog!

Hi everyone! My name is Kelly Smith, I'm a young artist studying Visual Arts- Illustration at Brigham Young University. Just a little bit about myself: I was born in Peru and moved to the United States when I was young. I'm fluent in English and Spanish. I recently got married to a wonderful man who supports me in every step I take. I also have an awesome family which I love to death. I enjoy life... it's always an adventure! As a child I always liked drawing, painting, and anything related to art. I never really thought about studying art as a career till I got to college. I realized how much I love it! I have so much passion for it and I just LOVE learning anything new that can help me improve my talent. I like to look at other people's art because I find myself learning from other artists’ art pieces. Here at Brigham Young University (BYU) I have been able to take many different classes during the past 4 years, such as science, english, religion, history and other GE's. I have also been able to take some other sort of art classes that are not just Illustration. I know a little bit about Studio and Photography as well. 

I have created this blog to show my progress as an artist. I want to post my process on how I create my pieces. These pieces are going to be assignments from my Illustration classes as well as my personal stuff. Sometimes I tend to hide my art from others because I know it’s not perfect or is not exactly how I pictured it in my head. I want to be able to be more open and feel more comfortable showing my art. I’m going to try to post as much as I can—not only my “good portfolio pieces” but also my lame stuff. Feel free to make comments about things I can improve or feel inspire to make art yourself. Hope you enjoy my blog!