My Board-- mostly because I couldn't think of an intelligent title

For two weeks or so I  lugged around a 10" x 24" wood panel to and from school to work on a "late" project for my illustration class.

Ready for Painting Adventures, I was.  Readily equipped with paints, gessos, water containers, and different types of brushes.  Ready, I was.  Very much awkwardly, too. And, my arms got exercise. Yes, they did.

I wanted to avoid painting at home, so I tried to paint at school as much as possible, leading me to paint and ink in public often.  Consequently, I got interesting questions/conversations from random strangers:

I originally wanted to respond, "With paint and paint brushes."  But, I thought that that might be rude to strangers, so I pretended that I didn't speak English.

Also, For motivation and to help me to stay up at nights, I decided to take pictures of my process, and I even posted some on my Facebook.

1.) Phase One:

At this point, I was kind of feeling good about myself. =D


2.) Phase Two:

Still feeling pretty good at my progress...

3.) Phase Three:

Despite the fact I spent some quality time with Google Image looking at tube images and I had been marching band for 6 years, I did not seem to know what a tuba looks like.

Also, at this point I was pretty much:

4.) Phase Four

Barbara Streisand Fish is riding a float made from flowers.  Such fun. And look at 'em rain clouds turn into roses.

Also, I was starting to feel a bit of despair because it seemed no matter how much I worked on it, it never seemed to be close to finish:

5.) Phase Five

Done! Or, close to done as I could get.

Oh. If you're curious what the actual assignment is, it was to illustrate three phrases.  My three phrases were:

Don't rain on my parade.-- Funny Girl
And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

If you look closely, you can see these phrases throughout the panel.

I used a combination of acrylics, regular and clear gesso, and FW ink.

Coffee painting and fan brush

Since I'm taking illustration again, I am once again playing around with coffee and FW ink because it's my "thing".

...and I got a fan brush using a Blick's (art store) gift card...

If I'm using it right, it's amazing.

If I'm not using it right, it's still amazing.

This is a self portrait sketch based on a picture I took of myself with a mini ginger bread that sits on a mug of hot chocolate that my lovely artsy friend made for me. It was amaaaaaaaaaaaazing

I actually had a right hand that was holding the mug but I royally f*cked it up so now it's just a big smudge of coffeeness.  Also, I got lazy in rendering my hair so it's a little bit WTF toward the back of my head. At the time, I had long bangs, so no, that look wasn't because I wanted a "sexy" look or because I was lazy...I really had long bangs covering my left eye.

This is a painting I am working on for my class...that's kinda late and should have been done, last week?

It's a cup of coffee painted in coffee.  Hahaha, get it?  I'm not really sure what to get either.

Sketching classmates

School has been....scary ass busy.  Like, SCARY-ASS.  I'm already having nightmares about my biotech classes.  I keep dreaming about everything that could possibly go wrong in lab.  It's been terrifying.

Anyway, I dug through my folders and sketchbook to find some of my better sketches so I could decorate my desolate blog....

This is from 2012. These are sketches I did during my rendering class:

My teacher (top left)  basically talked abt "meaning of life" more than  rendering so I  ended up drawing my classmates most of the time.  I drew this particular classmate(bottom right) quite often, b/c well, let's admit it, she has pink hair.  HOW COOL IS SHE?

One of my favorite things in my illustration class is that our instructor has us working in our sketchbooks for 30 minutes.  Like usual, I like to draw my classmates:

Another thing that's great about this class,is the use of traditional media, even in our sketchbooks.  These sketches were done with ink and pen.  

This was a sketch I did today during sketchbook time (well, I guess technically, yesterday).  It was done in COFFEE.  I changed the value of the coffee by adding black ink or white ink:

This girl has beautiful hair but it's kind of beautifully tame and wild at the same time.  It was difficult to draw.

My sketchbook smells lovely now.