Figures 'n stuff

Here are a bunch of figure studies from this semester. The oil paintings are from John's class, the drawings are short sketches from Yvonne's class. I love doing short poses... You just kind of get the gesture. Plus the model gets to do fun poses because he/she doesn't have to hold them very long. Also, we finally got some male models! Already I've gotten so much better at drawing the male figure... which is good, because I sucked at it...

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The Tell-Tale Heart

This was an assignment for John's class. We had to read and mark up a manuscript of Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' and choose a scene to illustrate. I picked the part when the crazy guy invites the policemen into the room where the old man is buried beneath the floorboards. They are sitting and chatting obliviously as the murderer begins to go crazy as he hears the old man's heart beating... I added blood coming out of the floorboards just to add to the fact that he's insane! I had some fun with textures in this... I wanted to give it a kind of dark, scratched look. The composition isn't perfect, but John was being pretty anal about the size, so it's not exactly what I wanted... I used to do lots of crazy angles, and I've kind of drifted away from that. I feel like I've lost some of my creative ambition in college, so I thought I'd try a crazy angle.
I may tweak it still, and I will update this with the most recent version.

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More Yearbook

The last two illustrations for the yearbook. The first one is some of the characters from Glee. I've only watched the show a few times, so it was kind of hard to capture their personalities (and therefore their likenesses).

And they also wanted an illustration of President Obama.

Sketch Dump

One of my favorite things to do is look at sketchbooks. A lot of people are really hesitant about showing their sketchbooks, and I definitely understand why (mostly because I am one of those people- but I'm getting much better about it!). Sketchbooks are the place where you go to be yourself. You don't have to worry about what anyone will think of the art you make in it. You can just let your brain explode all over the page. It's so much more personal than any finished illustration. So in an attempt to show a little bit of myself, here are a few pages from my most recent sketchbook (I started it at the very end of the summer... this one has lasted me a while).

I thought I would begin with a disgruntled unicorn.

Followed by a disgruntled llama.

This is the first page in my current sketchbook. It's from the summer. I had just watched an old Errol Flynn movie ("The Seahawk"... great soundtrack, by the way), and was in a very pirate mood. Arrrr.

Some girls. I drew this in symposium.

Critters.

These are some character studies I did for the Urashima assignment (Japanese fairy tale).

Ever have one of those days where you just can't draw?

A girl.

Character studies for the Tell Tale Heart assignment... which will probably be up in a few weeks when it's done.

More people... a girl with paint brushes and overalls, and some guy.

Some girls. The younger looking one is a re-imagining of a character from a story that I wrote in 7th grade... I still love the character. She holds a special place in my heart :) Oh, and the anatomy of the ninja-ish one has no basis in reality... at all...

My roommates and I have been watching a ridiculous amount of Buffy lately... I couldn't call myself a true Joss Whedon fan without seeing it. So I drew Angel and Spike from memory.

Closeup of Angel and Spike. I think Angel turned out better than Spike, but still... not bad for no reference.

More Collaged Cards

Here are all of my collage playing cards! (Also, today is my birthday! woo.)

Avatar (the one with the blue people)

This is another illustration I was asked to do for the yearbook. They wanted a few pop culture illustrations, and one was of James Cameron's Avatar. (This is part of the same series as the Lady Gaga illustration I did a little while ago.)

Ambitious But Rubbish

I decided to go back and revisit an illustration I did at the beginning of last summer. My Spring semester had been pretty horrible (for a number of reasons), and one of the only things that kept me going was Top Gear. It is by far the funniest TV show I've ever seen, and will ALWAYS cheer me up.
I decided to do a montage of some of Top Gear's most classic moments (like Geoff the Electric car and the infamous pickup that nearly got the boys killed in Alabama). I added to the background and just made a few tweaks, but just looking at it again made me laugh and I thought that it deserved it's own post.

-Anna

Collage Playing Cards

Our first instructor for Concepts is Marty Blake, a collage artist. Obviously, she wants us to work in collage for our first project. Our assignment is to make a set of 6 playing (or Tarot) cards. I decided to make my 'theme' nature, and the different suits are different environments.

Below are three versions of the same face card. I liked the trees in the first one, but I felt that the design was too busy, so I simplified it and ultimately I think I'm going to go with the third design (or something more similar to it).

I know I'm going to make a few changes, but I want to stick with this style for the next 5 cards. I will post the rest once I finish them.

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Stars

Yvonne's class was canceled (for the second week in a row), so my roommate Erin (she's in Yvonne's class too) and I decided to put our iPods on shuffle and DRAW! I did a random little sketch of a girl and robot, and then I decided to color it, and it got all EPIC. I have no idea what it's about, but I guess it doesn't really matter. And now I need to go to bed.

I also did a version with my name on it, because I have a MASSIVE ego.

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