Water for Elephants

So, for my core illustration class, we were assigned to design a book cover for the novel Water for Elephants by Sarah Gruen. Luckily, I'd read this a few months ago, so it was pretty easy for me to do something more narrative, or that related to the characters. I'm not that happy with the colours, in fact I kind of like my original paintings better. Maybe I'll comp them together again from scratch at some point. My professor seemed to like it, though, so it's not all bad.

Narcissism

I did a little greyscale portrait of myself for one of my drawing classes. Ink on illustration board. Usually I will use ink on watercolour paper, so this was a little bit different for me. The ink did handle nicely on the surface, though, so I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Then I decided to return to my evil Photoshop ways and colourize it. Also quite happy with how this turned out! Maybe will try this technique out again some time. The contrast is pretty good, I think.

He's the Goddamn Batman

A quick watercolour painting of Batman, holding Robin's cape and eye mask. What's the message here? Well, that Batman's cape will swoosh even when other fabric is unaffected. Whoops. I'm happy with the how the painting itself turned out, though.

Tea Boxes

For my core illustration class, we had to design a set of tea boxes for Starbucks, based on legends from India, Japan and China. The legends we were given were, frankly, uninspiring, so I searched around for some that I thought would work better together--and so that I could use celestial imagery for the toppers.

The rabbit is based on "The Rabbit in the Moon" legend, which is general to Japan, China and Korea, but we didn't really have to do a write up, so I guess I cheated a bit in that regard. I originally had a goddess to go with it, since that is part of the legend, but my Professor suggested that maybe it would be too much. (I agree!)

That hair would have been really fun to render, though. Woe, alas.







This one got really dumbed-down due to time constraints. It's based on an Indian legend about the mother star, and her children--two who are ungrateful and do not bring her back gifts from their journeys, and one who brings her back food, hidden under her fingernails. Got a little lost in translation, here.
This one was based on the legend of the Monkey King. I think this is my favourite out of the three, mostly because it has the most energy. Good flow.

The drawings for this were all done in pencil and ink. It's a style I think I need to explore more, because I think it reads really nicely when it's all composited together digitally. (Can't escape the digital, I really can't.) It's a really great way of getting the tones down, too, and then colorizing.

It was a worthwhile project, overall.

Painting practice

Generally speaking, I'm shit at painting, I'll admit it. Especially traditionally--oh man! Anyway, I wanted to do some digital painting practice with a couple of characters, using greyscales to get the contrast right and then colorizing them. Worked pretty well.

Of course it looks kind of weird without the multiply layers on top! Haha.



I did resort to my cheaterly ways by putting a colourizing layer over top to warm it up and unify the colours. Ah, how I love working digitally.