9/28/11

Pinocchio - final idea

I have to give credit and many thanks to my friend John:
He gave me not only a suggestion, but an adorable sketch to go along with it!
Check it out guys:






I'm definitely liking the usage of white as space, so I'll definitely be considering more on white now,
and I do like the strong blacks bordering the figures.
So I think I'll take those two elements because for my last page I do want to show Pinocchio's face
or at least the difference with the posture from the front.

Thanks again John!

I'll be finishing my drawing tonight, so check back tomorrow!

9/26/11

Pinocchio 1 and 2...complete!

Just one more and I'm done!!!
The final is the finale...where you finally see Pinocchio as a real boy.
I'm a bit stuck...because it's finale, I want it to be THE END, where fanfares and explosions happen everywhere
but then again
I want a simple, sweet tone to finish these series.
So more white space?



What do you think?

9/25/11

São Tomé - more pictures!

I found more pictures taken by my friends with nicer quality camera to show the children giving me flowers.


This is when few of the girls taught me how to make headpieces out of banana leaves! 
 

The answer is Yes, I would definitely go visit the island again.

Pinocchio - 1

My first Pinocchio piece is complete! But the pieces are due by the 30th of September. Do they mean it has to be post-marked by that date? I'm confused. It's all in Portuguese.

Regardless, I'm going to send all 3 in this Friday. Which means I have to have it all printed, at the latest by Thursday so I can package it and send it correctly by Friday morning... hmm, tight schedule, but I think I can do it.

1 down, 2 more to go in 3 days. Go.

Oh, so my first piece. Thanks for the comments! (I had others via facebook/email). I took the suggestion of using limited palette.
Thanks again, now I know which direction I'm heading to, so the rest should be easier!

9/21/11

Illustrarte competition

I think I mentioned earlier that I am illustrating for the book Pinocchio because I've never drawn for an already written story before.
So I decided to motivate myself in drawing one by applying for the Illustrarte competition!
It's a biennial children's book competition held in Portugal, and the deadline is September 30th.
I'm pretty booked with school and work, but I hope to complete 3 illustrations for this.
I'd like to at least be able to apply and say I was part of it in some ways.

Here's a link for more information:
http://www.graphiccompetitions.com/illustration/ilustrarte-2012-children-books-illustrators-contest

I've completed one illustration so far. I'm working on the colors right now and boy am I hating it.
Please help!


9/15/11

São Tomé - redrawn fashion illustration!

Ha hah! I got it done! Check it out. Woot.

Now two travel books to go....Go!

São Tomé watercolor

Good morning!

I'm working on a new piece for the final watercolor as we speak.
I completed a fashion illustration while I stayed in São Tomé,
but being inspired so much by my fine artist friends there, my work became more realistic.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing, but I am now going to only exhibit that piece for the Summer Study Abroad show,
re-do another painting and show the new one for my Summer Thesis show.

Here's what I did in São Tomé:

Marlin, or the swordfish, will come up often during this travel. In Portuguese they're called "peixe andala" (fish marlin) and they're SUPER delicious!

I wanted to redraw this same image and just stylize it a bit more for the fashion illustration, but I ended being inspired by the pose, but changing the girl entirely. Check out what I have so far:


Excuse the documentation quality: scanning for me is such a hassle because it's smaller than my works and it tends to saturate my pieces more. At some point I'm going on campus to re-scan all my final work for my website.
Anyhow, in the re-do I made the her hold a bucket of fabrics. The background will be the river scene with other women washing their clothes. I'm not sure how well you can see in this image, but there's a little boy holding her hand and also a toy car made of plastic bottle in his other hand.

Critiques are always welcome. :)

Next blogpost I'll show you my travel book. At some point I have to show you the box I carved too! About 2 and a half weeks stay in São Tomé, some of us worked with the professional word-carvers and either commissioned them, or learned to hand carve wood with them. I'm very proud of the box. The top is a mancala board (or "jogo de arrur" in Portuguese. I'm probably butchering the spelling. If anyone knows it, please correct me) and the bottom has a little drawer to put the playing pieces in, in my case, sea-shells I collected on the island.

9/13/11

São Tomé

São Tomé and Principé are small tropical islands on the coast of West Africa.
This summer I had the opportunity to visit there for a month and it was incredible!
I loved everything about the place and the experiences I had there.
I'll post some pictures for you to see:

The red Skittles looking things are seeds from this tree. They're so bright and beautiful, I brought some back with me. They're used as beads to make necklaces, but I'm not sure what else they're used for. The shells belong to this snail and are discarded after you eat them. Yup, I had escargot. Mmmm! These shells are much smaller than the ones I saw on my dinner table.

A lot of the houses in the smaller towns were built above ground to avoid mice and bugs. Aren't they beautiful? And the windows and doorways were usually covered with brightly patterned fabrics.

Yes, the more rich and upper-middle class had washing machines, but we visited all over the island and saw people washing at the lakes, rivers, and estuaries too. I'd say this was much cooler and awesome-looking. Look at the fabrics they have!


LA - sketchbook

More scanned!



Ladi da.

That's it! I have more but I want to show more of my other stuff.
I'll upload the sketches for my LA pocket book soon. Stay tuned!

Summer Thesis - new and improved!

I decided to tweek my thesis a bit...

So instead of all those mumble jumble, I am going to have 3 sets of 1 fashion illustration, sketchbook, and a little pocket book with few pop-up pages.

The set will be for Los Angeles, São Tomé, and Baltimore.

This is what I have so LA for fashion:
I really need to get a good scanner. It has the most difficult time capturing yellow and seems to make my images too bright. :/ 
I'm still in progress of making the book, but I promise to post up sketches this time!

And for the sketchbook...meh, I suppose I can upload some.



This is when my friend Elizabeth tried ordering Chinese food and had to spell out her name.

some view from Santa Monica beach.






I clearly have 2 totally different approach on fashion illustration, and I'm struggling right now on how to go about this.
We'll see how it goes.


SPEAKING OF FASHION, GREAT NEWS!
I will be a GTI (graduate teaching instructor) for Daniel Krall's Lifestyle's class!
That means I will be working on fashion illustration while I teach kids! It's going to be great!
I'll do the best I can to keep updating my blog. That way, I can see my progress too.

I'll scan more, but this is it for now. Enjoy!