Mika J Nakano

Lifestyles

2011-12-15T09:17:00.000-08:00

To make a gift for each of my students in Lifestlyes, and by "my" students I mean Dan Krall's students that I'm TI-ing (Teacher Instructor-ing), I compiled a calendar for them using their illustrations I assigned 2 weeks ago.

This is what I drew for them. :)

Acorn necklaces galore!

2011-12-04T12:16:00.001-08:00

Art Marketing!

I've been swamped with teaching, but I'm finally done!
Yesterday was my last day teaching the Kindergarteners with my partner Holly Cloer.
If you don't know her, you should. She's an amazing partner, friend, teacher, and artist.

Anywho, these are the necklaces I've been making!

Oh, and ear rings too!

To avoid acorns rotting, I coated them with some watered down Crystal Lacquer. (You can see the bottle on the bottom picture)
They're super easy to work with, and make such beautiful results!

If you're interested, the product can be purchased here: http://www.sakuracraft.com/

The red seeds? And the tear drop seed that doesn't look like an acorn? Well... the red seed is from a church wood tree called Sibipiruna, mostly found in Brazil. The other seeds are palm tree seeds! Or AKA, baby coconuts!
I found both seeds during my trip in São Tomé and Principe. Due to my limitation with the materials, they are $20/necklace, but I think that's reasonable. I haven't even made one for myself yet.

2 more days... I'll be making labels today. More pictures will be posted soon!

Art Market!

2011-11-30T17:06:00.001-08:00

Hello, hello! It's been a while.
I've been teaching Kindergarteners and they, are, ADORABLE.
They call me Miss Mika. That's right.

Few exciting news regarding art:

1) So lately I've been working on projects for Art Market, so stay tuned.
I'm making acorn necklaces!

2) I just made an Etsy account! I'll let you know once I document my necklaces. :) ;)

3) I baked apple pie for the first time with my roommate Julianna Brion!

4) I made pumpkin butterrrr

Map - Barcelona!!! TEN PACES

2011-11-11T09:47:00.001-08:00

Woohoo! Ten Paces this week...MAPS!
Julia Kostreva did the original sketch and I did the final.
To be honest, I don't think I did justice to the sweet city of Barcelona.
Sooo critiques are welcome, but please be gentle, colors kinda exploded on me. Meh.

Just for fun, this is the sketch I did for Map...TO DEATH! Muahaha!

And I can't be any more happier with the result of what Natalie Andrewson did.

Isn't she amazing?!

Travelogue: Baltimore

2011-11-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

Helloooooo Baltimore!

This is my final piece to complete my Travelogue Fashion series. Hope you liked them!
My works will be up in the Fox building at MICA for another week, so check them out and draw/write something in my sketchbook if you'd like!

Travelogue: São Tomé!

2011-11-08T17:28:00.000-08:00

My second fashion illustration:São Tomé

Tomorrow I'll post my final series: Baltimore!
People seem to like that one the most. We'll see how you feel.

Let me know if you have any comments/questions about these illustrations!

Travelogue: Los Angeles

2011-11-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

My summer thesis show went up few days ago, and I have NO idea why I didn't post these up!

I completed my summer thesis to draw fashion illustrations for Los Angeles, São Tomé, and Baltimore! I redrew pretty much all of them several times.

Instead of displaying them all at once, I'll post them one at a time.

So come back to check out the others, but for now, here's LA!!!!

Break(fast)ing Bad

2011-11-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

Hello hello, and check out Ten Paces and Draw! This week it's Fan Art and I did my final for Derrick Dent (http://www.derrickdent.com/). So you all Breaking Bad fans, check it out!

Ten Paces and Draw - Circus

2011-10-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a while!

My finally submitted my first piece to Ten Paces and Draw this week!

"Ten Paces and Draw is a blog about collaboration and illustration. As artists we thought it would be fun not only to catalog inspiring work by others, but to start an ongoing illustration project to which we can all actively contribute."

This week the theme was Circus and I received Rachel Dougherty's sketch to work on.

Check out Ten Paces blog! - http://ten-paces.blogspot.com/

Pinocchio...now complete!

2011-10-02T14:49:00.000-07:00

Here is my final for Pinocchio!!! And I was able to send it to Portugal on time!
Well, actually, I checked the website again last week and noticed the deadline was extended.
So any of you out there with children's book illustration related images, or are currently working on one, go send it!
The deadline has extended 'til the end of October.

So now the drumroll please....

Pinocchio, the last of the triptych!

Lots of white space!
What'd you think?
Well, too late, it's already sent.

But I didn't notice until I printed them that the green I thought were the same actually was a lot warmer than the first piece.
I hope they work well together... meh, oh well.

So instead of having this page to read as the "last page" or the "finale," it ended up looking more like an end page or a cover/back.

Pinocchio - final idea

2011-09-28T20:54:00.000-07:00

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!

Pinocchio 1 and 2...complete!

2011-09-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

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?

São Tomé - more pictures!

2011-09-25T17:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

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!

Illustrarte competition

2011-09-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

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!

São Tomé - redrawn fashion illustration!

2011-09-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

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

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

São Tomé watercolor

2011-09-15T05:42:00.000-07:00

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.

São Tomé

2011-09-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-09-13T18:50:00.000-07:00

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!

Summer Thesis - final

2011-06-11T12:16:00.000-07:00

I finalized my sketches and I was ready to illustrate the girl, so to celebrate my "yay I finished enough for today," I went to go watch Bridesmaids with my sister.
After spending about 2 hours of quality time with her, I realized the beauty of illustrating "types of figures" is when an artist captures the diversity in people and style. So I decided to draw 4 figures instead, and started the final.

Sketches were never my thing. It's very rare that I stick to my sketches and get the result that I want. In fact, I prefer working directly on the final page and recreating many finals to get the perfect one. It's time consuming, but I'd say I draw pretty fast, so it all works out best for me this way.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm still not done, but this is what I have so far:

I couldn't fit the whole image onto the scanner, so there's that weird gradient/shadow, but whatever. It's not the final. If you have any suggestions for the color for the suit, please feel free to comment!

Summer Thesis - LA

2011-06-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

So one of the requirements for MAT (Masters in Art Teaching) is to complete a summer thesis before entering the 5th year.

I proposed to my professor Dan Krall that I will be completing 3 sets of series:
3 fashion illustrations for LA, Sao Tome and Principe/Cape Verde, and Baltimore.

In each location I will be drawing a female fashion, male, and a large illustration depicting both female and male in the environment.

These are my sketches for the female:

I think I'm keeping the same pose as the last one, but w/ a better butt. I'm a bit sad I can't show off the thong sandals like in the first two, but I'd rather capture the attitude of LA more than thong sandals anyway.

For Dad's work - princess series

2011-06-04T15:09:00.001-07:00

Last but not least, and definitely my favorite working on these series: Princesses!

I had trouble figuring out how to make a green castle look good...I suppose I managed.

Next project is to work on my Summer thesis. I'll talk about that more next.

For Dad's work - fairy series

2011-06-04T15:08:00.000-07:00

So these are the 2 other girls as fairies.

Any comments welcome!

I don't show all 4 because, well, you get the idea once you know what all the girls look like. I just change the color around for each haha.

For Dad's work - ballet series

2011-06-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

Summer's here!
Now that school's over, it's time for me to show the world what I've been up to.

My father works as an craft manufacturer and he needed illustration series for the girls.

So here's my first one's. I have 4 girls in total, but I'll just show you the 2 for now. Here they are!

All done in Illustrator

If you like, check out his website: http://www.sakuracraft.com/

Art Market!

2011-02-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

Last year I sold 2 different screen prints:

"Under the Sea"

and

"Into the Woods"

These are both on white background, but I sold larger prints with tan colored paper, which were beautiful!
I still have more to sell if you're interested.

Okay fine...

2010-12-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

I give in.

Let me retreat myself back to the internet world,
and show you all my works:

But to begin with,
I just got an e-mail from Anna M.!
She is a wonderful and sweet lady who has commissioned me to make 2, 8"x10" art work for her 2 year old daughter.
So what do I draw?

A flying pig and sheep of course!

Here they are:

Both done by gouache, but the pig was altered just a tad with Photoshop.

The assignment for this was
2, 8"x10" images, appropriate for a 2 year old daughter for her room decorated mainly in pink and green.

bunny ABC

2010-10-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in SOOOO long!

So, I'm going to upload a drawing...that I did a year ago. But good nonetheless!

more will be posted soon...

Seriously, how do people update their blogs/websites so frequently? I need an assistant...

So, for Concepts....

2010-05-10T21:50:00.000-07:00

"Because I Fell and Scraped My Knee"

I FINISHED THE BOOK!

It was a long long process of me drawing and coloring... but alas, I'm done with it!

9 spreads in total. I haven't drawn end pages, but I might not have to with this book just because they're almost appropriate for card-board book. Hmm... Although I don't like that idea because in my mind card-board books are kinda... geared toward younger audience that I intend the book to be for.

I'll show you the first couple of pages, and I am planning on printing them awesome quality and hand bind them for Art Market, so if you like the story, shop-away! Woohoo

Hope you liked them! :)

Genie the Giraffe - finals

2010-05-10T21:45:00.000-07:00

Yayyy so I finished some! Check it!

This is what the cover looks like...:

The writing for the title "Genie the Giraffe" and the little window for Genie is actually open so when you open it, you see this...

I printed the mock-up at Kinko's and the images came out a little more saturated, but fortunately (?) my class liked it more saturated. So I suppose I should be more confident with the colors I choose and brighten them up a tad more. We'll see.

Here's a little snip-it on the first page. Mind you, It's a pop-up so Genie's head is supposed to raise up when you open the book.

Critique away my friends!

CHECK IT OUT

2010-02-19T23:37:00.000-08:00

So upon suggestions from friends, I decided to continue my doodling of my daily outfit, into digital!

Check out my other blog: http://mikanlife.blogspot.com/ if you want to see it!

I just started it today so there's only one outfit, but by tomorrow there would be TWO! (if all goes as planned that is).

I will be doing both "indoors" and "outdoors" drawing.

Here's a sample:

Indoors -

so if you like it, come check it! :)

New Story!

2010-02-19T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hello hello,
So. Illustrated Book.
I finally decided instead of continuing my work with "On the Way to School," I am going to start a whole new book called "Genie the Giraffe."

This is Genie:

A special kind of giraffe called Superlongoneckaraffe and that means that she has an exceptionally long neck. With that neck, she noses around other animals' business at the zoo.

The class decided the red Genie is the best. And with Jamie's suggestion, I'm going to use the purple Genie for a night scene.

I want to make the story a pup-up, but with the limited time, I'm gearing toward the slide/interactive book.

We'll see how it goes.

Some color scheme studies:

Class decided on the one at the very left.

Any feed back would be great!

children's book...now in color!

2010-02-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

So with Nick's help, I finally got my "On the Way to School" to be in color!

I'm not quite done with them, but I'm going to start inking up my other ones tonight.

Snow's crazy, but it's really pumpin me up to do more work. woot!

Check it all.

Suggestions or critiques are welcome.

my goodness...i had a blog?

2009-12-26T17:12:00.000-08:00

great start. really.
i totally forgot i had a blog.

so, until i forget again, let me post up more work

these are more of my illustrations for the children's book :)

why does it keep one changing it sideways?!

That's upsetting. So I think I won't put up more until I get this figured out.

So my teacher suggested I change my title for the story.

title I got now: "On the Way to School"

Yeah... the whole story has nothing to do with going to school because the boy practically is stuck at school and uses imagination to figure out why his mother is late.

Can anyone help me figure this out?

Let me post up few more and I'm going to bounce. Ciao

I forgot to mention: Merry Christmas and Merry Belated Christmas.

I'm currently in New Jersey right now with my roommate and friend, Laura. She's a lovely girl. If you see her around, tell her I said hi. We're on our way to go watch a movie!!! Hurrah

When I come back, I'll tell you more about New Jersey on my other blog... where I should be talking about my life.

writing for children's book

2009-12-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

So I'm making a children's book for one of my literature class.

Because it's such a large project, I decided to finish it for my next semester's Illustrated Book course.
But check out what I got so far! :)

Hmm... I'm not sure why it's sideways... but oh well!

obviously i'm new to this

2009-12-02T07:24:00.000-08:00

i suppose i can delete the other post
and retype it again with new images
but it's kinda funny so i'm going to keep it there

so again
my art works...

the blue one is in watercolor and the cicada is in gouache. they're both from last year so give me a break.

random art

2009-12-02T07:23:00.000-08:00

hurray i found some art i can post! so here it goes....

here it goes

2009-11-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

so after thinking about my blog url for about 3 years

and not being able to decide on one

i was demanded by Becca to make a site just a minute ago

so i signed on

and thought of my url in 5 seconds.

i guess illustrators are best last minute.

so here it goes

mika's wonderful world of wonder.