Flower names

I had a tea and the name translated to "Thousand sun rouge." Pretty name.

Musical kick!

I watched Aida last night at my friend's son's high school and it was great! Definitely inspired.
Speaking of musicals, "Chicago" is coming to Baltimore. Anyone want to go see it with me?
With that I'm going to post a drawing I did inspired by the sexy cigarette smoking ladies with raspy voices.

Audrey Hepburn from Funny Face

Michael's is having a contest!!! They're taking you to Paris if you win! The theme is "Springtime in Paris," and you can bake, draw, do floral arrangements, blah blah blah. Check out paris.michaels.com.

Anywho, I did an illustration of Audrey Hepburn from the movie "Funny Face." It's only appropriate to draw a character so in love with Paris for this submission. What do you think?

Website update!

Hello all!

Since last post, I have been directing a musical with the music teacher, painting and drawing more, and overall enjoying my life.
To show case that check out my updated website:

mikajnakano.com

Portrait #1

Portrait of my friend

"Laraba" gouache and pen.

Piece for Blooms of Nigeria, http://bloomsofnigeria.tumblr.com/

Beautiful project where female illustrators were names of the abducted girls from Nigeria to illustrate with a single flower.
I had "Laraba," which means "Wednesday daughter."

HURRAY RAVENS!

Congrats to Ravens!!! I am so excited to be living in this city filled with so much excitement.
To honor the Ravens and my pride for the team, I painted Ray Lewis in my sketchbook.
Wishing them great luck and amazing victory for the Superbowl!

(Sorry for the bad quality - I really should get a scanner so I don't have to update my illustrations using Photobooth).

Testing dollar items

Yesterday I went to a Japanese dollar store called Daiso.

They have amazing stuff there! And I found some brushes, watercolor, and air dry clay.

This is me testing out the clay.

Pretty snazzy.
Can't wait til I get to paint 'em!

I only got the black ink, but they turned out pretty cool!

That page was my last page for my sketchbook. Gotta find a new one.
Until then, I'll be drawing in paper napkins and such. You know, the usual art people paper.

Dana Scully

I've been waiting for so long, and now that I've had the chance, I totally forgot to show you the final drawing of Dana Scully!
Last week was the opening reception for the Light Grey Gallery; it's too bad I couldn't make it because from the pictures on flickr the reception seemed like such an amazing event!
Here's some information about the gallery I had the opportunity to contribute in:
"Curated by Light Grey Art Lab's own Lindsay Nohl, Francesca Buchko, Chris Hajny and Jenny Bookler, Girls: Fact + Fiction is a spectacular new exhibition that celebrates women from history, literature, film, music, culture, politics... and everything else!"

View their gallery for more up coming events and information regarding the gallery: http://blog.lightgreyartlab.com/

To purchase a print or a booklet with many other amazing works by illustrators, visit http://lightgreyartlabshop.bigcartel.com/product/pre-order-of-girls-fact-fiction-book

Thanks! :)

Persephone #2

I forgot to upload this! But I redrew Persephone with a whole new concept.

This is it ladies and gentlemen, Persephone:

Dana Scully drawing

Hurray! It's 3:20am and I officially finished drawing for the Light Grey Gallery!

The Light Grey Gallery is holding an exciting exhibition where they will hold works by many illustrators in creating artworks of women both fictional and real.
Here's a link to their site for more information: http://blog.lightgreyartlab.com/2012/08/call-for-art-girls-fact-or-fiction.html
Sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier to share this opportunity with you guys. I'll let you know more cool shows next time!

I was accepted to illustrate Dana Scully from the X-files as part of the Fictional female character.

I can't upload the whole image until the gallery opening, but here's a little tease to show you her face!





Thanks for checking in!

I'm back!

Hello my friends!

It's been too long:

May - I graduated! I successfully finished my Masters with Arts Education and am well on my way to teaching children.
Speaking of which, I have finished an interview last week with an independent non-tuition Catholic middle school academy and will be interviewing with the president today. Which basically means I am hired...but not officially. The president needs to give me the thumbs up. Wish me luck!

I have done some drawings though.

To start off with, I have been focusing on job-hunting for part-time teaching so please excuse the lack of up-date and art-making.

To build my portfolio, I made a personal project to do illustrations for the Greek mythology Persephone.

This is my in-progress work for one of them:

I'm hooking up my scanner today, so more doodles and whatnot will soon be uploaded. :)

Lifestyles

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. :)

Travelogue: Baltimore

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!

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

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

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

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!

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 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?