Book Cover Thumbnails

These are my quick ideas for the book cover project. I chose to do To Kill a Mockingbird. Several of my ideas have to do with the contrasting views and the prejudices that come up in the book, primarily those issues between the black and white communities. That's why I chose to do the ying-yang ideas with the man's silhouette and the bird shadow because several of the characters throughout the book are supposed to represent innocent mockingbirds.
Two of the other sketches illustrate the gifts that Boo Radely leaves behind in the knot hole in the tree for the kids. And the last one is sort of silly...a mockingbird being squashed by a judge's gavel. This is supposed to be symbolic, not literal of course. In the book when the court rules Tom Robinson guilty, it was like the judge taking his gavel and killing the mockingbird...does that make sense...?
Anyways I think I'm going to work on the one with the tree and the knot hole with the ball of twine draping down into the shape of a bird. I need to wiggle the compostion around a little to create a better focal point and really think about where the title will go. I might add a few more the the little "gifts' that Boo leaves behind to the knot hole. I also want the bird shape to look looser, maybe by adding small nails to the tree and make it look like the strig is draped over the nails in the shape of the bird.
After I figure all that out, I'll move onto color. Right now I'm picturing sort of a whimsical color scheme I guess you would say. I think I want the background to be pretty dark like a dark navy and then the tree to be brown obviously, and then have the twine be a purpleish white and I also want there to be some gree so I migh add some leaves some how...

SOUND ILLUSTRATION

Here is my pencil comp and two marker comps of the sound illustration. I chose to illustrate the sound of stomach growling because my stomach is constantly making noises. And sometimes, it even "roars" at me. I was really happy with the pencil comp and immediatley went onto the markercomp stage. Then, after getting feedback from peers in class, we had to do a second marker comp and change something that someone suggested. I got a lot of positive feedback but there was one person who said that the illustration read as stomach "roaring" instead of stomach "growling". They suggested having the lion look more like he was snarling instead of roaring. But the reason I chose that lion was because the focus was on the mouth, not the eyes or any other part of the lion. Also to exaggerate what was happening, exaggerate the sound. I was pretty sure if I had a lion snarling, it would just look like an angry lion on someone's stomach and that's what I think my second marker comp looks like. The focus is on the eyes and not the mouth. Another issue that I had to deal with was making sure the lion didn't look like a tatoo. But I feel like I was successful in making it look like a lion head as part of the girl's body by extending the mane past the edge of the body as well as blending in parts of the mane with the texture of the skin.

Now, I've got to paint this. And I'm hoping I didn't bite off more than I can chew...just because I can draw it well doesn't mean I will be able to paint it well. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to use gouache but I'm going to try and just paint - no pick-out method, in other worlds. We shall see...

Final Guinness World Record Poster

Oh finally. This is my final Guinness Book Of World Records Poster with text included. I am happy with the final version of the painting, especially considering what it looked like at first. Everything sort of just blended together. I added more contrast and so line work to give the piece more structure. The silly shirt was redone six times and the fifth time might have been succesful but I ran out of green gouache. I also had a lot of trouble with this painting because I think I have associated the pick-out method as the only technique you can use with gouache. But that's obviously not true. So once I had color "blocked in" I to force myself to just simply add paint to what was already there and avoid thinking about picking any of it or subtracting any of the exisiting paint. Once I did that things started to look better.

Final MO Postcard

This is my final Missouri postcard. I chose to use watercolor for this project because I missed using watercolor...and I was tired of gouache...I think it looks almost identical to my marker comp. After doing it, I'm not sure that watercolor was the best medium because I feel like there was a lot of little detail and I felt like I had to be fairly controlling with the paint. I'm not sure that any of the watercolor techniques from the beginning of the semester were reflected in this project but I'm not sure how I would do it differently I guess.

Final Cheesy Airbrush

Here's my cheesy cheesy turtle done in airbrush! Cutting out all the shapes from the frisket was relatively easy (especially with a sharp blade). First, I did the purple part of the shell. I used a piece of paper as a mask to make the hard edge near the top - so far so good, I was feelin confident. Then I started on the flowers, not too bad. There was a lot of taking the frisket off and then putting it back on to do each color. Then the lab was really close to closing so I had to stop and clean up. I was hoping to get the whole thing done in one go (about six hours) but that didn't happen. So I came back the next day to finish it and the lab was crowded like I knew it would be and my new airbrush and I were not getting along. But the green part turned out pretty nicely. I especially like the highlight on the nose where you can still see some of the paper through the paint. I did all the green freehand. Then for the circles, I used the plastic stencils that were in the drawer because I didn't cut out the circles from the frisket very well...they weren't very circular. This time around I had a lot more trouble with the paint being too wet. I know I was also rushing a bit too. That's all I have to say about that. It's CHEESY :)

Cheesy Airbrush marker comp

This is the marker comp for the cheesy airbrush project! Isn't he cute!? Thumbs up! This should be fun.

Missouri Postcard Marker Comp

This is my marker comp for the Missouri Postcard. This is from a picture of me riding my bicycle last summer on the Katy Trail (that's how it relates to Missouri) I just thought it was a really cool picture and Rusty picked the thumbnail of this immediately so... But obviously I didn't use the photographic colors. I messed around with several different color combinations, all I knew is that I wanted it to be bright. So I decided to have my body and the bike be all warm colors and the ground and shadow to be cool colors, primarily blue because I didn't want to have the entire rainbow on the postcard.

Second Fruit Airbrush

Much better. And it took me about half as much time as the cherry did! I free-handed all the highlights which I think looks much better. But I wish I would have let a little more of the paper show through in some areas. I also tried added some colored pencil on this one to add some detail work like the lines in the leaves and texture on the twig but I didn't like the way it was looking so I erased it the best I could... and there are NO WHITE LINES from lining up the frisket incorretly :)

Airbrushed Fruit

My first attempt at airbrush, well besides the practice exercises with the spheres, cubes, cones etc... Not too bad, but could use some improvement of course. I had a very difficult time cutting out the friskit (now, after doing the second fruit, I know it's because my blade wasn't sharp enough!) I cut through the friskit too far in some areas so you can see where I cut through to the board itself. I'm also not crazy about the graphic style of the highlight - I'll probably try to free hand the highlights next time. Otherwise, I think the actuall application of the color went fairly well. I don't feel like I let it get too wet or anything and I didn't have any problems with the paint bleeding under the frisket like I did with the cubes.

Final Conversation Illustration

This is my final coversation illustration. I did the color work in Photoshop the same way we did the DMV cartoons. But instead of doing all flat color, I added some value and shadows in this piece to add depth and make it a little more interesting. I think I was too scared to do anything other than just flat color when I did the DMV cartoon and this time I had more time as well. I think if I were to do another project in PS it would turn out even better...but no more cartoons this semester. Also, for this project, I had a much easier time with the character development. I like the way he turned out.

Guinness World Record Marker Comp

This is the marker comp for the Guinness Book of World Records poster. I added a shadow on the back wall to help create depth and picked colors that I though were halloweeny. I plan to put the title in the upper left corner and the body text/info in the lower left. I really want to use watercolor because I haven't used it in so long, but I might end up using some gouache also for the tighter details.

Guinness World Record Poster Thumbnails

These are my thumbnails for the Guinness Book of World Records poster. I chose to illustrate the fastest pumpkin carver (Happy Halloween!) I want this to be a poster for the Food Network inviting people to come see Stephen Clarke carve a pumpkin to see if he can beat his record from 2006 of 24.03 seconds. I like the one with the view of his back and pumpkin pieces flying every where.