The Cat Librarian
In my current illustration class, we had another assignment involving an animal, so I had another great excuse to draw more cats. The prompt was to put an animal into a situation that normally only humans would do. Of course I also love books, so I first thought of a cat reading or being in a library or bookstore. We had to start with thumbnails for this, as usual, so here were some of my ideas: My favorite were the ones with the cat as a librarian rather than just reading. And I liked the idea of a poor librarian trying to work while other cats wreak havoc. So my favorite was #8 because I loved the cart, especially with a cat sleeping on it. I also liked the one of the librarian sleeping on the job, because no way could a cat work an 8-hour shift without a nap.…
The Musician and the Dancing Cat
I’m in another illustration class, and we had three prompts to choose from for our first assignment: Dining with a robot. The musician playing for the dancing animal. How the magician sawed the woman in half. Obviously I chose number 2 so I could do a cat. My understanding of the assignment was that we were supposed to be doing the figures in silhouette, so entirely black. But it turned out that that was just for development of the idea. We had to do a bunch of thumbnails, so I did those, although I didn’t have any amazing ideas. I basically tried a person playing different musical instruments, and a cat dancing in different ways. Here’s what I came up with: I liked #7 because the idea was it was a line dance, but I developed that and a couple new ones for three rough sketches I had to do.…
A New Sculpture
I’m taking a class in 3D design, and we had to come up with a sculpture based on a wireframe that we cover with a bunch of a single item. I’m honestly not sure where I got the final idea, but I originally planned to do a hemisphere and give it cat ears, but then I figured out we were supposed to do something more tangible, so I decided it would be a cat head poking up from some clouds, visible from a little below the nose up. The basic idea was that there would be a cat head surrounded by a flatish space representing clouds (actually thes part is meant to be “bumpy”). Step 1 was to do the wireframe. I actually did this completely from my head and didn’t draw anything, because it was so clear in my head. I used three different gauges of wire because I…
A Master Copy
I had an assignment in my life painting class (which is still killing me) to copy a Master painting from the 17th century. I picked a Rubens: (Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Isabella of Bourbon, c. 1630) I thought there was a good range of values and colors, although I knew the collar would be tough. Her face is weirdly pale, though it was probably accurate. The first step was to do the drawing and then outline it in black paint. The second step was to tint the background (first layer only), and I had started that when I remembered to take a picture: I did this on 18 x 24 inch Gessobord, although I taped off the bottom 3 inches because there was enough of her dress/coat/whatever showing. I had to sort of make up what was going on to the right because I shifted her over to the…
A Multi-Step Painting
I just finished a three week life painting project, done in acrylics. I actually showed one of the early stages in my last post, but I’m going to walk through the steps for this one. We had to choose a pose and first do a version heightened with white over a black outline. Here is that part (sorry for the yellow light): I had some trouble laying down the background, which was done after I did the outline in black paint, so it looks a little wonky to the left of where her eyes are. I also only rendered part of the fabric she was lying on (totally out of laziness—also, painting fabric is hard). This ended up being kind of funny. The next step was to do a full grisaille painting, basically just using black and white, but with glazes (so basically black glazes layered on). It isn’t as…
Realistic and Exaggerated Portraits
It really has been a long time since I’ve posted. It’s definitely hard to keep up with everything. But I thought I’d post my last project for one of my classes last term, which was fun and turned out kind of cool. I had to do a realistic portrait of somebody and then another version with exaggerated features, and I chose to do my niece. These were both done in acrylic. Here’s the realistic one: Now, this has some problems (her eyes and mouth are too small, for instance), but it’s overall a little better than I expected it to be. For the second one, I decided to exaggerate her eyes. I’m not a big fan of this style, as I prefer sticking closely to realism for people. (I say that, but I also do like stylized art. So maybe it’s just I feel more comfortable with realism for myself,…
Sweeping a Cat Shelter Project
For the final project in my Life Drawing 2 class, we had to put at least one figure in an interesting setting. We had to look at a database of images of models in a variety of poses and work from that, picking three to play with. I worked on several ideas: I ended up going with the third one, with this model: At first I thought we could draw the figure clothed, and I liked her clothing, but it turns out they had to be nude (we were allowed to add transparent clothes, but the anatomy has to be visible). I developed my idea into a line drawing here: I got some feedback on the proportions of the figure, so I had to fix that in the final drawing. The piece had to be done on large paper and in color, but any medium was acceptable, so I decided…
Bastet Does TNR Project
For one of my classes, I had three weeks to develop another project that had to depict some kind of guardian figure. To get the mental juices flowing, the suggested things like an angel, a gargoyle overlooking a city, medieval castle guard, and Native American deities. This one came to me quickly. I decided to do something with Bastet, the ancient Egyptian goddess of cats, fertility, and more. She has a human body but the head of a cat. In the early days of her mythology, it was usually a lion head, but later it was a domestic cat. I found a good image to work from that I loved: (Found at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bastet_dame_katzenkopf.jpg) Her ears are tall here but she looks so sleek. The next step in the project was to figure what she’d be doing in the painting. I brainstormed a few things, but right away an idea I…
Illuminated Manuscript, Final
I finished the illuminated manuscript I talked about in my first blog post, and I’m pretty happy how it turned out. It’s not perfect, but I followed the plan I outlined in that first post, and it looks decent. The paper was a little buckled from the laser printer, so I ended up having it dry-mounted so I could get a better picture of it. Here’s the final version: I’m going to talk a little about the process here. I also forgot to mention the font that I used, an Arabic-style English font called Bulan Rajab that I found online here. I love how this turned out. There were quite a few fonts available, but this was very readable and visually appealing. As far as decoration goes, I’m not sure how real illuminators worked, but I decided to put the gold and silver foil (it was the artificial stuff) down…