Simple, but here!

So this'll be a pretty quick post, but it's here, and I'm posting in a timely manner for once! Got to appreciate that at least.

So, I feel like I'm copping out on you all for doing this, but all I have for you this week is another watercolor...ok, so I don't feel so bad about it. It's break, I'm out of my normal routine and I don't have a scanner handy that works decently, so you all get stuck with what I got.

Enjoy!

Just in time...

I bet you all thought I wasn't going to post this week! More likely my ego is large and none of you even noticed, but for whatever reason, here I am at 1 in the morning posting. Yay!

Unfortunately all you get is kind of a messy work in progress. Ever since classes let up, I've been drawing a good deal, it feels great to say the least. But I've also been working on my digital painting, because if I ever had any skill in it, well, I'm getting rusty. So I'm using what I've learned this semester in classes and applying it to digital painting, which, I must add, is a blast.

So anyway, I've picked up a few sketches and have started coloring on them using different techniques and styles and such. Needless to say, more than one have been abandoned because my attention span for this is remarkably small, but I want to improve, so I keep plugging away. Like this one, for example, which I am currently working on. Please, no critiques, I already know my mistakes.

Blood, Sweat...and Ink?

So, this blog's not even been up that long and already I've missed a week. At least I have a good excuse? School obviously thinks my life is tasty, because it's been eating it like crazy. BUT! I have goodies for you now! I'll let you see one of the things that I've been working on that was due two days ago.

Meet my type Specimen book. The concept: If you could only use 6 typefaces for the rest of your career, which 6 would you choose? We chose, and then took those 6 typefaces and made a specimen book for them. We wrote the content, designed the books, drew the illustrations, got them printed, and hand bound them, even wrapping the covers ourselves, if we had hard-bound covers (Yay for scrapbooking paper!) The photos don't do it justice, but they can give you an idea.







So that's it. Front to back. It looks so much better in person, but it's there! And It's done! And it cost me way too much money and stress.

It's pretty.


Aaannnd, as a bonus for not yelling at me for having nothing up last week (all 3 of you...ooh, proportional oldstyle lettering....) Have another watercolor Self portrait.




I look like one of the heads from Easter Island, which makes me laugh, at least.

It's a Miracle!

Two posts in one day? Unheard of! Except, perhaps, right before a break. And I feel guilty because my last post had a portrait that I'd already posted.

So now, have a watercolor!


This assignment was possibly my favorite of any we've done so far in my Illustration class. The assignment was do do a self portrait in watercolor, but we had to distort our faces somehow. I rather abused the wonderful thing that is Photobooth on my macbook. Did 8 paintings for that assignment because it was so much fun. I love watercolor.

Yeah.

Quickly trying to get a post up before I have to go to class. Obviously, I didn't get the post up that I was wanted to last week. This isn't even that post, but I wanted to get something up. School has decided that it likes the taste of my time and brain. I will have to put school on a diet.

Everyone remember that Pastel piece that I put up a couple posts ago? Well after doing a few projects, my Illustration class scans in our assignments, digitally manipulates them, and uses them for layouts of things that we might end up designing in the real world, including books, CDs, magazine, you name it. We've even had a few people do liquor labels. So what did that pastel turn into? Why, an ad for an energy drink, of course.

There should be more...

I promised a friend that I would post something tonight, so I am, even though I don't have everything done that I wanted to post. So you all get a tidbit now, and probably a tidbit later.

Somehow, I've gotten myself into the idea that I'm going to alternate between posting schoolwork and what I do in my own time. We'll see how long that lasts. But for now, my own stuff (and probably (read as "hopefully") another post later tonight or tomorrow sometime with more of what I wanted to have ready to post for today.) Every now and then I get an image in my head that I know won't leave until I get it down on paper...or at least until I get it close enough. Usually they aren't even anything special, like this time, where the image in my head was a girl standing in an oversized hoodie, slouching, and done in kind of a weird stylization. Unfortunately I couldn't get stylization down quite like it was in my head, but I like the result. I even inked it and slapped some colors on there! Without further ado:

Scared Yet?

Late night shifts are sure interesting. Especially when you spend the time listening to Broadway tunes. They also make you go "Hmm, I think it's time to update my blog again". Interesting, no? Anyway, I'm getting distracted, so on with the show!


My current Illustration class is all about methods and media, and so to help us do that, and just for ease, we're spending the class doing mainly self portraits. It gets pretty boring doing the same face all the time, so we mix it up. One of the recent projects was to do an off-the-wall expression in pastel. I rather like the results. The sketch is pretty awesome, too.


I, myself, am rather fond of chalk pastels (Oil pastels can walk off the face of the earth in my opinion.) There's just something fun about how messy they are. You can really dig in and get your hands dirty, and that, I think gives it personality. It's like fingerpainting with dry media.

A Page in the Life...

More like two pages, really.

So, my dream is to one day become a character and concept designer/artist. So I fill pages and pages of sketchbooks with things like this. Characters, poses, expressions, anything and everything that comes to mind (Which means I get an awful lot of junk pages). These pages happen to be in a small Field Notes book I'm filling for one of my classes.

When I started on drawing characters and the like, I followed Japanese Anime closely and modeled my style after that. In he past couple years I've been trying to move my style away from it. Have I succeeded ? Not yet I don't think, but I'm getting there.

Famous Teachers

Check it out! One of my professors, who has since moved on to other things, is being featured by Mac Pro!

I present to you Qian Qian

First Post!

Yay for the first post!

So I'm kind of new to this. Not blogging, I've been keeping a blog for years. Rather, I'm new to keeping a sketchblog, so you all are going to have to keep me accountable to this thing...all...2 of you. Indeed.

So a little about myself, even though all of my lovely readers know me.

I'm a third year Graphic Design and Illustration student at Missouri State University. I've got two years left after this one, and after that I'm off into the wonderful wide real world. My dream job would be to be a Character and Concept designer, so that's what I've been working on in whatever spare time I can manage to scrape together.

For this blog, I'm going to be doing my darndest to post once a week at least with a sketch -- hold me to that! I need the consistency. Also correct my spelling. I need that, too. ANYWAY. These so called "sketches" will be anything art wise that I've done lately. This could be part or all of an assignment, or something I've done on my own; I'll try to keep it a good mix.

So to start us off, have this. A scratchboard self portrait from my Illustration class. Disclaimer: It doesn't look like me.