So these might be new to you, but old to me.

I’m working on saving for a decent epson scanner to start posting some new work-bear with me.

So last Sunday night at 10:30 at night I decided to do a self portrait just for fun. I ended up taking the portrait into critique for senior studio along with my painting of Adam Duritz. To my surprize people responded well to the self portrait.

So I guess it’s about time that I actually start posting some work that I’ve done over the past couple months. This is a painting of Amy Winehouse and a jailbird. The bird was actually taken from a tattoo that I  drew up for a friend I met in New York over last summer. I went back to using oils, and am digging it.

So I haven’t posted anything in a long time. Mostly because I lost my password, haha.

This is a painting that I did for Chuck Gillies greeting cards, memorbillia, collectables class. The idea behind this is that I wanted to do a kitchy painting, something familiar, based on The Fox and The Hound.

Yesterday I emailed Alberto Vazquez asking him about how and what inspires his style and ideas for his illustrations. And when I woke up this morning I checked my email and he responded to me! haha yea, I know. I’m a dork. But this is what he said…

Hello Michele,
thanks for your words…I don´t  know very well what answer to you. Depending on the work I am raising
In different ways. But I do not know, I do not like any particular style.
The important thing in illustration is  TO READ MUCH AND WELL, if you read carefully the text (and
Text is good) gives you a lot of resources and suggestive images. Resources
Literary can also be graphical resources. The graphic style is a question personal, individual tastes, but the concept is universal.
If the concept of the picture is good it will always be a good result.
My last comic called psychonauts and is published in Spain by
Astiberri editions. You can see more work of mine here:
http://www.alberto-vazquez.blogspot.com

I regret not being very helpful. My english is not good.
Good Luck Michelle!
Alberto

So I just emailed my two freshmen for mentoring. I slightly felt like I was trying to get them to go  on a date with me, haha. “Hey want to meet me the cafeteria for a coffee and we’ll talk about art…. Wear something mesh.” LMAO No, I wasn’t THAT creepy. haha

OOooohhh…..

So I just wanted to link you guys to an illustrator that I’ve been looking at and admiring.

http://www.albertovazquez.net/menu.html

I originally saw Vazquez’s work in this past July’s issue of Communication Arts.

I really like his style, his color schemes, his characters. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!

Check him out!!!

This is a montage done for advanced illustration and design class. The character was taken from an ink drawing I did this past summer. I took that image and threw it into illustrator and drew it. And that bat was taken from a doodle I had in my sketchbook. I’ve learned that I like taking images that I drew or painted and juxtaposing them with other things in photoshop. I’m thinking about doing more of that in the future.

So this semester started off to a slow start. Now I’m in the process of trying to catch up with things. I think I just got bogged down by my other classes (computer classes) and had to spend a lot more time with them because I had no idea what I was doing. So now I need to regain some sort of balance between that and painting. As for senior studio I just finally got some momentum going. I didn’t know how to approach doing sequential work. And since my focus for the class is redoing my favorite book as a kid The Poky Little Puppy, I had some things to learn. I now know what direction and style I’m going to be taking the ilustrations. I have three illustrations done and am in the progress of working on two more paintings at the moment. As soon as the oil paint dries I will scan them and post on here.

I’ve decided to leave putting in the text until I am finished with all of the paintings. I just feel like I will have a better idea for placements and things once the illustrations are complete.

So I am not happy about this whole Adobe upgrade. I went home this weekend to my parents house,  thinking I could work on my homework there since I do have a pc with CS2 on it (and I tried to open my work and since I’ve been working in CS3) my program compressed the files. AHHH!!! God, why does Adobe have to complicate my life?! Seriously.

Otherwise, I need to get a drawing onto board and get painting tomorrow. I only have until Thursday to get a painting done. This time I think I’m going to skip out on gessoing the board. Or if I do use gesso I want to sand it to get a super smooth surface to work on. Since I’ve changed my style up and started using a rapidiograph the gesso makes me have to struggle with line work.

Well, I need to get back to working on enviroments for Goldilocks for my independent study…

adios