Starry Night

This was a special commission for my sister, with her only request being that it be thematically related to Van Gogh's Starry Night. The final piece will be printed on a meter long canvas print, so I'm super excited to see how it looks when it's done.

She also humored me by allowing me to make the piece fit with my bird obsession... :D

Sailor's Bane

Past the explored boundaries of man, there are monsters lurking...

This one was super different from what I've been doing recently, with it being a full page, more narrative illustration. It was super fun trying to figure out and research the tentacles and loopiness and wrapping of them(Octopi look SO cool!), and deciding how to make the perspective and depth work. I definitely want to do another underwater piece and work on light beams and shadows and depth and silhouettes and ALL of the fun stuff :D

Red Support

This was in response to the wave of LGBT support that went around facebook a while ago, with the redsquared equal signs. I wanted to make mine a little more unique to show more then just a sort of mindless reblog of support, so I did a red selfportrait with the symbol :)

Lionfeesh!

Another pretty mermaid lady, going in theme with my ever-so-slightly fishier mermaid designs. Ever-so-slightly being mostly in fancier fins and skin colorations.

Here is a lovely lion fish!

Haven't posted in awhile, but I've got an oodle of new things to tack up. Jubilations! :)

Technicolor Mermaids, Anyone?

"Dragonettes."

Not-so-spontaneous painting of some color-rific mermaids. Based on the colors and fins of a rainbow dragonette, and a spotted rainbow dragonette.

I very much like the idea of mermaids that look much more fishy than human. While these aren't quite at the "more fishy than human" design level, I'm more intrigued by the patterns and colors extending up the faces and arms, as opposed to more Little Mermaid sort of designs, where it is 100% human from waist up.

Hope you all like it!

Doodle-bobbin'

Actually updating! Hooray! Apologies for my severe lack, and my need to finish updating previous posts(Namely my thesis posts ugghhh). Super limited wifi connection at the campground, set up in a friend's hotel room currently.

In any case though, I have actually been productive the past few days, though this is the only piece I have I can currently show right now. Starting to think I should try purchasing a scanner... Anyways. Doodles of some lovely feather faces to get back into the swing of things :)

Various breeds of macaws and cockatoos, and voila! They have the prettiest colors... :)

Flower Girl Faeries

So I recently created a tumblr, and while I'm still working into actually using it, I have found some artistically inspiring images on it already. A friend had recently reposted some incredibly pretty flower petaled girl figures someone put together and photographed, and when I saw them I decided to paint some little flower faeries to match the girls.

You can find all the original photos from Elsa Mora at her blog here. I'll post the images I based the drawings off of here too, so you can compare, but follow the above link to see the rest of the originals, they're quite lovely.

Plain ol' watercolor! :)

Tumblr 1 and 2

Thesis, ptIII - Kraken

The third piece of five in my senior thesis pieces, featuring illustrative costume design based on myth. The theme for this piece is taken from the Kraken of Norse legends, the rarely seen, colossally large octopus/squid type creature.


The oceanic warrior:

The Kraken is another well known fantastical critter, though I think some portion of it's commodity in the past few years was because of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Anyways, this one proved a little tougher for me in terms of research and pulling the culture in with the costume design. My main method of researching was trying to find cultural depictions of the creature in question, but for the Kraken and the Norse peoples', they were very much a warring, vocal history sort of people I think. At least they weren't usually to be bothered with paintings or wall carvings or anything like the Mayans or the greek were.

Most research and references I found were from what stories managed to be recorded, and from the jewelry that has lasted through the centuries to show designs, patterns, faces, and runes. Tying in all of that along with the costume outfit and the location, I wanted it to feel Norse with the boat and the leather skirt and arm pieces seeming like a squids arms. The pose, with the figure's back to the viewer, is also hinting towards the Kraken which few ever lived to see and tell the tale. It also meshes with the colossal and giant squid, the almost never seen deep sea creatures, so I didn't want the figure's face to be seen.

Thesis, ptII - Sphinx

Here comes round two for the thesis selections, with costumes based on mythology. The second piece I starting researching is the Greek version of the sphinx, the better known one with people eating and King Oedipus and the riddles and the killing herself. Yeah. That one. Anyways.

I was super excited for this one for various reasons, one being that I love love love drawing curly haired women, and I also wanted to give the lady's figure a more plump, curvaceous look then I typically draw women with.


The leading lady:

Well I hope you're all familiar with the Greek Sphinx. Part woman, part lion, part bird, she was a monster that set herself up in a cave outside the city of Thebes, would tell a riddle to any person trying to enter the city, and eat them if they couldn't answer it. Eventually the man Oedipus came to her and solved her riddle, at which point she threw herself out of her cave and dashed herself to pieces on a bunch of rocks. Or something like that.

With the outfit and figure, I wanted to emphasize a more sensual, bountiful feel to everything. The sphinx lounged to her hearts content outside Thebes, always eating people's faces off but not exercising so much. Looking at the figure now, I feel like she still isn't quite as fleshy as I wanted her, but I'm satisfied enough with it for the time being. In any case, she has the bemused, lounging pose and casually resting her face on her hand, as if about to give a riddle to another would-be traveller.

I think the potentially neatest costume piece of the series, though, is the claw bra. I want to tie in some form of the bird's claws and hints for the lion. The figure has slit pupil cat's eyes, and the original drawing had a lion's tail peaking out from under the couch, but the tail made no sense with the rest of the piece so I removed it. The claw bra though, I think could be a super nifty thing to make, assuming I had the skills and materials to reproduce it. I came up with possible ways it could be made, but I don't know quite how likely or easy it would be.

Also, the pillows she is leaning against have a horizontal feather pattern on them to hint at the Sphinx's wings, just like the pattern for the Phoenix :)

Thesis, pt.I - Phoenix

For my final year at Ringling College, I had to put together and produce a themed senior project during the last semester. It was a completely free choice sort of project, the pieces just all had to relate to the central theme and look cohesive as a whole.

My theme of choice was illustrative costume design, based on creatures from myth and folklore. The general idea was choose a number of creatures from cultural myths, such as the Egyptian Phoenix(Shown below), the Norse Kraken, etc. I researched each culture and creature, finding symbols, clothing styles, and meanings behind each thing in the culture to put some significance into the designed outfit.

In addition to the final painted design, I filled several pages in a large sketch book for all the concepts and ideation behind each costume, and I'll be posting some of those concept pages with their respective painting as well.


And now, moving on to the Egyptian Phoenix, aka the Egyptian Bennu.

When I initially picked the Phoenix as my first piece, I had a couple more choices for it then I did for the other costumes. Countless cultures have some sort of phoenix/firebird myth. Egypt, Russia, Persia, Greece, Rome, and several others. I'm more familiar with the Russian version, the Firebird which is like a big fancy flaming peacock, but because I'm well versed in the fairytales for it already, and have made paintings of it before, I decided to go with a different culture's version, one whose appearance was vastly different from the Russian peacock. The Egyptian Bennu Bird is a type of stork, and the Phoenix is always depicted with a two feathered crest on it's head.

I think in terms of all the pieces for my thesis, this is the one I like the most. The amount of colors I put in, the values, the composition, it's definitely the one I'm happiest with. One of the things I tried to do with it was have the figure look more androgynous, as opposed to being overly masculine or feminine. The Phoenix is particularly known for engulfing itself in flames every thousand years, and then being reborn from the ashes. No mom, no dad, just bringing itself back, so I thought to show it as being neither male or female, just there. Existing, but not needing another person. 

I also super want the tights. I wanted to bring the flames into the outfit specifically on the leggings/bodysuit, having them come up from the feet and starting out white hot, and then cooling down and turning to the color of smoke halfway up. It may also be hard to tell, but the shall they're wearing has a texture of horizontal feathers all along it, to hint at the bird's wings.

The concept pages all start off with some sketches and reproductions of artwork I found depicting the creatures. I tried pulling in things from the original culture's art to put into the costumes, to make sure they would both tie together in a more recognizable manner. The sketches are all to play with different mixes and matches, to see what outfits might look the best, switching shoes, switching shirts, etc.

Landscape Study - Craig Mullins

So for the last project of the semester in my digital class, I decided to do a study off of another artist's paintings. I've always liked looking at Craig Mullins' artwork, so I did a study/copy(Not quite?) of one of his concept art paintings. Environments and lighting aren't something I've done as often as I'd like, but that'll be changing now with classes about to end.

I take no credit for creation or originality, merely attempting to learn from a better artist :)

Stilts McGee

A humorous alias of mine, Stilts McGee is the crazy girl that runs around on stilts and scares people around building corners. She and Lily really aren't too different, but Stilts unashamedly admits that she had a Napoleon complex while growing up, so traipsing about on wooden poles are her way of coming to terms with her height problems.

Say hello to Stilts!

Support your local stilt walker! 

Skittles! Lovebirds!

Not really. Anyways. I'm trying out some different styles, and this piece is in the style(sort of) of Brittney Lee, who is phenomenal with cute things and birds and paper cutouts and just things in general. Definitely go give her a looksy!

In any case, the main idea for this piece was to try and push myself with color, and to try out a style that's outside of what I typically do. My initial idea had it being a lot more vividly colored, with a lot MORE colors, too, but I think I'm satisfied with how it came out.

Little lovebirds!

Secret of Mana

This is a cover/poster redesign for an old super nintendo game called the Secret of Mana. The character on it is the Mana Goddess of the land it takes place in. The basic design actually comes more from the game's sequel, Secret of Mana 2(Otherwise known as Seiken Dentetsu 3, since there was never an official release of it in the states, only fan translations). You see the Mana Goddess a few times in Secret of Mana 2, and it's her design from that game that I redid.

I'm kind of super excited to print this one, though. While it was supposed to be a game "cover" redesign, I worked with the idea of a poster lurking in the back of my head.

Wine Labels - Lunetta

Label designs for a wine called Lunetta. Instead of Man in the Moon, it's the Lady in the Moon, right? Well, Ladies. Anyways. I decided to turn my love of cirque arts and performances into something I could do for a triptych, and I think it came out alright.

I'm not overly fond of the left one, I prefer to think the middle one came out the best, but they were all a little finicky to work on.

Self Portrait

Self portrait assignment for an advanced digital class. What represents Lily most? Hair and jewelry, as many will attest.

Game Art - Assassin's Creed

Free choice assignment for an advanced digital class, so I went with an environment and character art from Assassin's Creed.

There is a lot that can still be done with this, between proportions and things being off on the tower, and I'm going to go back and fix them soon hopefully. Until then though, this is what will be shown :)

Antwerp Harbor

Another from when I was at Sint Lucas, it's probably one of my favorite things I did while there. One of our class days we went to the river side, and I drew the harbor line. It's a different style for me, but one I definitely want to try again.

Fire

Value and color study for a would-be show poster I designed a little while ago.

The final piece didn't turn out quite so nice, so it's in the process of being fixed at present.

Adobe Illustrator. We Meet Again.

I decided to kick myself back into Adobe Illustrator, it feels like it's been ages since I used it, so I needed a refresher. I felt like a fish out of water through both of them, but I'm warming back up to the program. Slowly but surely. Yeah, something like that... Just two simple, flat little parrot vectors. Me and my birds, go figure. With a couple of tigers thrown in for good measure. :)