Happy Valentines Day!

This is the last valentines day I'll be in school so I decided to enter our valentine contest. Kevin and Winnie Forever!!!

Fine Fast Food

One Day Assignment

Editorial assignment started and completed during class. The name of the article is "Best Pet Beaches."

Newspaper Editorial

Cover and quarter page Illustration for an article about Teddy Roosevelt's love for nature.

Wow.. School.

So.. I've been busy, but you probably can't tell from my blog. I just entered my first illustration competition and I'm excited about it.. not about the outcome, just that I did it I guess. For a long time I felt like none of my illustrations were good enough for something like that but now I've learned a lot. Anyways.. Here are the two that I entered. The skull is to be used as a surface design on a spanish class binder for high school kids. It would wrap around so that the middle of it would be the spine of the binder. The presidents was my first editorial assignment, I had about 5 different versions of it before I made one I liked. It was for an article with fun facts about the MN state fair including which presidents have been there (in their lifetime). I have much more work ready to post, it's just finding the time to post!

Completed Children's Book Finals

Here are two of my four completed spread illustration for my children's book project I posted before. The originals didn't turn out as I had planned but, i guess you win some and you loose some. These images i photoshopped a bit and added the text as I designed it. I started out just using magazine clippings which went well until I started trying to layer with other things.. lesson definitely learned.

My first Children's spread

I know I mentioned it before, but I'm currently taking one summer class, once a week for Children's Book Illustration. I completely love it, and I didn't think I would. Usually when I tell people I'm going to school for illustration I am a little disapointed when they say, "Oh! like children's books?" In the real world children's book is more of a niche thing for illustrators to do. Don't get me wrong, there are people that go out into the real world trying to be a pictures book illustrator.. but usually Illustrators get trained to do editorial, advertisement, and sometimes artwork for products - and some of them end up traveling the children's book path without doing other work. Most childrens book artists start doing other work because Children book's don't pay as much per piece of artwork as others - it can also be a lot harder to get a book project. It's a lot of work getting a plot to flow visually! And there's a lot of art to be made for a whole 32 page book - which is the norm for children's books. It can take artists almost a year! But anyways... those who do make it big in the children's book world don't have to worry about financial problems and get as much time as they need to produce books. I'm currently working on sketching out an entire book for my final which I will post soon.. I'm doing the song "Tree Hugger" by Antsy Pants in children's book form (the song is from Juno - if you've seen the movie you probably know the song) ANYWAYS this is the first piece from my class.. to introduce us to the horizontal dimensions and children theme we were supposed to create an imaginary spread based on real childrens book title. I chose "There Once Was an Old Lady" for mine. I'm pretty pleased with it because I got more than enough time to finish it, I used acrylic for the first time in a long time. If you couldn't tell I've already learned a lot from my class and will be posting all my sketches for an entire book next. But for now enjoy this crazy lady! you can click on the image to make it bigger