Week 5 - Painting with Technology

    As an Illustration Major I'm doing a lot of work, so that when I'm done I can get some work of my own. For my Senior Portfolio class I'm working on a "full page illustration" to accompany an interview with science fiction author Alexander Weinstein. I get a feeling that his work is about technology's ability to empower and weaken us as we rely on it.

    After thumbnails I came to this sketch. Then I shot reference and photoshopped them together to create this.

    Now I've started to work on the final sketch/painting which is due this coming Thursday. I like where it's hedaed, the hard part for me is finishing and cleaning up.

    This is just one assignment for my class, I'm doing a lot on my own for my senior project, I'll try to share some more work soon if I can find time.

-Cody

Studio Update 9/16

    I've been working on some pieces by starting collages. It's really fun and gets my head clear. It's easy to get lost in collaging and create something interesting. I took this one and painted it at the end. My work consists of fragmented images so that's what the end result would look like.

    First I lay down some color and some values I think would work best. This image above is my under painting.

    Once I lay some tape down to cover the under painting in section I would like to preserve, I shift the image or change the tint of the area I'm painting to imitate a collage or fractured image. 

    The end result is this image above. Most people are surprised to know this is all paint and has no collage included. From a distance it would look collage-y but up close there are some nice design elements.

-Allison

Senior Year

    We have moved into our studios and have been working hard. Sorry for not keeping our blog up to date in the past couple semesters. We like keeping our family and friends informed, but sometimes our school life consumes us. We are going to try to keep our senior year documented, at least that's the most important thing to document.

    I stopped posting before because all my images were deleted, I felt like It wasn't worth it anymore. Any post I had put up no longer had photos and anything from Italy was gone online. I still have photos from the trip, but the blog posts were no longer available.

I attached some photos from our studios if you were curious! More soon!

-Allison

[Allison's studio]

[Cody's studio]

Week One Done

    We're one week into class now and it looks like I'm going to be doing a lot of reading. I don't have anything to share from any classwork yet, but I've some sketches/studies of my own here.

[aardvark rider sketch]

     I'm working on trying to "finish" off my designs more, and I'm getting there. I'm also trying to find a way to present my work that looks professional, but not overdone.

[vehicle sketches]

[environment studies]

    The student juried show is coming up again, and Allison and I both have had work accepted. One of my painting from Painting II, and my Ramadillo from Digital Painting will be in the show. If you live in the area come by and see our work.

-Cody

Hello again,
   
    It's been a very long time. The only excuse I have is I've got a lot on my plate. I'm taking 4 painting classes this semester and one is a large scale project and another is an independent study. I have two pieces in the show coming up and one is in the exhibition card. The industrial silo's in the top right corner.

    I'm excited to start my paintings for the semester but I'm having the most fun making collages for my thumbnails. They are easier to make instead of drawing, it has more idea provoking material than just trying to come up with images from my head. the process is long but they come out detailed enough for me to do paintings off of them.

    This panoramic one will be for my large scale painting. I'm hoping to pull it off as well as I want. It looks cool all broken up like this in my sketchbook. 

    Here I just added a few things together on the left, and on the right I took a photo of the reflection in my window. So you see outside objects as well as what my room looks like inside. I drew a small sketch of things I saw and wanted to change. 

-Allison

 The show's opening reception will be:

Friday, February 5, 2016 from 5-7 p.m.

Last Year, and This One

    We didn't post much at all during the second half of the semester last year, we were fairly busy. I won't go back and share all of it, but I'll upload a few from the end here.

[figure drawing]

[self portrait as self]

[landscape painting]

[composite animal]

    I ended up submitting the figure drawing, landscape, and animal paintings into the Annual Juried Show for the beginning of the school year. I've spent the last two weeks in Colorado visiting family. Reading and sketching, I'm home now and I've missed my tablet. I need to get back to my personal studies/work. I've got some time until class starts on the 19th. So I'll get some work done. 

    for Christmas I got a few books I'm very happy to have, one is an encyclopedia of mythical/magical creatures. Which I've been sketching from, there are hundreds of creatures to work from. Oh and Star Wars VII came out, that's a different discussion though.

-Cody

Hello, for the first time in months.

    I've been on a hiatus clearly, with being the Resident Assistant at my school and just doing work for class I've been very busy. I will try to write at least once a week and update you on what I've been working on that week. I'm in an independent study class so I will have to make some documentation of what I've been doing each week. Below is a painting of a landscape I did for Painting II for an exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum. I really wanted to think outside the box so I did some man made structures instead of doing a grassy plane or some trees by a pond. 

[landscape painting "Factory Tin Cans"]

    I was really into this piece and I think it will inspire my next painting for Large Scale Painting. I want to incorporate stencil and painting on large canvas. I hope it works out, I need to do some sketches and some test stencils for layering that I'm going to try to use.

[figure painting]

    This piece is a self-portrait using only my spatula like brush.  I did take some reference photos for  this a while back, but I never got to paint it over the summer. I had an assignment for class where the figure was meant to be in a staged setting and I felt this was a good start so I used my reference photos to create this piece. I'm going to go back in an retouch some things with a regular brush. I like the texture it leaves but I need to be more careful with my rubber tool, it seems to make some areas dirty.  I want to create more pieces like this as well for a series of uncomfortable positions of everyday furniture. 

    Here are some digital imaging works as well, just images manipulated with Photoshop. 

 [ made black and white, added a skull and made a smoke brush]

 [ combined an image of a girl with a colored city and a textured image]

[manipulated features ,added animal like ears and nose, added text to the shirt.]

Cheers 

-Allison