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.

Studying Away

     I've been getting some work done most days, last week I missed a few in my schedule, but I'm determined not to this week.I'm trying to make sure I hit a little bit of everything each week. Vehicles one day, environments another, animals, and characters...

    Early last week I got a few vehicle sketches in, I'm trying to work on my perspective above most other things. It's one of my weaker skills.

[vehicle studies]

    I also worked on some black and white environment sketches as well. This week after I get a good sketch I want to develop it further. Hopefully I can start pulling some portfolio pieces out of my studies. I'm still having a hard time creating a real sense of depth though, another thing to push. 

[environment studies]

    After those sketches I started on an idea I've had for a long time, that until I understood applying perspective was baffling me. It's just a double floating pyramid in a city, but I couldn't do it 1 or 2 years ago.

Progress? I may come back to it, or go at it from another vantage point/composition later.

[environment concept in progress]

    Today though i was working on some animal studies, birds in particular since they are dinosaurs. I want to be able to bring the real traits and postures of living birds into extinct dinosaurs. The dinosaur sketch I ended up doing has a kind of silly pose/stance. So I'll play with that more next time.

[bird studies]

[dilophosaurus sketch]

    There's a group/movement on Twitter and other sites called Jurassic June, where people are celebrating the Jurassic Park franchise for the entire month. Seems like a good month to pick with the new movie coming out IN ELEVEN DAYS. I'm going to try and get a dinosaur into my studies each day if I can so here's another chunk of Dino A Days.

    Allison's been drawing and painting almost every day with her classes in Italy, hopefully she can share some pictures of what she's been doing tomorrow. If not it may be another few days because she's taking a few day trip to Rome, and Pompeii. She better have 2 billion photos for me on her memory card when she gets home.

-Cody

We appreciate any comments or thoughts anyone has, and share our blog with friends and family if you think they'd be interested.

Summer Work

    I finally have some time to work on some art and share what I'm up to. I've been drawing/sketching most days, but until this weekend I hadn't buckled down. So I've got a plan to keep myself working every day.

    I'm still working with a friend of a friend on a game project, it's shifted away from the armadillo character, but that's alright. We're gaining steam and more team members so I'm looking forward to working on it more. I had misunderstood what the art direction for a character and I ended up with something sci-fi and we're actually going with high fantasy...

[unapproved centaur knights]

    Last week I did a spitpaint[30 minute speedpaint] based on the prompt "fish car", I've been watching Design Cinema videos by a great concept artist and teacher Feng Zhu lately. So I essentially did a quick exercise he suggests of re-skinning something with the attributes of another. Hence the fish shuttle.

[fish "car" spitpaint]

    I actually sat down to do some re-skinning sketches and there are what I came up with. I'm trying to pay more attention to perspective, but I know I can do even better. I do like what I ended up with though. It's all good practice. I'll push myself more in the coming weeks. 

[fish inspired spacecraft]

    I still plan to photograph all of my work from the 2 semesters at Lyme, but I'm not too good with my camera, so I'm waiting until Allison gets back from her trip.

    While she's gone though I start my new job at Lyme Academy, I'll be monitoring the digital studio and helping out faculty with summer courses for high school students all summer. I'm pretty excited, it's a little closer to my end job than the meat department is.

-Cody