Illustration: October 2009

Midterm Portfolio:

I will start from the top. The first piece I chose was the gouache montage, which is our most recent piece. I really enjoyed this piece, and it took a decent amount of time. The scanned image scanned in darker than the original, but it doesn't look too bad on the screen. I enjoyed my composition of this work and the objects I chose. I also liked how I worked with scale and the shading of my objects. I like my background, however, I wish it was perhaps a little lighter so there would be more contrast with images such as the clown fish. Another slight issue I had was with my tree. I wish there was a little more depth when it came to my leaves and branches. Overall I liked this piece and the final outcome.

The second piece is my DMV Cartoon. This piece required not only the cartooning, but a concept as well. I enjoyed cartooning and working with expressions. For this particular character expression I chose the look of shock and dropped jaw. To emphasize this look I added a burst of color behind the character. I liked adding the color in photoshop and experimented with a few different methods. I found that flat color worked best with my piece, but I added a few shadows as well. As far as concept goes, mine is pretty obvious. I'm doing a play off of the long waits that always seem to be present at the DMV. I liked how this piece turned out in the end. It took around 3-4 hours for the final piece, and more if you include sketches and concept work...

The third work above is my memory portrait. I actually redid this piece so it is completely different from my original. I wanted to go with a look that wasn't so flat and cartoony, but still not realistic. I am happy with the new portrait. I sketched the portrait and then went over with ink, using scumbling and shading to help build the form. Afterward I went over with watercolor, emphasizing the shading with this as well. Overall I am happy with this piece and feel I've developed the character fairly well.

Fourth you'll see my gouache product illustration. I'm fairly happy with how this turned out. I chose a cell phone and was ambitious by doing 2 images from different angles (brownie points Rusty?). There are a few issues I had with this pieces, such as a couple areas where the paint color was a little off on the phone. I also feel like the phone looks flat in some areas. I like the composition of this piece however and I also liked the background; I wish I would've extended my background "splashes" a little more though. This piece probably took about 4-5 hours to complete, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Lastly I've included one of our watercolor exercises. This was when we first began landscapes and this was one of my first ones. When I did this piece I was just getting the hang of painting loosely with watercolor and learning about dabbing clouds etc. By using some new techniques we had learned and not trying to control the watercolor too much I actually created a piece that I enjoy. This piece probably took about an hour or so even though it was just a little half sheet of watercolor. Also, this landscape was made up rather than taken from a photo, which I liked better. It was nice not stressing over making a piece look exactly like something else. This is my favorite of all the half sheet exercises I believe.