For a cookbook in the making, perhaps.

Curiouser & Curiouser book cover art
(going to add my own text later to flex my typography skills)

Baby bella mushrooms & garlic (interior vignette illustration)

Eggplant & tomatoes (interior vignette illustration)

These 3 illustrations are the first few pieces of my portfolio development. Because I enjoy cooking so much, I entertained the idea of using my love for both drawing and cooking. I am actually taking the idea of publishing my own cookbook much more seriously. I mean, why not do it? The title of my book would be Curiouser & Curiouser, featuring recipes that I have created along with family recipes that collected and I tweaked to make a little bit more health conscious. 

All of the images were done in ball point pen, but I used watercolor for the cover as well. The vignettes were left in black in white because they probably would be printed as such if (or possibly when!) my cookbook would be published. This is so exciting!

Ball point pen rediscovered . . .

 

These are a few more projects that I've been doing this winter with ball point pen. The first 3 are part of a project illustrating the alphabet. I just chose 3 random letters to depict using the theme of classic tattoos. I ended up tinting them with different hues digitally, but I still think I like them monochromatic. I might change what I have posted later . . . 

The fourth piece above is a piece I did for Save the Tiger! It might be used as a poster to promote an event funding help for the endangered tigers. I did the full size of 13" x 19" in watercolor and ball point pen (took lots of tedious time!). The event is scheduled near Valentine's day, so I kept that in mind with the mood of the drawing. I really enjoyed doing this piece, and I really think is a direction that will continue to pursue in my professional illustrations. What can I say? I love animals and they never get me bored .  . .

More stuff to come soon!

Untitled

This was actually done from a sketch that I did earlier in the fall of 2010 (which can be seen in an earlier blog entry), that I decided to play around with my extra time in November. Blue isn't necessarily my favorite color, but I have been enjoying this beautiful blue ink that I purchased while I was in France over this past spring.

I started with my original pencil sketch, modifying the drawing as I let my thoughts and mood direct my creativity. (The addition of the deer tail tied to the antlers was actually inspired by white deer tail that my dog had found earlier that day.) I inked over the graphite drawing with a dip pen in the ink that I find so inspiring, then digitally colored the background a flat blue tint. Something about the blue feels so spiritual and serene to me. I haven't come up with a title of the piece, so for now it's Untitled.

I have a few other things I worked on over the holidays, but a matter of posting them just takes me time . . .

Some Holiday stuff!

I didn't work during my holiday break, so I had 6 weeks to be incredibly lazy, do some personal work, sketches and doodles, bake for the holidays, watch lots of TV, play with the cats, etc. These 3 watercolors were done as holiday & Christmas cards that I mailed to a few of my friends. They are quite cutesy, but I was thinking of my grandma! I wasn't very pleased with the scan, but it's tough getting good scans of watercolor with a not-so-good scanner . . . Eh, I fun doing them, though.

My friend, the ball point pen

Though one of my professors (he/she shall not be named) didn't seem to be much of a fan, I found that the ball point pen was a good friend of mine. I think I'll be using this pen a little more for my own work. I like that it reminds me of tattoos . . . a field of illustration that I really hope to explore more. In fact, I have really been toying with the idea of going into tattooing . . . The cowboy boot project got me thinking "western", so I did a red-tailed hawk, hare, and coyote (which isn't quite finished yet). I did these animals to play around with ideas and kind of get used to the feel of the pen.





The image of the Virgin Mary was actually from a project for my Advertising Illustration class, in which we were assigned different Haiku poems to illustrate. Here's how mine goes: "Biting the orange. Acid drips too easily. A question of thirst." My interpretation of the poem really became something kind of personal to me, as I am finding my work does more and more. I noticed that things tend to come out even better when they're quite personal though. I did this all in ball point pen, and then colored it digitally. I really loved doing this project, but I think I might like it better in black in white than in color.

End of fall quarter . . .

So, it's finally the end of my last fall quarter at SCAD! Well, I'm actually kind of sad that things are going by so quickly. I feel that there's so much to learn that I never want to leave! But now it's winter break and time for me to work on my own some. I think this will be a great production time for me, actually.

Oh! And, I also happen to draw people! Yes, human beings. And, I even like drawing people. These are some gesture drawings from my Life Drawing II class. There are many, many more, but I thought that's enough from my sketchbook.

I had a few projects that I haven't posted yet. The cowboy boots were an idea that I'd been dreaming about for a while now, and I decided to try putting my idea into visual form using Photoshop. It has actually turned out as something that I would really like to attempt to on actual boots. I just need to find a way first . . . 

Sketch book pages . . .

A few photos from the sketchbook; just part of the process. These are some of those sketches I mentioned about 3-4 weeks ago. I used the finches and goldfish for a couple of class projects, but still haven't decided what to do with the horses . . . I'm seeing a personal project on the horizon . . .