Villa Incognito

Villa Incognito is a Tom Robbins novel I thought it would be fun to illustrate. I pulled together all kinds of images of tanuki and kitsune, references from Hokusai, Japanese legends and even Amano's art in The Dream Hunters but none of my designs felt right. One little scribble I did while planning all this was of the girl throwing up a chrysanthemum and this morning that drawing came together.

First I sketched in blue pencil- a trick I've been trying out lately to good effect.
Then I inked right over it with brush and india ink.
Next I got out my bamboo sumie brush to do the flower. Then scanned.



With the help of a few new photoshop brushes from http://chriswahlartbrushes.blogspot.com/

I'm pretty happy with the result! I think I need to loosen up more and push the brush ink and watercolor angle some more.

Kokoro Cover

Sticking with my idea for doing a few covers I finally settled on redoing a project I started in school but had to rush to finish for class. I was never happy with the final result so I thought I'd give it another shot:




I left plenty of room for text and here's an idea but I would love to see what a real graphic designer would do (typographically etc).





I absolutely love kimono and kimono patterns. Working on Ojosan's kimono was a challenge because I had to weigh the balance of pattern versus busyness for the overall image. One of the last choices I made was to go over the black outline in favor of color trapping, which I think turned out well.



Here are some of the planning sketches I went back to from the original project:

Evolution of an illustrator

I hope by the time I am 40 I can figure out my artistic niche? I hope that isn't too ambitious? I have quite awhile to go... but I feel rather lost as an illustrator. I have pretty high standards that my own work often seems to fall short of!

So my journey continues in a new direction, now that my thesis is done (from which I am still recovering) and I can work on anything I want, the hardest part is just pinning down a direction. In an effort to not spin my wheels I endeavor to start documenting my process (Hopefully this way I'll at least see where I've been).

So, Today's lesson: good research not only shows you where to start but also where to quit. My idea is to do a series of book covers that are at least reasonably well known- if not classics- to use as portfolio pieces. In researching Lolita covers I found that the ground has already been thoroughly covered- though often incorrectly.

According to 'Chasing Lolita' by Graham Vickers, Nobokov didn't even want an image of a girl on the novel, much less the overly sexualized versions that developed after the movies. I did find some great links/images along the way:

Here is an archive of Lolita covers, and a contest of designs which I found from a link on a new(to me) artist's blog.



Lastly, I remembered this video posted on Open Culture of Nobokov looking at various covers.

So, my quest for a subject/ novel to illustrate continues.

more doodling

More ink and watercolor doodling.

Sketches

It was surprisingly satisfying just to doodle with some watercolor and ink the other night. I must remember to do this more! Esspecially when I have a nice set of blank watercolor cards and frame cards to make use of.

Masters
I passed my defense and am nearly finished with all my classes. MFA complete. Some new posting may commence.

Anyway, here's some cover art from my thesis:

Summer around the corner

Another semester over/survived!