Ode To Cereal

I take the box and turn in upside down,
The flakes fall like delicate flower pedals,
My taste buds are heaven bound.

...that's all I can come up with.

I just really like cereal.

WIP

I'm entering a contest! I love contest, its a great way to practice your skills, commit to a deadline, experience healthy competition, and possibly win an cool prize!

The Facebook group Character Design Reference is holding a contest to create a pirate character. The rules are super simple and this contest is, I believe, held every month. This month's prompts, as I already mentioned, is pirate themed.

My pirate is going to be a young Mexican girl. I thought is would be nice to include my culture in my art. So far, these are the sketches I've come up with. I've asked my critique group which outfit is most successful and most seem to like the one with the braids. They also suggested to add a headdress like Frida Kahlo, and I think this is a great idea!

So back to the drawing board I go!

Lighting

Ah lighting, how I love and loath you so...

Yes, lighting is a wonderful, magical component that takes illustrations to the next level. It can dramatically change the mood, focus point, time of day, and temperature of a painting. However, mastering lighting is very difficult, and takes plenty practice.

I am on that mastering journey and this is one of the many steps I've taken in order to understand light and how it affects color. The School of Visual Storytelling is an amazing website featuring informative classes that help and inspire artist. Jake Parker and Will Terry are the founders of this website, they are magnificent artist and their classes will take your skills above and beyond. But enough of me rambling. I am mentioning SVS because they have a class titled Painting Color and Light, that I am keeping my eye on. I would love to buy this prerecorded class because it would help me with my lighting tremendously! Maybe I can ask for it for my birthday...or Christmas...wait it's still January.

Regardless, I will buy it one day! For now I must settle with what I did today, and that is a lighting study of a forest scene. I am currently working on my children's book and the whole story takes place in a forest, so in efforts to do a killer painting job, I really want to understand how light looks in a forest.

I am also trying to do mini 30 min to and hour paintings (notice the word "trying" please, thank you), and so far I've done pretty well. The skunk and the bunny illos are the other mini paintings I've done. I really want to improve and be the best artist I can be, and practice really does make perfect.

Confidence!

A quick skunk illo. I'm really getting into texture! Love the feel it gives.

As I was drawing this, I was listening to Lady Gaga - "Born This Way", it totally inspired the painting!
This song gives a wonderful message about loving yourself for who you are. It is very difficult at times to be confident in our own skin, but we have to remember we were "born this way" and we are all beautiful on our own way! I must say, I never thought I would like Lady Gaga's songs. I think her outrageous outfits and meant dress made it hard to relate to her. However, she has an amazing voice and her songs are quite catchy!

*cough, cough, cough* ugh....

Ugh, I have been sick for the past month and a half, and it has not been pretty. It was so bad, one night my cough was so bad I found myself wheezing and gasping for air. Definitely one of the most terrifying nights of my life. The flu that has been going around definitely got a hold of me, and the cold Texas weather didn't help! Nothing is worse than trying to illustrate with a 101 degree fever, so I had to take a break for a while. By the way, if you have a killer cough nothing works better than ginger tea. Yes, it is very strong, and yes is does taste like pepper and chili water, but it works!

Alas, I have finally kicked the sickness and I can get back to my illustrating. I thought it would be appropriate to come back with this painting of a sick bunny going to work. This is an accurate representation of me going to work, tissue box and all. My boss would rate how sick I was that day according to my tissue box and thermos. If would leave the tissues at home, I was feeling better, if I brought it with me, it was going to be a very long sick day.

I am also experimenting with texture brushes. I'm trying to get away from the "digital look" as some people may call it, and to a more hand rendered feel. I must say, I quite like it.