Finals!

Okay, so a long overdue post since finals were over two weeks ago, but I've been recovering...

And sadly, this won't be the most exciting post because I'm only posting one final - my photoshop final.  Unfortunately you'll have to wait to see anything from the sketchbook as it had to be left in Monterey to be graded over the winter break and I didn't get a chance to scan anything from it before turning it in.  And I won't be posting my scratchboard final for a similar reason.  It had to stay in Monterey as well, and though I did a pre-scan of it, it still needs some work before I can reveal the final.

Hopefully the Photoshop final makes up for the other losses...

The above is a combination of graphite, Photoshop, and Illustrator.  All the color on the branch was painted in Photoshop. The branch itself was drawn in graphite and then scanned in.  I love maps, so I created one in illustrator borrowing the distribution data from another map.  I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I'm also happy to be home in Long Beach.  Only 3 more weeks though and then I'll be back up in Monterey until June (with a break for Spring Break of course).  :)

Sample scratchboard

 The last part of the semester (in our Intro to Natural Science Illustration class) we've been focusing on learning scratchboard, also called scrapper board.  It was pretty challenging to get started as I've never even touched the stuff before, but I think my sample illustration turned out pretty well...

Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans)

(click to enlarge)

The class final will also be in scratchboard, which reminds me... the first term is almost over!  Can you believe it?!?  All the class finals are due two weeks from yesterday (our last day of Fall quarter), which means the next time I post my work I'll be back in Long Beach enjoying a 5 week break from school.  After that, it's essentially one long 4.5 month push till the end (we only get one week off in between Winter and Spring terms).  It's crazy to think of all that will be done in that short period of time...

In other news, we enjoyed our last field trip of the year at the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Wednesday.  I, oddly enough, spent my time sketching plants from one of the tanks (Sea Grapes and Surfgrass) while most people were drawing the wildlife that is so abundant there.  I discovered a beautiful little fish that I hope to illustrate in the future (perfect for a color assignment)...

Juvenile Blacksmith (with Sea Grapes and Surfgrass behind)

 Next Thursday will find me enjoying friends and family up in the East Bay and I can hardly wait!  After that, it'll be a crazy push to finish my final scratchboard, my final Photoshop painting, and 2 field sketching assignments (I'll post more of my field sketching work while on winter break).  So don't expect to hear from me again until early December.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Something old... something new...

My first attempt at our last ink assignment proved disastrous, so last night I decided to start over completely (and it was due today!).  I'm so glad I did though, cause I'm much happier with this piece (and I can sleep when I'm dead right?):

Our assignment was to create a "collection" of items that were somehow linked to each other...  I chose the almond and all it's reproductive parts.  There were so many amazing illustrations done on this theme (by all my classmates) and I wish I could make copies of all of them to share and for future inspiration, but perhaps they'll show up again someday in the student galleries.

Also due today, was our first Photoshop painting!  We used black and white work from a previous drawing assignment and colored it in using Photoshop.  I'm pretty happy with my little skipper, remember him?

That's all for now.  If you'll excuse me I'm going to fall asleep now...

Ink Textures

Our 3rd ink assignment was to create 12, 2 inch squares filled with different textures...

Click to see larger

I quite enjoyed myself, though I ended up with the worst kink in my neck...

Besides ink textures we've been working on photo manipulation in Photoshop, painting in Photoshop, skeleton drawing and live animal drawing in our field sketching class, and much more.  I'll finish my Photoshop painting by Tuesday and post that soon.  And once I get my sketchbook work back from my teacher (it's currently being graded) I'll post a few of my sketches as well.  

I'm currently working on our 4th and final ink drawing.  I'm really excited about it and it's kind of hard to describe, so I'll just wait and show you next week after I finish (it's due on Tuesday, so I'll post it after that).  Once that's finished, we're moving on to scratchboard and there we'll stay for the duration of the program (only 4 weeks left).  I'm pretty excited, but a bit nervous too because I've never used scratchboard.  Fortunately our first assignment is much like the one above - practicing different transitions/textures on scratchboard.  Our final for the class will be in scratchboard too!

Anyway, time for dinner.  :)

 

And another...

We've been productive up here in Monterey...  just yesterday I posted the stipple assignment and now I have my completed coquille all ready for you... 

Pinyon pine cone - black prismacolor on coquille (click to enlarge)

Coquille board/paper is also known as "stipple paper," because its coarse texture is supposed to mimic the appearance of stipples when the artwork is reduced.  When drawing on coquille paper, it's important to work somewhere around 2x as large as you intend for the final artwork to appear -- to allow for a significant reduction in reproduction of the work.

Part of the appeal of coquille (over stipple) is that is saves time,  I easily spent less than half the time on this project as I did on the stippled skipper before it.  The original was ~20 inches long... I created 3 different reductions: 50%, 75% and 30%.  I liked the 50% reduction the best (I've tried to recreate that here).  

Anyway, had a lot of fun with this one... my favorite view is the very last one (top down, on the right) cause it looks like a flower.  :)

Stippled Skipper

Last week I submitted my final stipple assignment (in case you forgot, "stipple" is a method of shading a drawing using lots and lots of little dots, in this case, done with a .35mm technical pen).  I choose a Common checkered skipper on a whim... it was the same day we visited the UCSC Farm, and as I was leaving I saw one of these guys land on a flower.  They are pretty small (less than 3cm across) and ever so slightly blue on the furry little body.  Anyway, after leaving the farm a few of my classmates and I went back to the UCSC Natural History collection where I intended to check out a moth I wanted to use for my stipple assignment, but I couldn't get the skipper out of my mind so I took a couple of those too and lo and behold... the skipper won out over the moth.

Common checkered skipper

 

Our coquille assignment is due tomorrow and since I don't want to reveal it prior to our class critique, I'll post it after class tomorrow.  :)

10.20.2010

So last Wednesday my field sketching class went to Point Lobos and oh-my-gosh was it gorgeous!  I was admittedly having a bad day the day before we went, but as soon as we arrived in Point Lobos all of my concerns from the days and weeks before seemed to dissolve.  I was completely taken by the beauty and quietness of this place and was reminded of all the reasons I came here...

(I didn't bring my camera that day which was stupid, but I was super excited to find that my phone took really beautiful photos and I wanted to share them with you...)

Powdery Dudleya (I fell in love with this stuff)

  Ice plant

 Trentepohlia (algae) - not in focus, but still a cool parasite

 The view from where I sat to sketch (above and below)

I also wanted to share a few of my friend Stephanie's photos from that day...  (thanks Stephanie)

Me, Corlis and Stephanie (I bent at the knee cause I didn't realize he was taking a full body shot, silly)

Super awesome, creepy-cute, hairless squirrel we saw on the way out (he was blind in that eye, yikes)

So right now I'm working on a new assignment... it's a drawing in black colored pencil on something called "coquille" board.  It's supposed to mimic the look of stipple, but get there a whole lot faster -- we'll see.  :)

Which reminds me, I still need to post my stipple assignment from this week.  I'll do that before the end of the weekend, so be on the lookout.

Field Sketching

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is Field Sketching.  It's pretty much what it sounds like, but it's even better because our "field" is Central California!  So nearly every Wednesday our class takes a fieldtrip to some new lovely spot on the Monterey Bay.  Our first was in Santa Cruz visiting the UCSC campus (we get to borrow specimens from the natural history collection there and we were getting acquainted with said collection).  The ones following included Carmel River State Beach, the UCSC farm and Point Lobos!  We went to Point Lobos today and oh-my-gosh did I love it, BUT I wanted to share my photos from the farm day first cause I never got around to posting those last week...

The farm was absolutely lovely and fortunately, the day we went was a sunny, warm day, perfect for hanging out and sketching outside.

Here are a few of the things I happened across that day...

A quick botany lesson with Jenny (in the hat)

From left: Martha, Corlis, Alexis, Sean, Stephanie

Pears!

See the bee?

Did you know kiwis grew on a vine?

Which do you prefer?

Artichoke gone to seed

Persimmons (also my drawing subject that day)

Ok.  So now I can post the Point Lobos pics...  next time.  ;)

Fun Quote

I am being introduced to so many new methods and materials in my classes, and none have proven more challenging (so far) than the seemingly simple (and common) pen.  There is such beauty and elegance to the "simplicity" of pen and ink work, but it requires such a different approach than any other "workable" medium (i.e. graphite, charcoal, even watercolor and colored pencil).

To aid my learning process I picked up a highly recommended text on pen & ink:

Which leads me to the reason for this post....

While reading through the first few chapters I came across a quote I particularly loved and wanted to share.

"Pen drawings, in their simple black against white, have a crispness and directness that are appealing; they are full of life and light.  Many of them are only suggestive, leaving much to the imagination, and we take pleasure in this.  A few lines here, and a few touches there, and sometimes that is all; yet there is power to this suggestion which often makes photographs, telling everything, seem stupid by comparison."

(This is not intended to put photography down, only to contrast that wonderful suggestive quality found in simple pen and ink work.)




Speaking of pen and ink work, perhaps I should be doing some.

Oops!

I was wrong, this is not week 5 of the program, we just finished week 4.  Next week is week 5, so next weekend marks the half-way point. 

My bad.  :)

Edit: wrong again, cause apparently I shouldn't be counting the first week as a week (since it was orientation and 1 day of class).  So we just finished week 3, next week is 4, and so on.  I should just stop at this point, but I'm pretty sure I've got it right this time.  So we just finished week 3 of class, which happens to be my 4th week of being here.  Got it?  Ok.

At long last...

Geez!  This blog thing is a lot harder than I thought it would be... at least, when you have very little free time in your life, but I've decided to "take the day off" today.  That doesn't mean I'm not still working on my next assignment (which is due Tuesday), but it means most of the day will be (has been) spent sleeping, catching up on the blog, hanging out with friends, and other "chores" that get left behind during the school week.  Rest is important to creativity and stamina throughout the week (or so I'm telling myself today).

So we're 5 weeks into our first 10 week term.  Wow!  I just realized we're at the halfway mark!  So I guess it's a fitting weekend to post my first real update on back-to-school life.  For anyone who doesn't know, I'm taking 4 classes: Intro to Natural Science Illustration (hard), Field Sketching (fun), Information Graphics (very interesting); and a seminar - Special Topics in Science Illustration.  But don't get me wrong -- despite my little lables, all of them are fun and terribly interesting and each has it's difficulties as well.

I have 3 wonderful instructors that will be with me for the duration of the program: Ann Caudle (program director), Jenny Keller, and Amadeo Bachar (he's a past graduate of the program).  Ann is teaching the "Intro" class,  Jenny is teaching the sketching class and the seminar, and Amadeo is teaching the graphics class.

Fortunately, I already posted my first creative graphics assignment in the previous post, so you can see it below (I say "creative" because I'm leaving out the totally awesome graphs I learned how to trace in my first assignment, and by awesome, I mean as boring as any other graph you've ever seen before).  I probably won't be posting much of anything from the field sketching class (unless I'm really inspired to scan and share my sketches with you - you can see the sketchbook when I come home), but I will be posting almost all of the work I do in the Intro to Natural Science Illustration class - it'll be the most interesting stuff to share this term. 

Anyway, today is about catching you up on the pieces I've recently finished for the Intro class, and here is the first one:

African Gazelle horns, graphite

Above you will see the first, and only, fully graphite piece we are doing for the program.  I've drawn these horns from life (nearly everything we do the first term has to be from direct observation, so no drawing from photos).  I found these horns at the UC Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History.  The program I'm in used to be at UCSC until it moved, last year, to CSU Monterey Bay.  Past students of the program used to be able to borrow items from the museum and they were nice enough to continue that relationship despite our having moved to CSUMB.  So I get to borrow lots of great stuff while I'm up here, and during our first visit to the UCSC campus, these horns caught my eye...  This was a particularly fun drawing because I got to use lots of cool new techniques I'd never tried before.  Prior to starting this drawing, we created grids on plexiglass for accurate transfer of observed objects, and the really awesome thing is that when you draw with a grid, you need to block your binocular vision, and that means wearing an eye-patch!  So I did the preliminary sketch for this drawing while wearing an eye-patch... I felt very cool.  :)  Here's what my set up looked like while drawing:

My second assignment was more of an exercise.  In learning how to use pen and ink, we were tasked with drawing a single object four times and inking it in four different styles: outline, stipple, parallel hatching, and cross hatching:

Fremontodendron (Flannel Bush) in ink

My favorite method was the stipple (top right) though my classmates and instructor each had their own preferences.  It's probably a good thing you can't see the bottom two very close up -- let's just say I need practice in mark making with hatching.  I wasn't too worried about it though because botanicals are by far my favorite subject and they are most commonly rendered in outline and stipple, so I'm good as far as that goes.  :)

Right now we are working on a much more involved stipple project that I hope to share with you next week, but I need to actually draw it before I can share it with you (it's due Tuesday).  I'm illustrating a Checkered skipper specimen that I borrowed from the UCSC Museum of Natural history... so much to do in so little time and so many dots ahead of me this weekend. 

That reminds me, I need to get to work.  :)

I heart maps!

So I know this post is sadly overdue and there is so much more to post (hopefully this weekend?), but I thought I'd at least add something.

We had to assign ourselves a topic to map, using Illustrator.  After researching many subjects I settled on conifer distribution, primarily for the wealth of information I could find on the subject.  ;)  But I really liked how it turned out in the end (the tree silhouettes are my favorite part!).

We have a field trip tomorrow in Santa Cruz at the UCSC Farm.. I'm so excited!  I love farms.  The rest of the evening will be spent finishing my fremontodendron in ink (4x - in different styles).  I'll post those along with my graphite piece (the first assignment) no later than this weekend.

In the beginning...

So here I am in Monterey!  Two weeks into a 12 month adventure in Science Illustration that I hope to share with you here.  (To all those that have been waiting for this blog to begin, my apologies for the delays, but things are already crazy and we've barely gotten started.)

Anyway, I can hardly tell you how excited I am to be a part of this wonderful program!  I feel so blessed to get to live and work in Monterey for nine months (and, yes, by "work" I mean draw and paint lots and lots of pictures).  But, hey... it's work!!   :)  You'll see...

Stay tuned.