Tala

Provo River

Plein-air painting from landscape class down at Provo river... we've been working on painting trees (yay!).

Take Two

A hero and a villain return.... now with more personality.




I need to learn how to paint in photoshop. Like for real.

Trees again

I heart fall.

Terminé

We finished the silhouette project! Here are the finalists:

Space Robot



Construction Girl



Witch



Butler



I really enjoyed this project... It made me think a lot more than I normally would have. And I never attempt mechanics or guns or skulls... so it was good for me.

At the Lake

We've spent the past month out at Utah Lake for one of my classes. Then we had to take that plein-air study and turn it into an illustration.

Maid and Hillbilly

These are from my first week in character design. The assignment was a french maid and a hillbilly with a gun.

Silhouettes

For our current project in character design we are following the "Skillful Huntsman" process of design... which means... silhouettes. This is the first stage of an assignment that will last a couple of weeks. We had to come up with 8 silhouette designs for each of the four characters. Today in the critique, the Ryan chose the one that's going to be developed over the next two weeks.

These are some that I liked but weren't chosen. It was a cool assignment. Very stress free. I have like 20 pages of these guys littering my bedroom... but it was fun.

Spaceman



Female Construction Worker



Butler



Witch



It's late. I'm still up because I just watched Coraline , and while a super cool movie... umm.. I was rather afraid for that little girl. CREEPY villain. I liked the movie. I just don't want to dream about button eyes.

Comfortable like trees

For my dad, who loves pine trees:




It's weird, but I think in nearly every one of my art classes, we have discussed the effect of fear on art within this first week... for example, how being self-conscious or afraid of producing crappy artwork stunts your progress as an artist. Today in character design we talked about how we all have sketchbook "crutches" that we resort to because we know they are safe. Perhaps the thing we draw in order to avoid doing anything we think might fail..

Can you guess what mine is?

A Fish Called Zephyr

I have three brothers. They are all salt-water aquarium enthusiasts. Landen joined the other two as a true hobbyist this week by purchasing his own salt water tank (Cameron already has one upstairs, and Dalton, the trail-blazer, has one up in Idaho). As it turns out... it's very complicated to keep a little piece of the ocean in a glass cube in your bedroom. So many things i have learned these week, listening to conversations about water cycling and different lighting systems, salinity and rock to water ratios... I helped him set up his rock formation, something slightly reminiscent of pride rock, which I'm quite proud of.

A virgin tank has to sit and "cycle" for a while (from a week to a month) to get the water to the right composition. For the past couple days we've been staring at a tank of live rocks growing algae. It's strangely interesting. But today Landen couldn't stand the anticipation any longer, and we went to get a tester fish... A $6 zebra damsel... the most disposable of all salt water dwellers. Pobrecito. I'm praying he survives the night.

It does make the tank staring more interesting.

UPDATE: A week later. Still swimming. I think we're out of the danger zone. He's going to make it. And at least he's not lonely anymore.... He's been joined by a shrimp, 7 snails, 5 hermit crabs, some zoas, and a suicidal blue-spotted jawfish (a species notorious for jumping out of tanks... No lie, the first night he jumped into the filter... just like in Finding Nemo... and he costs about 21 damsel fishes...). A veritable ecosystem.

Magic

I went with my little brother and sister to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night at midnight.

I will always love Harry Potter.

Experiments

And so begins my summer quest... The Sketchbook. I'm jumping back in after an 18 month sabbatical. It was a surprisingly hard leap, considering how much i've been looking forward to it. After some consulting with friends, i have some ideas, and I'm excited. I got a set of watercolor pens and a new book and I'm ready to go! Here's a first attempt:



Ok. So, it's more like "Paint-booking" but. Fa. I really love paint.

Anyways. My dad is the king of Ebay and he found me a cool new phone for a dollar. More information at my fingertips than I could possibly know what to do with. It has a calendar and to-do list and seems to say: You wil set goals! You will achieve them! You will not waste time! etc. Very motivational.

I'm trying not to let it down.

Charlotte

Some more gouache:



This is my little sister Charlotte. She was eleven when I left, but now she's almost thirteen...


...and taller than me. Happy surprises.

The plus is we can now share shoes.

Hermanita

A trial in gouache...



This is Mariana. She's seven, and my favorite little girl in Uruguay. Her parents started calling her "Mini-Blocker." My little hermanita.