B-Day Invitation: Rough thumbnail sketches

Here are a few rough thumbnail sketches for the birthday invitation. The layout is on a 5x7 postcard, the left side will have a big vertical photo and the right side will have four small photos- two at the top and two at the bottom. In-between the four small photos, there will be a horizontal panel that will have the design and party information.

This is the design my sister picked out, It pulled two different designs together - the sizes of the bunnies may need to be adjusted once the photos are incorporated, since they overlap the photo areas a little bit. The crown will be pushed back more (close to the background value) and text will overlay it.

These are the two designs that were merged for the final design.

Other versions- the last three just show the middle panel, cause I didn't feel like drawing the grid again...

That it for now, I'll post some process work as I go.

Birthday Invitation Design

My niece has her 1st B-Day coming up and my sister and I have been looking through birthday invites, mainly the photo ones, so we could show how she has grown over the past year. Most of the ones we could find for girls had boring designs or were way too expensive. So I decided to design a custom card, upload it to overnightprints.com, and order from them for a much more reasonable price. Plus since I've ordered from them in the past, I know their work turns out well.

I'm planning to sketch out the design tomorrow and create the invite in Illustrator. My sister wants a princess theme, but simple crowns and wands are kind of boring, so I'm thinking of a bunny in a princess dress wearing a little crown. I want the head to be tilted a little with the crown at an angle. Since, the baby is turning one, I'll have one of the bunny's ears standing up and the other floppy. About 5 pics of my niece will be included, one big and the others smaller. I want to keep the color scheme simple, it will mainly pinks, purples, and maybe whites. I'll play with the design and colors more once I get started.

Expect sketches tomorrow and more process pics as the week goes on.

Illustrator Tutorial, Fall TV Premieres

Here is a little insight into how I work with Adobe Illustrator. This is a tutorial I made for converting a photo into an illustrator drawing. This is generally how I work in illustrator for the realistic pieces. I take my own reference photos and work from them. With other illustrations, like the previously posted Aesop illustrations, I make a line drawing traditionally, scan it in, adjust levels in photoshop, do a live trace in illustrator to vectorize the image, and then I proceed in the same manner described in the tutorial. Later, I add in textures in photoshop. Enjoy.

On a side note I just finished watching the premiere of Grey's Anatomy. It was a total tear jerker. If you haven't watched it and consider yourself sensitive, grab your tissues. It did have some humorous parts including Callie walking nonchalantly past Mark's girlfriend into the bathroom, while he was taking a shower, to ask him a question and when Izzie had her usual inappropriate reaction to sad issues- She left the funeral service to go bust out laughing and the others joined in as well. Just like the narration says, everyone has their own way of passing through the stages of grieving. RIP George, we'll miss you!!!

Flashforward was pretty good too, but I'll reserve judgement until the plot has progressed some more. The one man who was conscious while the rest of the world blacked out is really interesting, so is the depiction of what would happen if people blacked out- cars, planes, and helicopters crashing, surfers drowning, the surgeons passing out. A lot of these I wouldn't have thought about. Some of the characters said the blackout was a blessing, but I kept thinking: not for the people who died during the blackout. I also got the impression that TV is showing more graphic images than it used to, whether that is good or bad I haven't decided yet.

-Heroes was pure awesomeness! The speedster with the knives and the tattoo manipulator were my favorite new additions. I'm glad Danko is gone, I never really cared for him to begin with. As always Hiro, Ando, and Sylar were fun to watch. I busted out laughing at the point when Hiro and Ando were called to save a cat and Hiro froze his own time. Ando rolling him around on a dolly was priceless. The compass thing and the burial of an unknown character were a little odd, but its too soon for those explanations. I intend to enjoy the ride for now. I also thought it was funny that two characters from Days of our Lives were on there and they both didn't last long either, they were the water delivery man Matt sent away and Claire's 1st roommate that died.

Web Site Design

Here is a design I came up with for my illustration website last spring. I'm taking a web design course now, so I should have it live by the end of the semester. I'm thinking of revisiting the design though, I think it should be more visually interesting. I'm not sure what I'll end up adding, but I'll post some different versions later.

Train & Alexandria Pics

Like I said yesterday, I finally went on my first train ride, to Alexandria, VA! Overall I thought it was pretty cool. It was interesting seeing the landmarks I know from driving from the train's perspective. I was surprised how smooth the train took off, I guess I expected it to be a little jerky like a plane. I did get a little motion sick though, it felt like I had a knot in my throat for half the trip. It caught me a little off guard when the train would jerk to one side as it switched tracks, but I got used to it after a while.

We had to make several stops on the way and I thought the differences in the stations were pretty cool, though I didn't get to photograph them all. My favorite was the Ashland Station, it was a little brick colonial-style station.

To pass time, when I wasn't feeling motion sick, I started reading my copy of Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol. It grabs your attention pretty quickly and I'm already having trouble putting it down. I definitely recommend his books, in my opinion they could all be made into movies. My professor was also reading a copy of the book on her kindle. Those are pretty cool, basically you can buy e-books, load the info on the kindle, and have multiple books stored in there. It is supposed to replace textbooks one day. I could have used that back in middle school, my book-bag easily weighed 30lbs.

For those who were wondering this is what a kindle looks like, its really thin too.

When we got to Alexandria we went through Old Town Alexandria. There were tons of shops and restaurants. Pretty much all of them were brick and looked colonial. They were beautiful. We were walking too fast for me to get pics of town, though. We also went to the Torpedo Factory Art Center, which was sweet. There were three floors of artists' studios and galleries that were open to the public. Most artists were there so you could see how they worked, talk to them, browse through their galleries, and buy their work. I bet it would be incredibly inspiring to be surrounded by such great artists and art everyday, I really wish something this cool was in Richmond. Not to mention it overlooked the Potomac River, so the people on the waterfront side had amazing views out their studio windows. If your interested in checking out the Art center, their website is www.torpedofactory.org.

Here are the Pics, most of them are from the train stations.

Ashland Station:

Quantico Station:

Fredericksburg Station:

Alexandria Station:

Even the Phones had a Colonial touch!

River we went over, though I don't remember which one...

Masonic Temple aka the Lighthouse just outside of the Alexandria Station.

That's all for now, Enjoy.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Its been a busy weekend!! Friday, I went on my first train ride to Alexandria with my Exploring the Future class. We went to talk to a futurist about forecasting the future, most everything in that class has a tendency to make you think outside the box or just blow your mind in general. The rest of the weekend was spent doing birthday celebrating for my mom (We went to Capt. George's in Williamsburg!) and writing a paper. I don't have much time to talk about it now, b/c I actually have to finish that paper :'( but I'll post again tomorrow, go into some detail, and add pics as well.

BTW- I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait until the Heroes season premiere tomorrow night and the Grey's Anatomy opener on Thursday!! I don't really know where Heroes will be going story-wise, but they haven't disappointed me yet; and with the cliffhanger from Grey's, I really want to know what's gonna happen next. They actually did have a little teaser clip on the show's website on ABC.com that seems to solve some of the mystery, but I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet. That new show FlashForward looks like it might be interesting, so I'll probably catch that too.

Later!

Children's Toy Design

Here is a design I made a while back for a children's toy and its packaging. It was aimed at kids 3-5 years old. Basically the little animal figures are moved through the maze with a magnetic pen and they can be removed and played with separately, once they reach the goal area (watering hole). This was really fun to design/draw, I especially enjoyed making the characters. I'd like to make a few more like these soon.

Cornhole Boards

Here are a few custom cornhole boards that I painted. The first, a Washington Redskin/Corona set, I painted and my brother built. The second, a University of Virginia set, I painted and my dad built. I am currently working on a Virginia Tech pair, I'll post those when they're done.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with the game it is pretty similar to bean bag toss; the object is to land the bag in the hole for 3 points or on the board for 1. Opponents' points can cancel out each other and the game continues until someone reaches 21 points. Very fun to play, especially tournament style! :)

River Photomerges

My family has had a place at the Rappahannock River for over 30 years, but last year the campground we went to was closed for good. I thought I should capture our view of the river to remember it by. Both images are photomerges which make up an 180 degree view of the river. The sunset version was taken from a bluff that overlooks the water and the day version was taken from water level on the beach. Enjoy! (If you click on these, be warned they are very big, width wise.)

This was made up of about 4-5 different photos. I really like it because it shows all the boats that belong to my relatives and the boat the furthest on the left (My brother's) had to be photoshoped in later because he was taking his boat on the last ride of the summer- you can see him in there covering his boat too, my family got a kick out of that!

This one was made up of about 12 different photos. I love how it shows how long the river is and the beach of the campground is visible there, as well. I would have liked to have everyone's boat in there too, but they had all gone to spend the day at the sandbar. I was disappointed to find out after I had finished that this one is pretty impossible to print, given its size. I figured it up and to print it at a height of 3 inches it would have a width of several feet, ahhhh very disappointing :(. Oh well, it will live forever digitally!!!

-On a side note, I am able to print the sunset version :)

LOOOONG Overdue Update

This update has been long in coming. I'm adding pretty much all the finished illustrations I did during this past Spring that I already had digital files for. All of them are a mix of traditional, photoshop, and illustrator techniques. Anything I forget or have to photograph will be added later.

Also I will be trying to post updates daily now, but they all won't strictly be art updates. With out further adieu here is my art dump, enjoy!! :)

Editorial Illustration from February about how Obama has to deal with a lot of national security changes that Cheney made, while in office, and whether or not he should get rid of them, or keep them as is.

Ed. Illustration also from Feb. that draws comparisons between the inaugurations of President

Obama and President Roosevelt (FDR not Teddy).

-I know I need to work on the likeness in these illustrations, but they were my first attempt

at drawing a celebrity, oh well live and learn. :)

Ed. Illustration about Chinese search engine, Baidu, which is the largest search engine in China (their logo is the dog paw print by the way). Baidu has been basically killing the traffic to sites that refuse to buy ads from them, which effectively kills those businesses in the process.

Ed. illustration that discusses human evolution and its roots in Africa.

Illustration of Aesop's The Old Lion. In the fable, the lion is too old to hunt so he feigns illness to trick passing animals to come into the cave to help him. When they come in, he eats them. One day, a fox passes by and calls out to the lion. The lion asks why the fox won't come closer and the fox says that he has noticed that all of the animal tracks lead into the cave, but none come back out.

-I've always wondered how the next scene would play out, would there be an awkward silence or a sudden chase?

Illustration of Aesop's The Wolf and the Crane. As the story goes, the wolf gets a bone caught in his throat and promises the crane a reward, if he will use his long beak to get it out. The crane does so and the wolf starts to leave. The crane asks for his reward and the wolf tells him that being able to stick his head in a wolf's mouth and live to tell the tale is reward enough.

-I've come to realize Aesop's fables are all kind of violent. I didn't really remember them being that way when I was little, go figure.

That's all for now, check back tomorrow for more!