Catching Up!

Hi!

Guess what!

I haven't posted in this blog in like four months! It's mostly okay, though, because I've been extremely busy. Last semester was full of lots of artwork that I didn't actually post in here because I was far too busy trying to make the deadlines and prepare for my specialization review. But, you may be pleased to know, I have passed spec review and am ready for my next semester! It's very exciting.

So now you may be wondering what on earth I've been working on for the past few months! Well, that's what I'm going to be posting in here for the next few days (I hope XD)! I'll mainly be focusing on my projects from my Intro. to Illustration class, but I may throw in a few from figure drawing, and I might toss in one or two personal projects, as well. XD Anyways, first project!

For this project, I had to draw a self-portrait as Zorro four times. One had to be realistic (top left), one more "cartoony" (top right), one symbolic (bottom left), and one had to include text in some form or fashion (bottom right). It was immensely fun, and I'm pretty happy with the way it came out, though some areas still need work, certainly. Anyways, let me know what you think!

Also, I'm beginning work on a series of new projects for an illustration show at my school. The topic is "metaphors and puns," and I've basically got to illustrate just that--a bunch of metaphors and puns. XD It should be fun; I've been tossing some ideas around in my head for the past few days. I'm having trouble thinking of one that I really like so far, though, so here's hoping I come up with something soon! I hope to get some work done on those this week!

Anyways, I think I'm going to try to stick with updating this blog a little more often. I may not be able to do it every day, but I'm hoping to update at least once a week or something, with some kind of progress on my artwork. XD

UPDATE!

So! I have artwork to upload again. XD Finally. Actually, I have quite a bit of artwork to upload! Now that I'm back at school, I'm working on more projects, and I'll have a lot more art to upload! I still have to retrieve some of it from the Mac Lab here at school (the nicer-looking files taken by my teachers were uploaded to the local server here), but hopefully they'll be up soon! This is sort of just an "I'm still alive!" post, just to let you guys know I'm still here! XD

Art Grind -- Day 3

Art Grind, day 3! Josephine is on a boat (...). Except for it's a boat in the air. Apparently her boat can fly! Fascinating.

XD I'm not exactly sure if this came out like I'd planned for it to, actually. There are elements of her facial expression that looked differently in my head, and also I don't like her hand (the viewer's left). Also I had to try very hard to get the ship's wheel not to look like udders.

Hope you all like it! XD

Click for larger imageThe Art Grind

Art Grind -- Day Two

Day two of the Art Grind! Josephine now has a pet bird. Her name is Sasha and she is blue. And that's all I know. XD

Hope you guys like!

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The Art Grind

Art Grind -- Day 1

Day one of the Art Grind is hereee! The character I've chosen for this year is named Josephine Leah Rook (mostly just referred to as Josephine or Josephine Rook). She sort of jumped into my head out of the blue one day. XD I'm hoping to work on my proportions and facial expressions this year, not to mention ease of drawing the human body naturally (and preferably somewhat quickly). I'd also like to work on consistency with details; hence, all of the detailing in her clothing. xD Hope you guys like her!

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The Art Grind

The Art Grind

So it's nearly June, which means it's time for the Art Grind to start up again! For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Art Grind is a LiveJournal community of artists that take on a challenge: draw the same character (in different situations) every day for 6 months! It's loads of fun; I joined in last year with my character, Sophia, and had so much fun rounding out her character and personality through drawing her over and over! Anyways, I'd like to encourage anyone who might be interested to join it this year! They've just posted the sign-up list on LiveJournal, so if you want to join/have an LJ, go sign up now!

http://community.livejournal.com/artgrind/

The challenge starts June 1st! Hope some of you join! :D I'll be posting my progress here as well as on the LJ community, along with other art projects I intend to finish this summer (really, I do intend to finish a good bit...I've been busy with work and have been artistically dry because of it, I think). XD

mewithoutNoBread: A Mixtape

So it's finally done! My CD/InDesign project for my computer imaging class was due today, and it turned out pretty well, I think! Here are the results (also, clicking the link below each for the larger image is highly recommended! The lyrics to the songs are pretty important to the concept):

Front and back cover spread:

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Spread 1:

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Spread 2:

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Spread 3:

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Back:

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Unfortunately, though I have the booklet printed, I'll have to re-print it before spec review next fall; for whatever reason, my PDFs printed out too small for the CD case! I'll end up re-printing this summer at The UPS Store or Kinko's, and hopefully I'll be able to use a nicer paper that I won't have to glue together to create a booklet. Also, I'm not sure why the front/back cover spread and spread 3 are so dusty-looking. Just imagine that those two look more saturated for now!

Anyways, let me know what you guys think! Questions, comments, and constructive crit are all welcome!

Adobe InDesign Project

A few weeks ago, we were assigned a project in my Adobe CS3 class. The project is to design an entire CD, including an 8-page booklet, featuring a real band, a fake band, your own band, etc. I chose to merge the two and make a mixtape of sorts, and I ended up getting a fairly solid concept on paper. Here are my sketches, to be colored in Photoshop:

Booklet: front

Booklet: back
Page 2 (the lyrics will be in the center of the page, and a different type -face will be used for the words on the bottom)
Page 3 (lyrics will be added)
Page 4
Page 5

Page 6

Back of the CD case.

The playlist for the album will be as follows:

1. Torches Together! (Prologue) -- mewithoutYou
2. Wolf am I! (and Shadow) -- mewithoutYou
3. The Death (A) -- Showbread
4. The Sky (Alpha) -- Showbread
5. Matthias Replaces Judas -- Showbread
6. every thought a Thought of You -- mewithoutYou

Anyways, I'm pretty excited about it! I'll make another update on the project after it's finished, which will be sometime before its due date on Thursday, Apr. 23rd. Hope you guys like it, and feel free to give suggestions!

Summer Project Post #1

I've decided recently that, in order to keep myself busy and prevent falling into an artist's block, I want to be fairly artistically productive this summer. This all began a few weeks ago (or months ago, but the details are irrelevant), when I was listening to the song "Now That You're Home," by the band Manchester Orchestra. If you haven't heard of them, you have now, and you should totally check them out here because they are amazing! At any rate, in this song, lead singer Andy Hull is essentially singing about his journey finding God. In the second verse, he sings, addressing God, "from mirrors You looked like a fool." This line struck me pretty poignantly, mostly because of how unfortunately true it is. As Christians, we are to be mirrors to the world of who God is, living out our lives in a godly fashion as Christ exemplified perfectly. Of course, due to our human nature, we often screw up along the way (and fortunately for us, this is where God's grace comes into play), but even so, the song served as a good reminder for me and helped me realize how my actions may be affecting others, not to mention how others view me (or at least my beliefs).

All that being said, I was inspired to illustrate this concept of Christians and mirrors and how we should be acting versus how we act so often. At the moment, all I have is a basic, conceptual sketch of how I'm thinking the finished image will look. Hopefully I'll have some more concepts of how to best portray this idea, but here's the imagery that first popped into my head:

Larger image here

I'm hoping I'll be able to convey this better in color (I plan to use gouache as the medium), but everyone in the picture has a mirror for a face. The main question the piece will be asking is basically "Who or What Are You Reflecting?" The "busy street" (which doesn't look terribly busy in this sketch!) seemed like the best backdrop for a piece like this, since it's meant to reflect the present-day. Anyways, I'm open to suggestions and constructive criticisms on how to better convey the idea I've got!

I'll likely be making updates about this piece on and off as a work-in-progress from now until I finish it (hopefully sometime this summer), so expect to see much much more of this picture!

Next update, though:

An InDesign project for my Computer Imaging class.

Objective:

To design a CD for a band. Band of choice:

mewithoutNoBread.

I'm stoked. XD

An Intro Would Be Appropriate!

So! Congratulations. You have stumbled upon my blog! Or what will be my blog someday, once I can get the time to really customize it! You're probably wondering who on earth I am and why you would possibly want to read this! Well, I'm Corrie. I'm a Christian, a college student, and an illustration major. Clearly, my interests include many things within the visual arts, but outside of that, I enjoy a wide variety of wonderful music (though my favorites generally hover somewhere within the sphere of indie and rock), books, apologetics, movies, anime, and lots of other vague pastimes! I mainly plan to use this blog to talk about/show my artwork, ideas I have for my artwork, projects I'm working on (or procrastinating from) for school, inspiration I get from music or my faith (often a combination of the two, the reader will find!), et cetera and so forth. On an off day, I might use it to talk about any one of the aforementioned interests, especially if I'm struck by one of them in such a way that I might want to do some sort of illustration-y artsy project with them.

So yes! My blog. I hope you enjoy reading it!