Flu Art

The last week of the semester has been INSANE and I've had the flu (guess what? In college you can't get your mommy to call in sick for you) so here's some random stuff I kind of liked and in my flu-haze have decided to post. 

Abacus Alex

So here's the truth, ghosts who read my blog, my name isn't truly Zanna. I've never been called anything else for as long as I can remember, but apparently before the dawn of my brain being able to remember things I was called Alexandra. Which is weird. So for my creative concepts class I chose to design a character using Alex instead of Zanna (it had to involve our name) because I pretty much couldn't think of anything other than "Zanna Zebra selling zebra cakes" or "Zanna Zion selling robots intent on using humans as a power source akin to batteries and enslaving their minds in a cyclical flawed computer program". Long story short, here is Abacus Alex selling... mathematical video games for kids! Do you know how hard it was not to write Mathematical! over her head in large caps font? This is a stupid post. 

The Face of Procrastination

Face Painting

Painting a face for the (3rd) time ever yo! First time in art school anyways. My iPhone camera makes the colours look less intense :(

Sydney & Foxy

Me and my sister hung out over the weekend and I drew her as an Adventure Time character. At first she wanted to be the fox princess, but she ended up devolving into a fox hunter. With a pet fox (I don't make sense). Anyways, first time seriously trying to make something with the Cintiq's!

Sheridan November Sketchbook

I'm finally done my first sketchbook this year! Here are some of my favourite pages:

 

Sheridan Trafalgar Residence

Upon learning I was accepted into the Sheridan Trafalgar Residence, I was curious to see what the rooms would look like, and couldn't find any pictures. So here you go! 

Living in rez has been a great experience so far; you meet wayyyy more people in your program here. They're building a second residence building for next year right across from this one. I know because the construction wakes me up every morning. -_-

This desk is now piled high with canvas, paintbrushes, conte, newsprint, construction paper,  old projects I can't make myself throw out, candy wrappers, coffee mugs, nail polish, lamps (yes, multiple), a mirror, grocery bags, an apple core, a beer can, my wacom tablet AND an oven mitt because apparently I enjoy eating lava-hot food right out of the pan.

Mind Mappin'

Everyone hates our conceptual process class right now because of this massive mind map project that I think we all assumed was going to be no problem, but ended up taking us a million hours to complete. It was both time consuming and extremely taxing of the brain, however, still managed to be fun in my opinion. Anyways, the two words I had to connect were birdcage and phallus. Believe it or not the words were randomly chosen out of a dictionary (we had to keep opening randomly until we found two nouns) Get ready for a pop-up phallus :D

 Phallus is super excited to see you!

Painting at Sheridan

Painting class if great at the beginning because you're working hard, blockin' your colour in like a boss, and then you step away from it and realize it's a big wet pile of boogers. And then you look around the room to see everyone else happily working away at their non-boogery paintings, and you begin to feel like a big wet pile of boogers yourself. Basically painting class is an emotional roller coaster.
However, improvement has occurred!
Some things I have learned from my painting instructor that I didn't know before (sorry if this is insulting to those of you who already know how to paint)
1. Begin with a quick sketch of the basic shapes in your composition (eg. a circle for an apple)
2. Block the approximate colour in quickly so there is no more white (it will help you compare colours when mixing later).
3. Squinting helps gauge colour. Do it often.
4. Go from larger areas of colour to more detailed bits of colour. Think about it like layering pieces of construction paper to get a final image, NOT like painting lines. Painting is not drawing (sadly, or I would be better at it) Adjust any areas that aren't proportioned correctly in the beginning, not when you're doing fiddly little details or else you will ruin all your work :(
5. Step back from your painting lots and lots. It helps you to see how badly you suck. Up close your painting looks like it has a higher contrast then it actually does. (And paintings look good with lots of contrast)
6. Paint what you actually see it. Don't paint what you think you see, or what seems right. And don't choose a prettier colour because you think it will look better (guilty).

What time is it? IMPROVEMENT TIME!

Week One:

Week Eight:

Sheridan 2012 ARRAY Project

The first-year illustration students are currently working on a self-motivated project called ARRAY. It will showcase 3 or 4 pieces of our work in a magazine/artbook format. I'm super excited! Especially because the theme is "making history" and it is SO open ended that we can pretty much do anything we want. Some suggestions were to do comics based on history, historical costumes or portraits, historical propaganda etc. but the clincher is IT CAN BE MADE UP HISTORY TOO. Which opens the door for steampunk, stuff based on the adventures of Dr. Who, even Game of Thrones history (which are consequently the things I will probably be doing) Students would not even consider organizing something like this in highschool or even in my ol' University art program. There are a lot of super people in this program, and my faith in humanity is restored :D

Sheridan 2012 October Sketchbook

     Here are a few pages from my sketchbook this month. It's supposed to be random and nonsensical, I swear! Our instructor said it should be the "unedited you", except in the back of my mind the thought is always there that she will eventually read it and mark it. So it is difficult to be unedited.
     I've checked out a few other illustration students' books, and everyone seems to differ wildly in what they include. Some do collage, or page after page of adorable bunny rabbits, or watercolour or photo-realism, or scribbles, or beautiful skinny boys that look like heroin addicts etc. etc. I just do... weird stuff. Sorry for the craptastic photo quality :(

My iphone camera recognized the following dude's face as a human face!

Crappy Old Art Crap

I'm hoping this will be a personal reminder to myself that I HAVE improved over the years, and so will hopefully continue to become a better artist. To anyone who sucks at art now, maybe this will motivate you to practice. Not that the stuff I do now is that great, it's just soooooo much better than it used to be.  I'm using the "sterotypical pretty female character" to illustrate my improvement. To put the following crap in perspective, it is currently 2012 and I am 19, two years out of highschool:

Before highschool, I was stuck in an anime phase for like 6 years:

Grade 9 (I literally thought this was the most amazing drawing anyone had ever created ever):

Grade 10 (I started getting a lot better): 

Grade 11:

Grade 12 (When I got weirder): 

Improvement accomplished!

Painted Fruit

Yay! Painted fruit! We were focused mainly on blocking in colour (since it's only our second painting class) but I added a bit more detail afterwards, like the stem. This is just one of many lemons, aubergines and apples I painted that day.

Sheridan Illustration Portfolio Sketchbook

These are just a few of the pages from the sketchbook that I submitted along with my portfolio. Again... not the most amazing. Even after just a few weeks in the program, I've really improved not only my drawing skills, but my thinking/creative skills as well.