book illustration. again!

Okay, okay, okay, so I promised I would actively update this thing with the progress of classes for very reasonable reasons. But I haven't. And you want to know why. Because of life, that's why. And isn't that just great. Things like snow storms and Waco Wednesday and homemade pizza making and the State of the Union address and homework and dinners and lovely weekends with lovely people just making things o-so lovely. I'm in love with this semester.

But, as it is Monday, I have just left another Book Illustration class, and so, will inform you of the day's instruction, information ans such. First, drum roll please for the big unveiling of the first assignment:

(p.s. sorry about the terribly horrible photo. I'm at work.)

Titled Kitschy Kittens Knit Knottily, it explores three dimensional illustration (which I enjoyed so much I stayed up all night perfecting the piece, and by all night I mean I have zero minutes of sleep in my body currently).

Today was the first real round of critique for the semester, and let me just say I am super impressed with Jaime Zollars ability to not only flow through critique without making it a super annoying lecture or great speech, as well as her uncanny way of engaging everybody, even when the piece she is critiquing is not yours. Mad props. Today alone I feel like I learned so much, especially in the way of color. Zollars is all about the color really sending the narrative into stardom, making it highly accessible and yet exciting for a reader of any age. Her biggest critique for my piece was to plan the value scale before jumping into color choices. She said it was most problematic in the lower left side where the female cat character becomes lost with just a squint of the eye. It doesn't help that I tiled the background with two floral patterns, a hot pink solid and some bright yellow and pink strips, and so she also said I should try to digitally desaturate the background so the primary characters have a better chance to pop. This was clumped into a talk about the 'hierarchy of information' and that as an illustrator it is my job to feed to the public what is most important by the way I assemble the image, be it through color, composition, and clarity of design.

I was most excited by the fact that Zollars was excited about my piece. She voiced that sculptural illustration is a nice niche to feature in your portfolio, but went on to comment on how the scale ratio I produced, alongside the tactility of the two dimensional figures alongside the three dimensional stuffs heighten the whimsy and awareness of the scene. All in all, a great, great critique that I know I can benefit from.

After critique we talked about the new assignment. Titled Character Quest, we've been asked to pick a character from public or historical domain, and then re-imagine that character in five different ways. Most stories, I mean, really, all stories are character driven so being able to concept a character from the inside out, all the nitty-gritty, is a super skill to have. Also, when it comes to the illustrator's portfolio editor's like to see an example of something they are familiar with; see the artist's brand on something classic and their ability to reinterpret the old into something profitable.

Since I've left class I haven't been able to decide what character I should chose. Any suggestions?