Old Ladies and Cats Eye Nebulas

It's printmakin' time, so here are the first examples of what I've been doing in my intaglio class this semester.  (I would have included my first lithograph, but I forgot to bring it home to document - I will, though!)  Both prints are from a 6"x8" copper plate etched in ferric chloride.

Stage One:

First time using an aquatint:

Intro to Print Media

I finally documented some of my prints from last semester and though I might share them with you.  This is just a small collection of some of the ones I liked.  When I get the chance to document more of them, I'll post those too.

 dry point on PVC plate

 monoprint

 dry point on zinc

 monoprint

monoprint

This semester I'm taking two printmaking classes: lithography and intaglio.  I'm really excited for both and when we finish up our first projects, I'll be sure to post both of those.

Finals

It's getting to the end of all my major projects for the semester and I have some final products to share!

First off -- T-SHIRTS ARE DONE!!!  And ready to be sold at Art Market!  So, please stop by and check them out for yourself!

 

Next up is a holiday/promotional postcard that I made for Concepts.  I had a lot of fun with this (if you couldn't tell) and I'm actually having some professionally printed.  Hopefully those will turn out well - let me know if you want one!

And my final update for the day is a project that I've been working on with another student (Brittany Roger) for out Biodiversity class.  We made a three-dimensional energy pyramid for the kid's room at the Patapsco State Park Visitor Center.  The pyramid illustrates the four main trophic levels (producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers).  Brittany and I each illustrated five different species, and, yes, all six sides are covered for each cube.

 These are my final sketches for the five species that I illustrated (Indian Grass, Blue-eyed Grass, Foxtail, Deer-tongue Grass, and a Barred Owl).  Each species has three views.

 

So, those are my most recent finished pieces.  Now to complete the rest of my finals...  Winter break could not come any sooner!

Murals!

Here's another piece for Concepts that I just finished.  Our assignment was to design a mural for a building of our choice.  I chose the H. Furlong Baldwin Library which is part of the Maryland Historical Society and located in Mt. Vernon.

The proposed mural:

 What it might look like on the building:

 

Side note: I have begun t-shirt production on my faux-losophy shirts!!  But!... I overestimated my skills at screen printing and ended up ruining four shirts because I tried to screen print in my apartment in a makeshift kind of way.  So, from now on I'm going to not be lazy and actually make my way down to the Dolphin Bulilding so I can use the screen printing classroom in there.  Hopefully, I'll have better luck that way and not waste so many t-shirts.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is almost upon us and I can't wait to go home!!  I'm very ready to spend a little time away from Baltimore and the stress of college life.  Florida and delicious holiday food, here I come...!

Concepts

Sorry it's been a little while since I've posted anything - just the usual excuse being that I am so very busy making art all the time.  Junior year is definitely shaping up to be a busy, busy year, but at least it's busy in a good way.  I would definitely say I am enjoying myself.  And on that note, I will share with you some of things I've been up to:

All of the following pieces were made for Concepts I with Allan Comport.

This first piece was for an assignment where we had a week to create a finished comp for a full page newspaper advertisement.  We were given four companies to do an ad for and I chose the World Wildlife Fund.

The assignment here was to redesign the cover of a video game and I, being nostalgic and also not being a huge video game buff, chose to go old school with the Oregon Trail computer games.  I really just wanted to pay tribute to the '90s.

This was an exercise in which we chose a phrase or phobia from a list and created an illustration to go along with that.  I based mine off of the phrase "near miss."  I happened to be sketching on an airplane and feeling pretty relaxed when I came up with the idea, hence the rather zen guy.  Note: this isn't the best scan job, the scanner didn't quite capture the delicateness of my line work and shading.  Oh well, I'll just have to rescan it at a higher resolution sometime.

And this was what was due this morning...  Our assignment was to redesign a CD cover of our choosing, and being a big BOH fan, I decided to redo the cover of their second album, Cease To Begin.  I definitely enjoyed rendering the barn owl, and the Band of Horses font was fun too.

Also, since I'm in a printmaking intro class, I have all kinds of prints that I've made in the last couple months.  Hopefully soon I'll get a chance to document them all and post them on here.  But I am quite smitten with printmaking and excited to be taking more classes in that field.

Now I must prepare to present all of my t-shirt related things to the folks at the Double Dutch Boutique tomorrow morning.  Me and eight other students from The Lab class will be presenting our various project ideas for their criticisms.  Hopefully all will go well.  It's getting closer and closer to Art Market and I am getting more and more nervous and excited to make these t-shirts!  I can't wait until they're all ready to go!

An Update Inbetween Updates

While I'm in the process of working on current projects, I thought I'd update with something fun and relatively recent.  This project was my final for Illustration II last semester and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it because, after all, I do enjoy drawing things -- especially humorously strange things, and also animals with human features (well, that's oddly specific).

(Note: the assignment was to make a zine about whatever we wanted!)

So, fall break is merely a few days away, I am rather enjoying all of my classes this semester, my t-shirts are getting closer and closer to actually being made (exciting!), and life is good!  Hooray!!  :)

Hope everyone else is enjoying themselves too!

Faux-losophy!

Another thing I'm working on this semester is ... t-shirts!
Basically, it all started over the summer during my Birthright trip in Israel.  A friend I met on the trip and I decided that we wanted to make t-shirts out of these funny, profound-sounding quotes that he and another friend were making up throughout the trip.  And it just so happened that, for one of my illustration credits, I signed up for a class called The Lab, where we have to make a product to sell at the MICA Art Market.  So, it was a no brainer that I decided to make these funny, profound-sounding t-shirts.  Thus, I give you - Faux-Losophy Tees

(the tag that will be attached to the t-shirts)

(the t-shirt designs themselves:)

Note: The first design (A Man Without A Face Cannot Grow A Beard), when blown up to actual size, should be in proportion to your face so that when you lift the collar of the shirt the mouth is in proportion to your mouth.

And now that I have the designs, I'm going to start playing around with what colors the shirts will be.  So, hopefully, a post about that will be coming soon.

Hope everyone is having a great Saturday!

Grace



Faux-losophy credit goes to: Jesse Grossman and Max Kritzer