Ghosts of Christmases Past

Some things I've come across while working around the house for the holiday.

Merry Christmas everyone!

3 Eye Mask

Here's one of my projects for Stitch this past semester, a mask very loosely inspired by The Grimm Brothers fairy tale, "One Eye, Two Eye, Three Eye."

It didn't end up working very well as a mask but I'm pretty fond of it as an object in general.



ZOMG, GLITTERZZZ O,O !!!!11!!1!1

FLY

Three pieces on the theme "FLY" for my Concepts I final.



The semester is over and I am so psyched to be home and done with finals! I slept in this morning and woke up to futz around the internet, catch up on episodes of Conan, and watch the snow's progress as it gusts and flurries outside my window. It's so nice not having any school stuff to worry about for a while.

A note for Rebecca

Hi, Rebecca! I've tagged all of my Concepts I work for (hopefully) easy location. Regular assignments are here and sketchbooks can be seen here.

<3

Map

Concepts "Map" assignment, a map of a shopping center in my area of town.

The Book of Likes

I like being silly.

Spooky Stuff!

An illustration for a review of the movie Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant!

OoooOOooOOoooo!!!

The deliciously ghoulish duo of The White Stripes with sugur skull faces for The Book of Music.

AAaaaaAAAAaaaAAhhh!!!!

And me, dressed for The Day of the Dead a while back on All Hallow's Eve!

Oooogity-boogity!

Children's Books Spots

Here are four spot illustrations I did to go along with my Writing Children's Books final. They were created to complement four of my own original stories.

"What Is Magic?"

"I'm Lost!"

"The Night Owl"

"The Afternoon Gravediggers"

I just found this picture while cleaning up some computer files the other day. These are cards I gave to my dear friend Caitlin around this time last year (her birthday is on Christmas so I try to give her a little extra attention). The theme for these cards, as you can see, is me being AS CREEPY AS POSSIBLE. The second card opens up to a huge picture of Elvis but I didn't photograph it because it was just cut out of an old calendar, not hand-painted or anything (she has this peculiar idea that Elvis is following her.)

I really like these, particularly the Christmas one. I think I might play around with adapting the tone and style into a set of holiday cards I could sell, except perhaps with my face replaced by other characters. Obviously I'm not going to get it done before this Christmas but there's always next year and if I cover enough holidays I could sell them year round!

Oh wait! I'm forgetting something!

Hamburgerlar

Op-Ed illustration for "Eating by the Numbers," an article on Nutrition Facts on fast food.
This week's sketchbook, The Book of Beasts! This is one of my favorite book entries as well as one of my favorite mix CDs. Click on the image to get a better look at the tracklist (sorry, it gets a little hard to read near the bottom).

The Book of Self Portraits

My Concepts sketchbook drawing for this week. I made another mix CD. I'll edit this entry with the tracklist at a later date (I don't have it on me at the moment)




Oh wow! I just noticed that I forgot to cross the second "T" in "portraits. You can really tell I had been up all night, can't you?

Fashion Illustration

Hi guys! I'm back with my most recent Concepts work. The assignment was a sort of Secret Santa thing that included Rebecca giving us all a sheet with all our classmates' names on it and us having to come up with an especially tailored assignment for each person. Then Rebecca put them all in seperate bags for each of us and we got to pick two from the bag, then decide on one of them to work on. I chose "fashion illustrations for a teen girls magazine for 3 current trends," an option which was written by my friend Julianna. She had noticed my Polyvore blog post from over the summer and thought it would be good for me. I'm happy she did because I've been wanting to try fashion illustration for a long time. When I was in middle school I used to keep these books of drawings of girls in various outfits. Some of the clothes were based on real items, others I made up. Looking back they're pretty stiff and naive looking but I was really passionate about them at the time. That all stopped when I went to high school, though, and I haven't thought much about them in some time, until now.

I opted not to make the trends for each piece really obvious but I did try to make each girl have her own personality and style. Most of the clothing and accessories are based on real items though I have made some alterations, most notably changing the owl bag in the second piece into a top. I used Polyvore to find the clothing (most of which was already in my Polyvore closet) and figure out which pieces I would put together. Below I've embedded Polyvore sets I've made with my finished illustrations so that you can see the original items and possibly even buy them if you wish!

Hamburgerlar by greenwhimsy featuring KG by Kurt Geiger shoes

Items in this set:
Milanoo.com dress, $90
Elle.com dress
Debenhams.com top, 5.60 GBP
Lovebugclothing.com skirt
KG by Kurt Geiger shoes, 3.95 GBP

Darkly Decadent by greenwhimsy featuring kate spade

Asian Island Punky Schoolgirl by greenwhimsy featuring Michael Kors

Items in this set:
Michael Kors sweater, $695
Lola and James blouse, $120
Chaoticclothing.co.uk skirt, 18 GBP
Sourpussclothing.com clothing, $12
Edgeofurge.com tights, $28


And here's just one more Polyvore set. It doesn't include any of my illustrations but it's certainly seasonally appropriate:

Thanksgiving by greenwhimsy featuring Pade Vavra jewelry

Items in this set:
Clockworkcouture.com top, $23
Wetseal.com hoodie
Itsthenewblack.com.au outerwear, 279 AUD
Journelle.com intimates, $58
Graziamagazine.ru intimates

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

The Spirit World

This week's sketchbook drawing, this time for "The Spirit World" book. I made another mix CD. You can read the tracklist if you click on the image. I made it hard to read on purpose because I think knowing what songs are on a mix before hearing it kind of ruins the fun but I do want people to have a chance of figuring out what they heard later if they're interested.



The dominant colors are black and gold to match the end papers John put in when he made the book's covers.

It's All Connected

Yes! I am finally done with this monster project!
For the past three weeks or so all of the Illustration Concepts classes have been working on posters or TV spots for the an outside client, the Baltimore Office of Sustainability. The top five pieces will be printed huge and go up in Batltimore metro stations. I kept the size in mind while I worked on mine so I made it very detailed. The piece was created by making lots of little acrylic paintings and then scanning them into Photoshop and collaging them digitally. This probably wasn't the best technique considering how many layers I had to make and how big the file had to be (it was 4 gigabites before I flattened it!) but I think it all worked out in the end.


I mainly like the final product but it's kind of hard to tell, I've been working it for so long.

Here are some of the contributing paintings that I like well enough to show on their own:
I'm particularly fond of the Oriole. I actually think I saw one today while I was walking around campus. I tried to get closer but of course he flew away.

Ugh Busy Ugh

Sketch for last weeks sketchbook, The Black and White Book. It was originally a book on shells.

Here it is in the context of the book (and in non-edited colors)

I also did a mix CD and surrounding layout page for this one that I'll post next time.

Making it Brief

Concept's Sketchbook Sketches!

The Book of Romance

The Book of Dreams

It isn't an assignment or anything that we make mixtapes for our sketchbooks but it's something I've started doing. I think I'll try to keep it up.

Dream Mix Tracklist :

A blind stitch applique study for stitch:

And a sketch for my current Stitch assignment. It's a mask!

Sotto Zero

Hi all! It's been a pretty crazy week. My Dad had a minor heart attack and was in the hospital for several days. It was pretty scary but the doctors went in to check his heart and there was very little new damage. Everything went really well and I'm really, really happy that Dad's back home and seems pretty much back to normal.

Here's a pretty crappy sketch from the hospital:

He was pretty grumpy that day.

In other news, I just finished a one week assignment for Concepts. We were to illustrate a menu cover for a sort of modern Italian restaurant in London. The idea was to base our illustration around a single item on the menu without using any sort of cliche menu/Italian food imagery and without simply drawing the dish. I chose Sotto Zero, a desert item including lowfat frozen yogurt, fresh strawberries, fruit coulis, and a chocolate straw. I've been wanting an excuse to draw a cute girl in a highly patterned dress for a while so I decided that this was my chance to run with it. I really want to work on infusing more pattern into my work.

This was also my first time using gouache. I'm not sure how I feel about it, yet. It dries reeeaally fast. But I like how colors lay over each other as opaque. Acrylic can require a lot of layering, which can get really ugly really fast.

I also did a sketch for "The Book of Romance" sketchbook this week, but I didn't get a chance to scan it. I'll be sure to get it next time.

They call me Mr. Tibbs!!!

Second finishes of the new school year! I'm not sure how I feel about them. I tried a new technique using duralar and painting on both sides as well as on paper behind it. I like the layered look but I think my colors are kind of drab. I don't know why I have so much trouble choosing colors from my head - or even with reference. I guess I just over think things.

These were another playing card assignment. This time my theme was movies I watched this summer. I watched 100 movies in 113 days! Unfortunately it was my greatest summer achievement. But anyway...

The first is Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night as the Ace of Spades; the second is the cast of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as the 8 of diamonds; and the last is Hurd Hatfield in The Picture of Dorian Gray as the Ace of Hearts.

I'm pretty happy with the likenesses overall and I really like certain aspects each one but they aren't exactly the "crème de la crème." Oh well. Onward to the next adventure!