Sexy Hieroglyphs on Mouse Pads

 A few weeks ago my advertising professor brought in a book of build-your-own haikus.  Each student was asked to come up and watch him flip through the pages and say "stop" whenever they wanted.  Whatever words the professor's finger stopped on was the text inspirtation for our next assignment, to create a mouse pad.  The book was called Sexy Hieroglyphs.  These were my words:

Biting the orange

I'm yours (often enough)

Absolute Hunger

Here was my response:

Confused yet?  Sure!  

After reading my words over a few times I started coming up with ideas.  When I heard "biting the orange" and "absolute hunger" I immediately thought of lust.  "I'm yours (often enough)" made me think of someone who was getting something from someone else she wanted, but she wasn't completely his.  This person belonged to other people as well, but she was his "often enough".  My original sketch reflected emotions of sadness and jealously.  I also thought of a scenario where the girl was getting some from more than one person at once, but none of it was what she wanted.  Personal?  Maybe. Audience able to relate? Yes.  Everyone has been in some sort of jealous or undesirable situation.

So how did I eventually get to a skeleton?  Check it out:  

Here's my process from sketch to almost-finished (the finished art is in the first picture posted, with my desk in the background).  I guess I go through a lot of changes as I work.  I love my sketch concept, but translating that emotion into a painting wasn't quite there.  I wanted to play more with color and acylics.  After painting in the figure's face and the background, things started looking static, and my concept fell through.  

Inspiration came when I was looking for figure photographs for the girl's neckline.  I noticed how prominent and beautiful collar bones can be, and so I decided to paint in bare clavicles.  Abandoning the jealousy theme and spending time thinking about other possible concepts, I started concentrating on hunger and the orange.  I looked up what oranges mean to different cultures, and most of them seemed to hold the orange as a fruit that represented good luck, prosperity, and hope.  

The girl in the final painting had been hollowed out by some sort of desperation, but has the promise of a new awakening and hopeful future, represented by the dripping of the orange onto her bones, growing back flesh.  Why'd I leave the eyes?  Cause I thought they were badass.  And that's pretty much how my process works :)  Thanks for reading :)

Pee Weeness

Conceptual caricature portrait assignment. Bam!
Acrylic and white ink on canvas, 11x17

Finals Update

Chug a chug a woo-woooo! Truckin though finals, very busy.  Shut myself in my room this weekend to paint and write scripts, all coming along good so far. Ain't no rest for the wicked!

Here's what my paintings for my editorial class look like so far!  I'm doing four bars in downtown Savannah; Hangfire, the Rail, the Jinx, and Venus.  I was going to make them brighter and put in the different crowds that commune around each one, but my professor liked the paintings without them.  It shows how seedy the bars are without their followers, and lets the buildings' personalities come through on their own.  Works for me!

 

Next up is an in-class assignment where we had to make a promo poster for a band called the Turkey Callers.  The band got to pick which poster they wanted to use, and the winner got some money.  They picked mine and another girl's, and both will be printed and put out soon!  Here's a version without filler text.  I originally had the band playing at the Jinx, but now they're performing at the Mercury Lounge, so they're going to take care of the bar logo, information, times and all that.  If you look closely, you can see tattoos on the turkeys!

I'm also working on a mouse-pad for my advertising class.  I have a few process photos I was going to put up, but I completely changed my concept, and the final is going to look nothing like the process work.  When I'm all finished I'll put up a sequence of them so you can see how often artists can change their minds :) 

 

Now it's time to go back to work!

 

Bus Progress

Bus, bus, bus.  Here's some progress pictures of the project.  This first one is the line work, ink on some Arches Watercolor:

I added some watercolor, acrylic, and some photoshop, and here's what it looks like today!  I"m still going to edit some things and drop it in an environment, but I think this gives the basic feeling of it.  If anyone knows where to grab some SCAD fonts, let me know.  I'd love to get one and use it for the "Individual. Visionary.  Imaginative." part.  I think they keep them secret :p

More work on it's way to be posted soon!  Keep your eyes out for Pee-Wee, downtown bars, and some sexy heiroglyphs :)