Another Rough Background

This is a dutch angle background: I was given the rough outline below and asked to play with it and shade it. I skewed and resized the tree shapes, enhanced them, and added foreground elements to draw the eye towards the action from the storyboards. This was for another collaborative animation.

Illustration Assignment - Lymric

Music Appreciation - by Reina Elizondo

This was for an assignment to choose from some limericks and illustrate one of them. I chose 'There was an old man with a flute' by Edward Lear. This was done with pen and ink washes on watercolor paper.

Illustration Assignment: Illustrate a Song

Hotel California - by Reina Elizondo

I chose to illustrate the song 'Hotel California' by the Eagles. I wanted the feminine form to be made out of both the desert and chaos, to represent the desolation and to touch on the references to drugs and addiction in the song. To me the woman in the song is a representation of temptation and a lure to darker urges. In my picture the zipper of the woman's dress is a car on the 'long desert highway' and it's revealing chaos underneath.

Illustration: Reach Out and Touch Someone

Reach Out - Skin Hunger

Revised Illustration

An illustration of the excerpt  :

Cynthia Rylant. The Islander. (DK, 1998.) 

I was a boy when I met the mermaid, and, of course, no one believed me. It didn’t matter. I was a solitary boy — lonely, actually — and had long given up on anyone understanding what I said or how I felt. I had lived with my grandfather for three years, and he was a kind and gentle man, but he could not see into a boy’s world and so could not do much more than love me.

Illustration: Losing All Hope Was Freedom

Illustration Assignment: Cover for The New Yorker

 I wanted this to be a statement on left behind dreams.

Edit: I've recently seen a commercial that is totally rocking this theme since I posted this...coincidence? Looks at follower #s...I guess so, lol.

Revised Illustration

This was intended to illustrate the idiom 'Cock and Bull Story'; in other words an unbelievable story.

Watercolor and some ink.

I wanted to make the face in the foreground telling the story and so I made the dragon and flames coming from it's mouth. I associate 'unbelievable' with fantasy (ergo a dragon) and fantasy with purples and violets. Of couse dragons have fire so I got a good warm vs. cool going with the flames and the dragon. I'm aware I need to strengthen contrast in value and saturation.

I used salt sprinkled into the washes to get the background texture and I absolutely love the effect. It makes me want to experiment with more textures that way.

This is the revised version.

Illustration Assignment: Graphite

Strawberry Herring

This is an illustration of the following nursery rhyme :


The Man in the Wilderness

A man in the wilderness asked me
How many strawberries grow in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good,
As many red herrings grow in the wood.

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another Background for the collaborative film: Complement Me. Directed by Kathryn Nicolas. This is still being worked on, so you won't see this background in the current rough cut.

Matte Painting

Our assignment was to work on a matte painting with any subject matter of our choosing. This was the final I turned in.

Playing with Textures

I wanted to experiment with some textures.

Revised Bukowski

This is my pastel piece with the revisions I did to resubmit.

This was from an assignment to illustrate the following poem :


The Pretty Girl Who Rented Rooms 
by Charles Bukowski

Down in New Orleans
this young pretty girl
showed me a room for rent and
it was dark in there and we stood
very close
and as we stood there
she said,
"the room is $4.50 a week."
and I said,
"I usually pay $3.50."
as we stood there in the dark
I decided to pay her $4.50 because
maybe I'd see her in the hall once in a
while
and I could not understand then why
women had to be like she was
they always waited for you
to give a sign
or not to make the first move
and I said,
"I'll take the room," and I gave her
the money
although I could see that
the sheets were dirty and the bed
wasn't made
but I was young and a virgin,
frightened and
confused
and I gave her the money
and she closed the door behind her
and there was no toilet and no sink
and no window.
the room was damp with suicide and death
and I undressed and lay down on the bed
and I lived there a week
and I saw many other people in the hall
old drunks
people on relief
crazy people
good young people
dull old people
but I never saw her again.

finally
I moved around the corner
to a new place
for $3.50 a week
run but another female
a 75-year-old religious maniac
with bad eyes and a limp
and we didn't have any trouble
at all

and there was a sink
and a window
in the room.

Mattes for 3D Collaborative Animation

Illustration Assignment: Sketches around Savannah, GA

For this assignment we read parts of the book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt then we sketched around Savannah. These sketches were meant to give the viewer a strong feel for the city.

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another background

Background for Collaborative Animation

Another Background

Matte Painting WIP

Our assignment is to work on a matte painting with any subject matter of our choosing. I got some feedback on this about warming up the colors of the dome and making it more transparant. Also to work on the icicle shape.

Illustration Assignment: Pastel

This was from an assignment to illustrate the following poem :

The Pretty Girl Who Rented Rooms 
by Charles Bukowski

Down in New Orleans
this young pretty girl
showed me a room for rent and
it was dark in there and we stood
very close
and as we stood there
she said,
"the room is $4.50 a week."
and I said,
"I usually pay $3.50."
as we stood there in the dark
I decided to pay her $4.50 because
maybe I'd see her in the hall once in a
while
and I could not understand then why
women had to be like she was
they always waited for you
to give a sign
or not to make the first move
and I said,
"I'll take the room," and I gave her
the money
although I could see that
the sheets were dirty and the bed
wasn't made
but I was young and a virgin,
frightened and
confused
and I gave her the money
and she closed the door behind her
and there was no toilet and no sink
and no window.
the room was damp with suicide and death
and I undressed and lay down on the bed
and I lived there a week
and I saw many other people in the hall
old drunks
people on relief
crazy people
good young people
dull old people
but I never saw her again.

finally
I moved around the corner
to a new place
for $3.50 a week
run but another female
a 75-year-old religious maniac
with bad eyes and a limp
and we didn't have any trouble
at all

and there was a sink
and a window
in the room.

I'll repost with revisions later.

Illustration Assignment: Ink

An illustration of the excerpt  :

Cynthia Rylant. The Islander. (DK, 1998.) 

I was a boy when I met the mermaid, and, of course, no one believed me. It didn’t matter. I was a solitary boy — lonely, actually — and had long given up on anyone understanding what I said or how I felt. I had lived with my grandfather for three years, and he was a kind and gentle man, but he could not see into a boy’s world and so could not do much more than love me.

I will be posting the revised version later.