Alice in Wonderland

So I found another movie I'm excited for: Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton. Not only do i want to see the movie, but I also saw they had concept art for it's making. I was shocked to see this because it's a live action production. I actually didn't know concept art was used for live action things, though I understand this film is rather unique. It has quite a bit of computer generated objects and scenes not only for the environments but the characters in the film will be altered proportionally as well. It looks like the concept art was partially created in a 3-D modeling program, but still! It's cool to see all the places concept art is used :D

Princess and the Frog

So on itsartmag I found just a brief mention about the upcoming animated film by Disney called the princess and the frog. This isn't specifically art news but I'm excited for it! I'm thrilled to see disney hasn't forgotten about the power in hand drawn films. It would be an honor to be part of the storyboard crew on something like this. The screenshots are just as beautiful as the old classics. The small paragraph mentions its the hand drawn animated film since 2004 and they've made new songs for it and everything. Who doesn't miss those good old classics? I'm excited to get some new ones!

Adolescence

This week I'm working on my detailed sketches of adolescence growing up in poverty. This will follow my body of work showing age development and upbringing. I'm adding slight personalities to the drawings as well so the individuals have character. I'm actually really surprised to see how difficult drawing adolescents are, their bodies are much different than adults, and here I thought they were just little mini skeletons of adults. The little girl was particularly difficult, because I wanted her to look skinny from lack of food, but not curvy because she isn't developed yet. It's actually exciting to see how much I still have to learn in my development of the figure, but it's time consuming to figure out what I'm doing wrong myself.

Interview with Chet Phillips

On "itsartmag" I found an interview with a successful Illustrator who's dabbled in Illustration for movies, magazines, cartoons and even trading cards. He originally started with woodblock prints it sounds like, but transitioned to a digital program called Paint. He found this program to be less restrictive than other digital media and found it to be a smooth transition between traditional tools and digital media. Partly because he had a stable client that was in a company dealing heavily with technology. He does admit abandoning sketching will never happen, but the program makes quick work with the same style he's developed. I was happy to see Phillips discuss his degree in fine arts instead of multimedia, so I don't feel so alone in my desire for more handheld work. The interview was cool also to see how he balances his time, doing some email and comission requests, then moving to work, next working on promotion, and then working on new things he wants to start.

Illustrator Resources

I found some Illustrator portfolios for different types of illustration here.
Here is some concept art for a new MMO (Massive multiplayer online game) thats in beta testing called Aion.
I also found a site with a collection of concept artists here.

As far as where I'll be getting my news from for my blog posts I found an Illustration News site called ispot.
~~Unfortunately ispot, upon closer look, doesn't have much news on it. But it is a sight for new illustrators who want to hear about opportunities in the world to show their stuff. I found a different website, though not specifically for illustration, does have good articles in many different fields. itsartmag

Yay for the internet and all its wonderful resources :D

Summer Reflection

I can't say this summer was productive for me artisically. However I did quite a bit of creative writing and brainstorming about how to best create work for the Illustration field. I did find an amazing magazine with the top 200 illustrators world wide in it. It, unfortunately was spendy and I wasn't able to get a copy. But it was extremely encouraging and exciting to see how many Illustrators are making it in that field and to see how many styles there are. They also had them listed by venue, some working for books, others for magazines and such.
I also found this awesome website that shows all the art galleries in Minneapolis, theres so many! So I hope to visit them, a few during school, but especially during this summer after I graduate.

As far as vision casting for this semester. I've really been interested in fantasy enviornments, places that push reality and physics. I'm a dungeon master for Dungeons and Dragons so I get quite a bit of inspiration from that. So I might see if I can expand on the enviornments I've already sketched up, but that work might fall more into my printmaking. For life drawing I want to show the range of human development and type I'm able to draw. I feel like this is key to any employer who would higher me for illustration.

Life drawing 3

Skin/muscle study

Skin/muscle study

Dynamic Body Sketches

Art and Science

Art and science together is a fascinating area to explore. The word science is so broad though, and encompasses any topic or form of study you could ever want. Automatically my mind is drawn to psychology, and particularly how the brain interprets. I read the article “Interested Or Deceptively Flirting? Observers Of First Dates Can Predict Outcome” and it peaked my interest on how we deceive to get things. Even if we deceive in order to find someone we ultimately want trust with. There are other articles on Science News that I wanted to read about as well relating to this body language and false interest women in particular use. I’m not sure exactly how I want to express the duality of attitude and a deception.
Gary Parker and Lee Strobel have both written books on Evolution vs. Creation and this topic also interests me. The evidence involved for both sides, particularly that of the Universe and space could be developed into art. This is in a completely different area than the first idea, and both concepts are broad at the moment. But I’ll use either one of these as a starting point for developing the first project.
As far as artists go, I looked at Ron Pippin and Mark Dion. Ron works with old fashion mechanics and experimentation. He uses antique materials to make examination stations to look at bones or hold old test tubes. Mark is more into the natural sciences, seeing how man made objects and nature interact. Both artists are relatively unrelated to my interest in psychology, but I did look at both and enjoyed seeing what areas of science they explored and how they communicated their ideas.
Ron Pippin's work
Mark Dion's work

Drawing history and future

What drawings have been used for in the past:
Medical drawings
Educational drawings
Story telling
Memorialize events
Communication
Personal enjoyment
Represent, symbolize
Maps
Instructional diagrams
Blueprints

How are they used in the present:
Decoration
Protesting
Recording
Territory marking
Divide space

How we have encountered drawing as a viewer:
Realism can intimidate the less skilled artist. Inspiring us to try new ways of drawing, and expanding our styles. Relating your personal experiences to the drawings.

How have we experienced drawing as a maker of art:
Drawing really is the basis for most art processes, it is the experimental stage, and can become a final stage. It’s where artists begin. I believe as a maker of art, drawing is the most versatile medium artists have at their disposal.

When has drawing been most interesting to me:
After learning more about line quality and the different mediums for drawing (ei charcoal, ink, pencil) I saw drawing as having more potential to be different, not only in content and style, but also in medium.

What should drawing be for, how should it function:
Drawing should be for planning and as a final result. As it is functioning now in our world is exactly how it should be used. Drawing is fundamental to understanding art and it’s making. Without understanding the technical aspect of drawing its difficult to create anything the mind imagines.

Sweet Site

http://www.drawing-workshop.com/catalog/index.php

This site is actually really neat, they have free poses to draw of people in dynamic poses. I even noticed that they rotate to get different angles, though I don't know if all the images do this.

Found Drawings Discussion

The definition of drawing that we came up with was a moving point. Moving points create lines and a drawing is made up of a multiple variety of lines. An excellent drawing would have texture, a variety of line weight, an interesting composition, and an interesting use of space. When people in the group were taking pictures of found drawings, they looked for pattern, repetition and an interesting line quality. With this criteria, we picked the images that conformed to these ideas the closest.

Found Drawings

Found drawings can be found here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/megansart/