Noah’s Art Camp

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been dedicating my free time to doing homework. Art homework. I’m not in school anymore and I have more homework than ever before! This is because I signed up for Noah’s Art Camp, a 12-week intensive art course that is guaranteed to improve your skills. And so far it is kicking my butt.

This course has a lot of homework that takes a lot of time to complete and so far, like many others, I am way behind. Each week, concept artist Noah Bradley uploads a two-hour demo/instructional video based on that week’s theme. Week one was Master Studies, where we had to reproduce old master paintings to the best of our ability. That week we also had to make composition and color studies of other artworks to see how each element is used. Now I signed up for this Camp about 10 days late, so I’m not even halfway done with this homework, but it is a start.

Week two was all about Sketching From the Imagination. This is where I hopped on, so I tried to work on week one and two work back and forth. This assignment required another master study (I’m working on them!), color studies (also in progress!), and sketches from imagination with, preferably, no references. I can be a really slow worker when it comes to digital. That’s the biggest reason I took this course was to better understand digital painting through demonstration, practice, and critique. But I got some work done, like her:

I’ll probably add her to my portfolio once I clean her up a bit (it is a sketch after all).

Week three focused on Still Life. I have never done a still life digitally before and it frustrated me pretty badly, but I just kept working on it and I’m really starting to like it. I’m nowhere near done with the homework. I sort of put it on hold so I could work on week four stuff. Week three needed still life color studies, more imagination sketches, and 8 fully done still lifes. I ve got this:

A quick pastel piece of a glass ornament.

It is really difficult to do a still life for a long period of time. I’d rather do….

Self-Portraits! This is the current week’s theme and I love drawing people, even though now I must constantly draw myself. I haven’t had much time (as usual) to work on these because of work, but I’m really liking my progress. This week we were assigned to do imaginative sketches (preferably character designs), 4 fully worked selfies, 20 quick block ins, and 10 color studies from the masters. First day I did this:

And yesterday I made this:

This is probably the best self-portrait I’ve ever done. Hands down. I love it. And I can’t wait to do more, but this one took 4 hours and a lot of patience. But I gotta say, I’m loving this course and I see a great difference already. I’ve also been getting some great feedback from the Facebook group for the Camp and I love seeing other people’s takes on the assignments. Hopefully I’ll have more to show soon.

I’ve started designing fabrics!

I’ve got my own shop over at Spoonflower and have put my first pattern up for sale! :

“Dear Sir,” Fabric proof

Check it out!:

http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/allywe

Carters Designs

A couple of weeks ago I completed my designs for a Carters assessment test. This test asked for several character and pattern designs.

Here are the characters:

 

And here are the patterns:

 

Tell me what you think!

Post-It Notes make the best storyboards

Like most people,  I get bored at work and doodle, but lately I’ve been drawing out little scenes on post-its. I’ve been wanting to make an ongoing comic for sometime now, so I’ve been knocking a few ideas around and doodling them whenever I get the chance. These post-its are just rough plans for a random scene within the storyline, but I really like how some of them turned out:

 

I especially enjoy how the first and fourth doodle turned out. The first doodle is just a character design and the last one isn’t a part of the main sequence. I made the last sketch while planning out how the scene should end, so it’ll be part of the sequence, just farther on. I guess I got a little impatient.

I’m gonna have to buy more Post-Its.

Continued Sketching (Days 5-8)

The superheroes of days 5-8:

 

Going with an X-Men theme! Here we have Jean Grey, Professor X, Angel, and Iceman, all in their original costumes (except Iceman, he looked like a weird snowman…).

I’m kinda slow with updating these dailies because I’ve been taking more time with them than I should (penciling, coloring, AND inking) and I always forget to scan them. I’ve also become more immersed in another sketchbook I’ve started which is made up of quick, 30-second ink sketches:

 

It is mostly made up of doodles and various other drawings, but lately I’ve found interest in doodling some of the clothes from ModCloth when I’m looking through their selection:

And I’ve also been working on some quick character designs for some stories that have been knocking around my head for some time now:

 

Til next time!

 

The First Four Days

The first page spread in my daily sketchbook:

There is day one’s Jubilee from the X-men, day two’s disco superhero Dazzler (also from the X-men), day three’s Dagger (from the duo Cloak and Dagger and is occasionally a part of the X-men), and day four’s Doctor Light (the female, hero version).

This page is a bit everywhere and it doesn’t interact super well, but I had fun making it. I really like the way Dagger and Dazzler turned out. However, Dazzler is heavily referenced from a Farrah Fawcett pic because I’ve always equated the 70s with Farrah Hair. It also looks like some of the inking and even the colored pencils from the other side of the page are bleeding through the picture of Dagger, which I didn’t notice until now. Also poor Doctor Light is jammed in the corner because I don’t know how to delegate space properly, but I gave her the prettiest sparkles to make up for it. 

Anyway, the first page spread: all light-based superheroes! I think I’ll keep going with themed pages, it makes thinking up which heroes to draw so much easier!

New Year, New Resolutions

Now I’ll admit, I’m really not the type to make New Year’s Resolutions. At all. I’m a bit cynical and feel that most resolutions aren’t made seriously and that people feel obligated to make goals at the beginning of the year, but never really think them through. Like those who sign up for a gym membership and never actually go because they never seriously scheduled the time for it.

But for me, this year is quite different.

I don’t know about you, but my 2012 was difficult, and it seems that was consensus of most of my friends. 2012 for me was marred by stress and depression, but I hope to change all of that in 2013. I really want to make some solid goals to improve myself and grow my confidence. I also want to grow my artistic method by sketching regularly, getting back into painting, and developing my digital skills. So I bought this fun book:

This One Sketch A Day book is published by Chronicle Books and cost me about $16, but the book has very handsome binding and is nicely organized:

Each page has 2 spaces for you sketch on and little date markers so you can keep track. The spaces are small (about 4″x6″) but that’s a good size for some fast sketching. My only complaint is the paper quality. Since it is in essence a sketchbook, it would be much nicer if it had paper that wasn’t just printer paper quality. It’s thin, so no marker or watercolor work or else it’ll bleed through, but any dry materials and light inks should be fine. All in all, this book serves as fine motivation to do some regular, fun sketches.

That’s why mine’s gonna be SUPERHERO THEMED:

Day 1 – Jubilee

I can’t remember where, but while perusing the interwebs, I stumbled upon an illustrator who owned one of these sketchbooks and just drew superheroes and other fun pop culture stuff in it and it was GORGEOUS. He ignored the divisions and also had his sketches interact with each other as he added to the book day by day. It just looked like a lot of fun, so I’m giving it a go. I decided to start with Jubilee because New Year’s=fireworks ( her mutant power) and rendered her with some Prismacolor pencils. I think I overworked it a bit since I’m a bit out of practice with colored pencils, but I like it overall.

Also:

This is a work in progress.

This year is gonna rock.

Sweater Love

This happened to me today.

I’m sure it’s happened to other people-

-but probably not. *sigh*

by Allison Weyda

So what HAVE I been doing?

As I mentioned in a previous post, the past couple of months have been pretty slow for me. I haven’t done much but I did work on a couple of things.

Mostly cute things with a vintage Golden Books feel:

Back in September I went to a job fair at my Uni and stopped by the Carter’s booth, which is a retail store that sells and designs baby clothes. Apparently they have design challenges that require you to submit several illustrations for their consideration. I was emailed the requirements, but I haven’t yet completed it. The challenge is to make about 10 to 15 characters, as well as 3 pattern designs. I have made about 5 characters (3 are above), but I also wanted to make sure they looked great, so I have been taking my time because I can only submit once.

Maybe TOO much time…

Anywho I will definitely be continuing these, but I would love to hear what you think!