Illustration-Assignment

I was looking through some old papers that I had shoved in a file cabinet. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this sketch and thought I would share. I created this rough freehand ink sketch in Junior High School as a class assignment. The class had to draw the first letter of their name that would illustrate something about ourselves. I was the odd man out because everyone started with the letter shape and decorated upon it. Instead, I decided to let the object that define me would become the illustrated letter itself.

I used mechanical drawing tools and my old art supply box to form the letter "S". At that particular time in my life I did a lot of technical mechanical drawings. I really enjoyed creating the texture of the objects by using different pin strokes. The simplicity, dimension and dynamic angle still makes me smile. I had to be 10 or 12 years old when I did this.

This might be the only class assignment that I still own. Thank you for stopping by_Shaun.

Reflection

Above is my first painting of a person, acrylic on canvas (48"x30"). Here are the things I wanted to accomplish:

1) Create a painting of a person from an original dramatic POV.
2) Not to use a lot of black but to use dark colors instead (painterly style).
3) Painting a rain scene - a wet look look.

The reason for doing this painting is to expand my creativity without becoming too detailed or too realistic. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you force yourself to tackle something that is way over your head. I try to paint without any thinning the acrylic but forced to do so at times to get the look that I am aiming for.

I started this one by sketching out the basic profile then worked in the facial features. I started by painting the eyes and working towards the mouth. Next I streaked in a background that would symbolize the angle of the rain. I was going to just paint the car in graphically without detail but it looked too out of place, detached-so I had fun throwing in the detail. The last item that I worked on was the jacket because I wanted to run the paint off the canvas to reinforce the water feeling to this piece.

My Business Cards

I went ahead and created my very first business card. The card features my painting titled, The Player. What a fun design project with a 4/1 classic color theme. I also included a die-cut of rounding two corners and added a spot varnish over the character for a unique style. They really came out better than what I expected-very nice.