Vogue Cover Re-Design

I am currently writing this in my last Adobe Illustrator class. This is my final project. We had to re-design the cover of Vogue for the November issue.

Luggage Tag

In my Adobe Illustrator class, I had to create a luggage tag for a company called EcoRoad. We could take inspiration from anywhere so I chose the country of South Africa. I thought it was appropriate for many reasons. My dad is from South Africa and has a lot of South African pride. He was probably one of the first to encourage me to pursue art. I also thought it was a pretty interesting time for the country since the FIFA world cup was there this year and they probably would want a luggage tag design to attract even more tourism.

This might be a work in progress still. I'm not quite happy with the font.

Beauty Heads

Update on the textile print

98% done.

Red, Black, and White are apparently the world's favorite colors

Just some figure drawings...

"Sorry I'm late...my eyes just got pecked out by crows"

Painting studies

Floral Textile Print in progress

As exhausted as I am from my non stop Wednesday classes, I am pleased with how the second-third of my textile/surface design class is going. The first project, my ipod print, was very tedious and irritating as it was very geometric and required a lot of precision and tight rendering. (I'll be happy to upload the final product of that when I get it back!) This second project, however, is much more organic and free. It is a floral print and I have been super inspired. I would say a good half of my sketchbook this past month has been flower studies. My professor, Carol Litt is famous at FIT for her wonderful floral paintings and I have been super lucky to learn how to paint from her. It definitely will help me with my illustration.

Pillustration.

In Bil Donovan's fashion illustration concepts class, I had to do an illustration for an article about a designer who used pills as a motif for a scarf design. I'm happy with how the orange pill case turned out...the scarf not so much. We had to use "fall colors" so I settled for brown. I'm thinking I could have picked something more interesting.

Some new stuff...

Adobe Illustrator again...

Look! Squash! I'm actually enjoying it more and more...

What I've been doing lately instead of sleeping.

I love Joe Denaro's class. He encourages us to be free and loose and inventive. He loves fashion and attitude and emphasizes knowing trends. I get a certain relaxed high in his class. It's a great way to end the week.

Bil Donovan's class is very different. We are learning concept, composition, value studies, etc. I feel like I am really learning how to improve the things I struggled with in my first year. We're getting assignments and have to come up with finished illustrations complete with smart composition, concept, and rendering. In this piece I had to illustrate for a review of a ballet where the dancers were becoming a little too flirty with the audience as opposed to graceful and poised.

Bil Donovan also recently released a new book on fashion illustration. My very cool anatomy professor, Karen Santry, raves about it every week. She told us it took him eleven years to write. Anyway...I accidentally found the book wandering uptown one day...and I bought it!

Textile design is very time consuming because it requires perfect technical skill. For our first project we are designing a print of an everyday object. I chose an ipod. I had to draw each one a about three million times with a ruler to get it "perfect" enough. My professor tells me this project is the tightest, most "perfect" painting we will have to do. I hope so. My A.D.D. cannot handle this very well...especially at night. Anyway, it is a work in progress and I hope it turns out nicely. Our next project is floral prints. I'm very excited to do that. It sounds like it will be more artistic and organic. To prepare, I will have to start collecting bulb catalogues, books on flowers, and gardening magazines for references, sketchings, and even just learning the anatomy of a flower.

Adobe Illustrator...

is very hard. But I am determined to improve!

3rd SEMESTER LETZ DO THIS.

ALRIGHT KIDDIES.

SUMMER IS OVER.

It's THIRD SEMESTER. That means I'm GETTIN' my associates degree this year. I'm gonna have to pick a BFA program. I'm gonna have to build a website and a portfolio and start doin' work all day errryday.

So to prepare for this-

I'm drawing EVERYDAY in my sketchbook!

I'm going to get a REAL website!

I'm taking 20 credits (33 hrs of CLASS)!

Making my own coffee in the morning!

Trying my best on assignments and projects!

Yeaaaah. This is going to be awesome.

I have some really excellent professors this semester. They are like greek gods to me. Two new professors that I've admired since I was in the high school illustration program at FIT are Bil Donovan and Karen Santry. They have both opened my eyes and inspired my drawings and it has only been 3.5 weeks of class. I am also super excited to have the lovely Joe Denaro again.

I have been looking into Textile/Surface design at FIT as an alternative to the General Illustration BFA program. It really interests me because there seems to be a lot of options and variety of work and it is sort of...illustration's cousin. I believe there is a blurry line between art and fashion and I always wanted to live in the middle of that blurriness. That is why fashion illustration was such a great experience for me. I wish it had its own BFA program. Oh well...Next yeat is time to learn something new and grow!

Anyway, back to Textile Design. I'm exploring it. I joined the TSD club at FIT and the students are super informative and welcoming to me and my situation. The TSD club wants to go to a lot of trips to Philly, Boston, etc. to see different textile mills, museums, studios, etc. I'm also taking a night class in surface design. It is 2 nights a week, 3 hours a night. I have to say...it is the most demanding class I am taking this semester...and it's not even my program! I get a lot of homework and I have to practice drawing slowly and perfectly and small and tight. This is SOOOOOOOO opposite of what I'm used to. My professor is very encouraging though. She said the first project we are currently doing is the tightest and hardest and after that I will enjoy it more.

So textile design is fun to explore. But it doesn't beat the high I get from drawing a model...

When it is not the middle of the night, I'll post some of the stuff I've been doing lately.

What I did today:

School is almost over!!!

janis's class: the accordian player

so...this is a lame excuse for an illustration with a concept and an environment...but you know what? that's my weakness... and i'm actually kinda happy with how it came out. i spent the whole class on it too. not sure if thats a good or bad thing. normally takes me 10 minutes to complete a drawing. oh and who likes the lil mouseys???

MICA

So I'm on spring break now. Tonight, I came to Baltimore, MD to visit my friend Liz. She goes to MICA, one of the best art colleges in the country. It's very pretty and different from FIT, but is it BETTER? I wouldn't say. It does seem to have things that FIT lacks and vice versa. Apparently they're having problems with break-ins. That would NEVER happen at FIT. Every building at FIT has a security guard at each entrance, ready to check ID's. I was able to walk into a few MICA buildings without anything like that. Also, MICA is very expensive. A PLUS about MICA is the scenery. They have an old train station on their campus! The buildings in Baltimore are a million times prettier than the ones in Chelsea/the Fashion District of NYC. Liz's dorm is a lot bigger than an FIT suite. She gets her own room and shares a living room, kicthen, and a bathroom with three other girls. Honestly, I think this suite is the size of my friends' Roosevelt Island apartment. OH!!! AND THEIR WALL HAS A GIANT CANVAS THAT THEY CAN PAINT ON!!! Sooooo lucky! My roommate and I wouldve gone crazy with that.

I still don't know too much about their artwork but I'm definitely sure it is amazing. MICA seems to be very flexible. You can go there and do anything creative with art and mix your interests. FIT isolates their majors a lot more, but I think I'm going to work around that and take some textile/surface design classes over this summer. Sooo, yes. Now look at the pictures of MICA I took today!

What I did today:

They're not even scanned. I took pictures of them with my PHONE and did a quick clean up in photoshop. Hahaha. FIT has interesting models.

I'm really tired. I procrastinate too much and then stay up really late doing projects that come out looking like throw up. Note to self: cold press watercolor paper is awful for tiny gouache details. I need to focus more on art and less on partying and friends and cafeworld if I really want to become an amazing illustrator.

My mom won an award for best newsletter advertising marketing thing in all of NEW YORK STATE!!! She's the REAL hardworking artist in the family. Go check her outt!

Soooo. This is new. I'm gonna put all my art stuff here I suppose. My friend Jack has one of these. I just realized he's been posting stuff since 2007! I was like...a BABY back then. Well, I was 15. And 3 years from now I will look at my 18 year old self and think I was a baby now, too.

Uhm, yeah. About me about me about me. I'm in my 2nd semester of fashion illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I love (most of) the teachers and I've made quite a few friends. I sorta have this love-hate relationship with NYC, but it's growing on me. Last semester I had an emotional breakdown and wanted to transfer and run far far far away but I'm finally becoming comfortable here, by myself, single, bored sometimes, and in New York. We'll see what happens.

The art: just doodles in my sketchbook because Adobe Bridge doesnt feel like photomerging large scans today. AND my recent photoshop project I did for class. Got a B+.