senior: mother goose poem

for my children's book class we had to choose a poem from mother goose to illustrate. i chose "My Black Hen."

Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen;
Sometimes nine, sometimes ten;
Higgledy, piggledy, my black hen.

senior: attic walk

this is the first piece of five illustrating the magician's nephew, the first book from c.s. lewis' chronicles of narnia. this is the scene where digory and polly are exploring the attic of their row house in london, to discover if they can travel between the houses via attic doors. soon they discover the secret contents of digory's crazy uncle's attic study, which is the beginning of their adventure.

this piece is very simple compared to it's companions, being a mere 5 paper pieces, but i think it's an appropriate beginning to the 9 following ones.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

5 paper pieces

senior: the woods between the worlds

this is the scene where digory is transported to the woods between the worlds via enchanted rings and the pool designated to his world (london). already here is polly, who, under the environment's overly-peaceful influence, is asleep by a tree. this is an example of an overly ambitious design-decision on my part. the grass is made up of rings of different green atop a field of gold. not only did green prove a very annoying color to mix (all gouache hues perform and react differently to treatments) but the edges of all the rings also had to be painted. in all my cleverness i hid connections between the rings behind the trees, so that most of the grass was technically one piece and would stay together. while this helped with the issue of alignment, the gaps between the rings was so small it was difficult to paint the edges of one side without painting the edge of the other side. and while this usually wasn't a huge deal, it usually wasn't just the wrong edge that got effected but the places that are easily seen. in conclusion, the rings were not worth the trouble they caused, and i'm not even sure the color green you experience is the right one!

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

35 paper pieces

senior: flight

this is the scene where the horse from the previous piece has been given wings, courtesy of aslan, and has been asked to take digory and polly to the forbidden garden to retrieve an enchanted apple. the garden is described as sitting on a hilltop unreachable by foot, nestled in the mountains. i went through a lot of ideas for color in this piece because some of it was looking too tropical. in the end i went for a dry looking palette that accentuates the improbably lush growth of an enchanted, unattainable, basically deserted garden.

while i love the color of the sky with all it's flatness. this piece is still lacking something and probably could have done with a watercolor sky or maybe some indication of clouds. also it's probably pretty obvious that i was blatantly avoiding drawing the children on his back, even though in hindsight it really wouldn't have been that hard lol.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

47 paper pieces

senior: forbidden fruit

this is the scene where digory is in the forbidden garden to pick an enchanted apple on aslan's request. at first he doesn't realize that jadis is also in the garden and has eaten the fruit revealing that the silver apples actually have dark red juice.

i really enjoyed doing this piece because the paper pieces are relatively big and not very delicate or particular. really it was a very simple piece, that used many of the same colors, however i found the effect pretty successful.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

58 paper pieces

senior: mr. tumnas

this piece is one of my favorites, and is the first of five images for the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. mr tumnas is a fawn, half man, half goat, and is found wearing a red scarf and carrying brown paper parcels and an umbrella past the illusive lamppost. this was the first piece i did and it's made up of 55 separate pieces of cut paper (made possible through use of the laser cutter). for instance, his face is actually three pieces, not one. there's a black layer that extends out to make his eyes (the eyelashes actually got cut out!) and on top of that there is the top and bottom half of his face, separated just a fraction to make the contour of his nose. the black of his open mouth is also cut out. similarly his horns have a all-encompassing gold layer underneath a brown piece with the ridges cut away. designing these pieces became a fun game of figuring out the most efficient way of getting what i wanted, and however excessive some of the puzzling may seem, it actually was only done if i thought it would make my life easier. (some of the times i was wrong ;)

gouache and watercolor on cut paper 8x12"

55 paper pieces

senior: turkish delight

the notorious turkish delight scene! this is when queen jadis realizes she needs to gain the trust of edmund who has wandered into narnia by accident by seducing him with enchanted turkish delight. this was the first piece i did of jadis and i was pretty worried it would turn out to be a rip off of the abundance of narnia art on the internet. not to mention the character design used for the recent narnia movies is flawless. anyway i'm pleased that my jadis is as "un-influenced" as i could ever be.

in reviewing the quotes i should use beside each piece for my final binder i realized that in the process of being "original" i swayed pretty far from her description, which gives her flowing hair, a golden crown and wand and a white fur wrap, but i guess at this point narnia has so much loyal interpretation it could use some variation.

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

58 paper pieces

senior: the melt

this was drawn weeks after all nine pieces where drawn, vectorized, and sent to the laser cutter, so i'm relieved to say i was pretty pleased with how effortless this turned out to be. it happens to be the only piece without a character, but i think a nice environment piece is important. i'm not sure how well it communicates melting after a long winter to the extent i envisioned, but at that point i just needed it to look nice lol.

this piece is entirely hand cut, as apposed to most of the others. the paper is pretty thick, so the cutting is pretty difficult, but the trees were really the only challenge so i was lucky!

gouache on cut paper 8x12"

50 paper pieces

senior: dead aslan :(

the final image for the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, where aslan is on the stone table after queen jadis has shaved his mane and killed him. after the mr tumnas piece, a lot of people said they responded to the watercolor background saying that the others lacked the more dynamic coloring, so as this was one of the last pieces, i made the background watercolor, which i think really helps, and it makes me regret not doing the same for other pieces.

gouache, watercolor on cut paper 8x12"

32 paper pieces

senior: thesis illustration1

so for my thesis i'll be illustrating CS Lewis' first two novels from the chronicles of narnia: the magician's nephew and the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. this is my first finish, however it seems inevitable that i'll be redoing it. this is the scene when susan and lucy are walking with aslan, not knowing that he's on his way to the stone table where he will be sacrificing himself to the queen in exchange for edmund's freedom. what i'm working on now is vectorizing the shapes to be sent to the laser-cutters. this will make more complex shapes possible, and in the future, when i WON'T be doing doubles of everything, it will hopefully eliminate tedious tracing, transfers and cuttings, and speed the process up a little. i'd also like to try using more textures and papers in the finishes. these will all be 8x12 in their original format, brought down to 6x9 for the book.

barcelona: the emperor's new clothes

an illustration from the children's story, the emperor's new clothes. still not 100% finished. i made a illustrator mock up that perfects all the little problems from the original scan. maybe one day i'll repaint it, or maybe use the digital file to stencil fun textures into the precise shapes. the original, however, is gouache

london: rainbow crow

in london we were asked to propose a children's book by story boarding twelve spreads, and finishing four. i did a native american folk tale called the rainbow crow. it starts out with the world being very cold. the animals talk about sending someone to an angel in the sky, and they settle on the rainbow crow. he flies to the angel and she gives him a stick of fire and tells him he must hurry back to earth or it will burn out. he flies so fast that he chars his beautiful feathers to a dull black. he's saved the world but he is very sad at his loss, so the angel talks to him. she says that man will never cage him because he no longer has a beautiful singing voice, but that you will still see every color in the rainbow beneath the black of his feathers, to remind the animals of his bravery.

i still have not bothered to put the text in. the first spread will not have text, the second and last one are pretty clear, and the dark one will have text on the top left and bottom right. they are all cut paper and all the color is painted in gouache

london: turban

here's my primary piece for our freshly pressed exhibit (one's digital). i originally did an etching of the portrait using aquatint, intending to then screen print the color on top. when i finally printed it though, i was really disappointed with the results. that's the scary thing about etching. you can work on something for days and not know what you're getting until you're horribly invested. anyway i cut my losses and screen printed the entire thing. the reason there's so much texture is that i actually pushed gouache through the silk and got this weird weave. i actually came to really like it, and each piece is completely different. i wish i had photos of all of them, because some are better than this, and it's cool to see the temperamental results i got using the gouache. some came out almost creamy and then others more like this. also these were all printed at about 4am in my bedroom with the screen TAPED TO MY DESK as a hinge. haha

london: perfume

here's a book cover for patrick suskind's novel perfume. gouache and cut paper

london: research

for the costume project we had to consider everything essential to survival. the pieces are a little strange and it's usually unclear how they relate to outerwear or endurance, but hey, it's a sketchbook!

junior: teeth

here are two pieces from a series i did about teeth/mouths. the intention of the series was to showcase a huge variety of teeth-portraits to communicate different personalities. it would have been nice to see a big batch of them together, but it really didn't turn out. i became interested in this particular face so i thought i'd do a mini series communicating different personalities dependent on different mediums, but i don't love the idea and i only ended up with four, two of which i thought were worth scanning at the time. one is cut paper (the edges of the paper are painted in different colors which is kinda cool!) and the other is gouache

sophomore: snow, glass, apples

two of the five images i made for neil gaiman's story, snow, glass, apples. it's a play on the fairy tale of snow white. gouache and ink

sophomore: italy: sinbad the sailor

an illustrated chapter from alexandre dumas' novel, the count of monte cristo. the chapter is called itally: sinbad the sailor. in it, franz, a young french gentleman moors his boat off the island of monte cristo, an apparently barren, deserted mound of rock. at night he and his men are discovered at their fire, and he is invited to dine with a mysterious host. he is led blindfolded into a cave that is richly decorated in exotic middle eastern fashion. his host calls himself sinbad the sailor, and, in keeping, franz calls himself aladdin. the two men dine on pheasant, corsican blackbirds, wild boar, goat, turbot and lobster, of which "sinbad" barely touches. then he convinces franz to try hashish in the form of a luminous green paste. he hallucinates that he's had an orgy with two beautiful women that just moments ago where the two stone statues holding baskets of fruit. the next morning franz wakes on a straw bed outside the cave, and sinbad is far on the horizon. he and his men search in vain for the entrance to the enchanted cave, but leave disappointed.

obviously the pieces i've posted are rather scattered and ambiguous in their relation to the story just relayed. one day, one day! gouache, oil, ink, china paper, and velum on parchment

sophomore: rhinos!

rhinos from the natural history museum :) gouache and ink

sophomore: rebus: word puzzle

bombing for peace is like screwing for virginity. gouache and ink