Blog has moved

Hi everyone! I haven't posted in a while but I'm not dead! I've just changed locations and am on Tumblr now, if you're interested in following me you can find me here http://brittsgraphics.tumblr.com/.

IF: Freeze

New IF! This weeks topic was freeze so I decided to make an illustration based on Hans Christian Anderson's story The Snow Queen. This actually turned out better than I expected, but I want more water color practice, so I may make some more illustrations for this story in the future. 

Downton Abbey Doodles: A Bunch of Branson and some Thomas

Wow! We're already a week into August and I haven't posted anything new yet! Thus I am remedying that with some of my better Branson head studies: 

And a sad Thomas with no one to smoke and scheme with!

IF: Carry

Here is this weeks new Illustration Friday submission, this weeks topic was "carry" and I originally planned to make an elephant procession, but got too caught up in the design to the point where I couldn't fit anymore animals or people in without them blocking the view of the architecture, but I'm happy with how it turned out nonetheless. 

Old work: Figure Drawing

While I was digging around in my portfolio today, I found some old pen and ink work from my figure drawing class last semester that I never got around to posting. So here it is! (Better late than never!) Also my scanner cut off some of the images so that's why there are some missing limbs!

I think this last one turned out pretty solid, I don't know why but it's much easier to draw people from the back, less detail?

Animal Drawing Practice: Horses

Just sharing a few horse studies.I've been trying to think of ways to get more animal drawing practice after the workshop, and found that the website that I use to to practice figure drawing, also has slides of animals to practice from! I mostly focused on horses so far, because we were given a brief lecture on how to go about creating equine animals. Hopefully I remembered enough of his suggestions.

IF: Lost

Yay! My Illustration Friday entry is up early this week! This weeks topic is "lost", and although I originally intended to draw someone lost in the woods, it actually came out looking more like someone "lost in thought" in the woods, which works too. But Ughhh! I really need to work on my figures!

IF: Suspend

While discussing possible ideas for this weeks theme (that wouldn't be such a literal interpretation of the topic) with my sister, she suggested the idea of "suspending time", and the first image that jumped into my head, was the Picture of Dorian Grey, seeing as Dorian Grey wishes to remain forever youthful, while his portrait grows old and ugly instead of him.

Downton Doodles: Thomas

Here have some Thomas doodles because I am obsessed! But seriously, it is helping me with drawing facial features and expressions.

And as an added bonus have some Thomas torture: (O'Brien looks weird here...it bothers me...)

Outdoor Sketching

As promised, here are a couple of landscape sketches that I drew at SRJC, (very pretty campus). I didn't quite get a chance to finish these so they are still in sketch form and not completely rendered, but I plan to do more drawings from life, and will try to get in some more finished work.

On another note, if you enjoy viewing my scribbles, or are interested in my journey through the art world, then feel free to subscribe! I like seeing subscribers and that people take an interest in my work, and that I'm not just posting things into the black hole that is the internet.

Downton Abbey Doodles Part 3

Just another quick doodle, until I can upload some landscape drawings that I've been working on. This is probably one of my favorite scenes in the series, when Mrs. Patmore manipulates the Ouija board to make it seem as though Williams spirit is communicating with Daisy. And of course Thomas is upset because she ruined his game :P.

"Artcation"

I went out of town to attend a couple of workshops last weekend, the first was a water color and gouache class being taught at Fort Mason in San Francisco by artist Erik Tiemens  http://www.watersketch.com/#home. It was really incredible to watch him paint, unfortunately my efforts don't measure up to his work just yet, but take a look at it anyway! : P

Modern art! (No, not really, these are pages of brush practices, to see how many variations of brush strokes we could create )

We started out with just playing with the materials first, just to see what gouache can do and the effect it had when mixed with the water color: 

We then made a mess thumbnails for inspiration while painting : 

And finally we made some "sketchy" practice paintings which were more like working out ideas for compositions rather than a complete painting: 

This one reminds me of a Fauvist painting (not what I was originally going for, but it's interesting)

 Strangely enough I like the simplest one the best ...

I then went down to Los Angeles for an animal drawing workshop taught by character designer/story artist David Colman (you can see his work here: http://davidcolman.blogspot.com/)

We started off by drawing skeletons of Ice age creatures at the La Brea Tar Pits: 

Bison skeleton

A mastodon skeleton if I remember correctly...?

Giant sloth skeleton

Camel skeleton

Some type of bird skeleton (They're all raptors! : P)

We then continued the class at the LA zoo, where we studied live animals (mainly giraffe's and eagles, as they were the most active during the time of day in which  we were visiting):

 Some corrections he helped me to see

 Really loose and sketchy eagles (Soooo many feathers!!!!Almost too many to draw!) 

And here is our final task, which was to draw a giraffe from memory, I still need to work on putting more 3D shapes into my figures, both human and animal. 

Both workshops were great! And make me want to keep drawing more than ever! More to come later! 

IF: Faded

Now that spring semester is finished, I'm trying to get back into the habit of doing a weekly Illustration Friday (even though for me it's more like every other week!) This weeks theme is Faded, which made me think of vintage photographs (maybe it's because of my new obsession of the early 20th century...or maybe it's because I went antique shopping last weekend) , either way I'm pretty happy with the results. 

Downton Abbey Doodles part 2

I think I may be suffering from a serious case of Downton Abbey withdrawal syndrome (January! Come faster!).  And so while looking at some behind the scenes photo's of season 3 I found this http://downtonline.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=314&pid=22883#top_display_media, and had to base a drawing off of it, because Thomas and Daisy are two of my favorite characters (William was my third  favorite :(  )

Yeah I know Thomas is being way out of character here, but it took me like 5 times to get his face just right. 

I may not have another post for a while, so please "bear with me" : P.