Once Upon an Art Class

I am a junior Visual Communications major at Truman State University, pre-Masters of Education (Elementary). This blog will be up to date with the latest completed or in progress projects.

[onceuponanartclass]

My Disney Life

Want to know what my Disney life looks like? This is the link you're going to want to have bookmarked for the next five months: http://disneydunnmagically.wordpress.com

[onceuponanartclass]

Illustration Final and Reflection

I have to say that I'm glad this semester is coming to a close. It's been a great semester but I am looking forward to what is to come as well.

This semester has been crazy, but it's been a good one. As it seems to happen every year, each semester just keeps getting better and better. I have to say I am especially grateful for my 4 south community of residents this year, and Ryle staff. There are lots of memories from this semester I will never forget. (Mario kart, cuddling, inside jokes, Frozen, movie parties, duffle bags, geocaches, rain puddle jumping and so much more). I also had the wonderful opportunity to do my clinicals in a kindergarten classroom in Novinger. I will always remember some of their crazy sayings and the smiles when they see me come in every Tuesday morning. The last day I was literally group hugged by 30 kindergarteners, which brought tears to my eyes. It makes me feel like I might be doing something right with my life when I have these two wonderful groups that I don't want to leave. 

Regardless, I will be off to work at Disney World in Florida come January!! I absolutely can not wait and will probably not want to leave that group of people either once May rolls around. Enjoy the winter weather Kirksville friends, I'll be on the beach!

As for illustration this semester, it was quite an adventure. Before this class, I hadn't touched watercolors since probably the 3rd grade. With that said, I realized I quite enjoy watercoloring! It's like a more relaxing version of painting. I have never been a very talented painter (thanks to very shaky hands) but I think that my watercolors progressed quite a bit over this year. We just aren't going to talk about gauche…. It's not a happy medium for me. I never went back to it after we were able to choose our own media for each project. 

The above images are the selected images for the final. As I went through the assignments from this semester, I realized that I did two projects with ice cream. (Tell you any thing about my life?) So of course, I chose to include both. Here is a list of the images and the assignments associated:

Wooden Blocks: Number 3 assignment

Ice Cream Cone: World record assignment

Colors of Nature Tree: Society of Illustrators assignment

Dove bar: Product illustration assignment

Grapes/Wine glass: Life and death assignment

Overall, I really enjoyed this semester and realized that I learned a lot about watercolors and digital painting this semester. I will probably continue to use watercolor as illustrations in the future. The two pieces that I chose to use as the best print outs are the Society of Illustrators and the Product Illustration.  

Best of luck with next semester friends :) Remember to have fun too. I see a lot of art majors and students in general here at Truman that spend all their time working, doing homework and studying. Keep in mind that this is this the time in your life where you still have flexibility to have adventures, so take it. Go on random adventures, have a whole conversation with a stranger, tell friends how you feel, be honest, have a random driving adventure in the middle of the night. Merry Christmas and happy holidays! 

[onceuponanartclass]

This is my ResLife life. And I absolutely love it. It's like arts and crafts is half the job. Okay maybe a quarter, but still, for an art major it's pretty exciting. I really love the Hunger Games inspired closing board that I thought up! For anyone who hasn't seen Catching Fire yet, you definitely should do that ASAP. Also since I'm leaving my residents at semester to go work at Disney World, I made them an extra bonus set of door decs Mickey/Minnie Mouse style.

[onceuponanartclass]

Da duh nuh nu! (typing sounds is an interesting concept)

Classical music piece completed! I'm just waiting for it to be printed so I can mount it and call this class almost done. I like the way this piece turned out. Rusty laughed at the color but I think it's a different take on something that probably wouldn't use this orange/coral color. Catch their attention! The music is literally flying off the page right into the air for everyone to hear, interesting concept right?

I'm so happy that I have caught up and am on schedule for projects in this class! Now just to finish up the rest of my classes and catch up and work on the final portfolio to turn in. We're almost to break guys!! Which means I'm almost ready to go to Florida for the semester!! 

OH! Random new development. I might have some interesting break plans in the back burner of my brain right now. We shall see what happens!

[onceuponanartclass]

I've realized that I never updated the final version of this piece. This was my society of Illustrators artwork. 

I've also realized that with everything going on, I've completely forgotten to blog. I'm sorry Rusty! So here come a whole string of updates.

I'm extremely happy with this piece in particular. Like, people may be getting prints of this for Christmas this year because I love it so much. I like all of the colors that represent the side of an artist and the tree that is the element of life that artists see beauty in. 

If I was a writer, that would have probably made more sense. I'll stick to the artistic side instead. :)

[onceuponanartclass]

After working countless hours on this illustration today…. It is done! I'm pretty happy with the way it is looking right now. Might not be the tightest illustration I've ever done, but I digitally painted the entire thing for the first time so that was an adventure. It looks like a book cover with the type on it and everything! Now just to stay up and finish everything else I need to do for tomorrow…. Can it be Wednesday at noon already?

[onceuponanartclass]

Guys! I have something done on time! I finished this beauty up early this afternoon. This is a rainbow tree that I water colored for the society of illustrators assignment. I thought that taking the creative approach of using all of the range of colors in one tree would show how artists take a known object and represent it in a way that stretches the truth at times. This might be my favorite illustration for this class so far this year.

[onceuponanartclass]

I just had to post the pictures of what Emma found and brought in today. Hearing Rusty and Matt laugh hysterically over this was just great!

[onceuponanartclass]

I just had to post the pictures of what Emma found and brought in today. Hearing Rusty and Matt laugh hysterically over this was just great!

[onceuponanartclass]

Update update updates. 

Okay… so here is the final version of the world record (world's largest ice cream cone) and Native American month. I learned that I'm not a fan of not full color jobs. At all. Also struggled with the background of that pieces. The ice cream looks delectable (that's probably not spelled right) though.

On another note… I started a Java/JavaScript/Web Development class online this past week through the University of Phoenix in place of taking VisCom 3 next semester so that I can go to Disney and possibly still graduate on time. (After this year I only need 17 more credits to graduate!!) Anyways…. JavaScript is extremely difficult. Especially when learning it online through articles on the internet in only 5 weeks. I understand the HTML that I'm writing but the JavaScript continues to through me for a loop. It looks like a foreign language. Maybe this is why we have to take a foreign language with the liberal arts degree. JavaScript definitely is one that's for sure. Hopefully with this next week it won't be as confusing. 

[adoseofsarahtonin]

Being an art major

It’s like Whose Line Is It Anyway: The grades are made up and they don’t matter

[onceuponanartclass]

So I realized I haven't blogged in a while. Here's an update on .... Well life. The world record illustration concept I chose to illustrate is the worlds largest ice cream cone. If you are interested to know, the largest ice cream cone is 9 feet and 2 inches tall. This illustration went fairly quickly and has a start to some nice shadows but still needs to be worked up a bit. The little girl was my problem piece to this one. The details on her are so small to try and tackle while still having a cartoony feel to it. An update on life: the life in reslife as an SA is a busy one! Bulletin boards were due on Sunday so after being on duty for 49 hours with the time change, this is what mine looks like! Then my co board has a giant Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. Also, food fast is this week! I've gone around all of Ryle knocking on doors twice to ask residents to donate meals/dining dollars to benefit local Kirksville families through the United Way. One round of this took three hours, so after six hours of my time this week I've talked to 59.5% of the people I'm supposed to! Yay!! If you have a meal plan please think about donating to the cause. If you would like to donate visit reslife.truman.edu. I also caught this really cool picture on my way back home after class yesterday and though to share it!

[onceuponanartclass]

Woot Woot! Things are done :) The top image is my #3 illustration. Inspiration came from my wonderful kindergarteners that play with these kinds of blocks all the time. We use them to teach letters and numbers so there was no better option than to use this to represent the number three, which is highlighted. This was a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop. Note: lighting effects in photoshop are pretty sweet to play around with.

The second set of images is the final artwork for my life and death. Maybe I'm not as bad at watercolor as I think. I added the green to the background at the last minute and think it helped quite a bit. I absolutely love the grapes. They might be my favorite thing I've watercolored this year. That illustration itself probably took about 3 hours. The wine didn't turn out as well as it did in my head, but it's not too shabby. Overall pretty happy with the way both turned out. And turning both printouts in today was great! Now time to start on that world record project..... I guess that will be what I'm going to work on all weekend. Oh and I'm on duty for 48 hours straight starting at 5pm tonight with two of my favorite people on staff, Brandon and then my co. BRING IT ON! I absolutely love my job :) 

[onceuponanartclass]

I'd just like to state that I caught up! yay yay yay! I have the print outs of #3 and life and death for tomorrow done and ready to go. They're even already in the illustration room. And I will post the pictures of them on here tomorrow morning. But for now, I am going to bed.... before midnight!! (I even got a nap in today) SCORE!

I even managed to trick or treat around Ryle and got a decent amount of candy! Thanks rezzies!!! And my best friend's family (aka my second family) sent me a Halloween goodie bag. It's been a glorious Thursday.

Happy Halloween followers :)

[onceuponanartclass]

Alright, so Rusty crushed my original pieces that I made for life and death.... And told me they look like clip art. :( So that was an extremely depressing Tuesday. 

New start. New concept. Different medium. I worked on these for a few hours yesterday... Not very happy at all with the wine glass but the grapes look pretty stellar. Straight lines are definitely not my thing, as seen in the wine glass. Rusty told me to try and use my unsteady hands in some kind of manner that it doesn't matter or become as apparent, hopefully I accomplished that in the grapes but I guess the test will be what he says when I bring it in to show him later this morning. 

[therelatablepost]

[onceuponanartclass]

I feel like this applies to viscom all too well...

[ohthatgirlkarla]

soooo. its raining outside.. hell no!!! we are not going to walk all the way to barnett in the rain just to go to Geography class.. HARD PASS

[onceuponanartclass]

But then we did.... and we both realized we got A's on papers we completely BSed :) YAY!