Nightingale - Best Friends

This is the last illustration for my Nightingale story. It doesn't need a lot of explanation, I guess. All is well with the world.

I don't really have much to say about this, other than that I'm really, really happy with how it turned out. I think it has a good "happy ending" feel to it, perfect for the end of the story.

Of course you know I had to fit a squirrel in there somewhere!

I'm kind of tired; I just got back from the Cartoon Museum in SF, where I got my high school copy of A Series Of Unfortunate Events signed by Lemony Snicket - or should I say, by his "official representative," Daniel Handler. Since, you know, Mr. Snicket lives in hiding at the top of a clocktower or something.

Having been a fan of Mr. Snicket since high school, this was very thrilling for me. I also laid eyes upon the almighty Jon Klassen, who is practically a rock star among the children's book students at AAU. Jon Klassen, you guys. I was in the same room as him!!!!

Draw

This is the first floor of the illustration building at my school. I have made many fond memories here, and I know that I'll miss it a lot once I graduate. (What I will NOT miss is having to walk through a gauntlet of homeless people to get there.) If I ever have my own studio someday, I'd like to hang "DRAW" in big letters on the wall, just like in this picture.

Nightingale part 3 - The Nightmare

The Nightingale Part 1
The Nightingale Part 2

Continuing our story - the boy has forgotten his friendship with the real nightingale, and instead spends all his time with his fancy toy nightingale. But eventually the toy runs out of batteries, and the boy is left lonely. He feels badly about neglecting his bird friend, but is too embarrassed to ask her to come back. Then one night he has a terrible nightmare. Through the open bedroom window, the nightingale hears his cries and flies into his room to sing comforting songs.

This is definitely my favorite painting that I have done so far this semester. Sometimes my paintings fall short of my hopes and expectations, but on rare occasions they turn out even better than I had imagined. Everything really clicked with this illustration and came together quite easily.

When I was afraid of the dark as a child, I don't remember imagining specific monsters, it was more of just a vague sense of fear and doom. So from the beginning I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted the monsters to be like in this drawing: vague, shadowy blobby things.

My professor suggested that I make the monsters a little more specific, and maybe bird-like to go with the whole theme of the story. So I combined my monsters with BARN OWLS!!

I took this picture of a barn owl at the zoo last year. I was struck by how it was simultaneously beautiful and weird. I mean, where are its eyes? Where is its face?? Perfect for my shadow monsters.

My latest self-portrait

This is exactly what I look like.

When my friend Sunny saw this drawing, she asked for a portrait in the same style. I made her this:

Despite the fact that I slaved over this for a total of 5 minutes, I'm rather proud of it because it really looks like Sunny.

Nightingale part 2- The Birthday Present

The Nightingale part 1
The Nightingale part 3

Continuing my Nightingale series, here is the second illustration. By this point in the story, the boy and the nightingale have become good friends, but then an intruder arrives. For his birthday, the boy is given a cool new singing techno nightingale. He quickly becomes obsessed with his new toy, which never gets tired, never needs feeding or fresh air. The neglected real nightingale flies back to her home in the trees.

When I was first designing this scene, I drew a couple of mechanical nightingales. But then I thought, would one of today's kids, who grow up surrounded by all the latest gadgets, be all that impressed with a mechanical bird? But a holographic bird that could sing - now that would be pretty cool.

For a while I struggled with getting the boy's face right. His face went through so many variations, and some of them are so downright freaky I'm not even going to post them on the internet. But in the end I think I got it right.

Stay tuned for part 3, which contains one of the my most favorite illustrations I've done in a while.

Will Terry shares new ways to market your illustration

This talk by illustrator Will Terry is lengthy but worth listening to. He talks about how the business of illustration has changed since the 90's, and how the invention of the internet has both shrunk the jobs available and widened the talent pool.

Although at times Mr. Terry rambles a bit, his underlying point is that the future belongs to entrepreneurs. This applies to the art world as well as most other fields. Sending out resumes in hopes of getting a job is a thing of the past, and the most successful people are the ones who take the initiative to create new things on their own. "Wealth is generated in your spare time," he says. That's a pretty profound one-liner, don't you think?

The Dog Doodler

For my next project, one of the characters is an Alaskan husky-type dog. I spent today drawing doodles of husky dogs with a ballpoint pen. While drawing I watched The Dog Whisperer, a show about a "dog psychologist" who rehabilitates difficult dogs. There was a cute episode where he taught mail carriers how to interpret dog body language.

I think the most difficult part of drawing dogs is their mouths, because when their mouths are open they kind of look like they're smiling, and it's hard to draw that without it just looking humorous.

Nightingale part 1 - New Friends

My thesis is about reinterpreting 3 stories by Hans Christian Andersen. This semester I have mainly been working on the Nightingale. In the original story, the Emperor of ancient China strikes up a friendship with a nightingale who sings very beautifully, and invites her (the bird) to live at the palace. Then the Emperor receives a mechanical nightingale which is encrusted with gold and jewels and never gets tired or needs feeding. So he neglects the real nightingale, and she flies away. Then one night the Emperor is very sick, and the figure of Death is literally sitting on his chest. The nightingale flies into the room, and her song so charms Death that he leaves and the Emperor recovers. He repents of his former shallowness and becomes a true friend to the nightingale.

For a while I pondered how to adapt this story to best benefit my portfolio. I thought about what I liked about the story, and the thing that stuck out to me most is the juxtaposition of technology vs. nature. The message is that machines can only imitate, never replace, real relationships. It's a surprisingly relevant theme for a story that was written in 1843!

So I decided to put it in a modern-day setting. Instead of an Emperor of China, the main character would be an Asian-American boy, so I can get more practice in drawing children. The rest of the story is basically the same, just a few changes which I shall reveal in upcoming blog posts.

This is the scene at the beginning of the story, where the boy and the nightingale are becoming friends. I really wanted a sunny, warm mood. The nightingale is supposed to be plain looking - that's part of the story - but I added a small blue spot to help it stand out. Originally I meant to have the bird hanging upside-down from the branch, but too many people thought that I had mistakenly drawn the bird at the wrong perspective. So in the end I changed it to a simpler pose.

I have 3 more illustrations and a book cover from this story - I hope you'll come back again to see them!

The Nightingale part 2

The Nightingale part 3

"It would be good for your portfolio"

Designed by Colin Harman

Today an Academy of Art student posted this on Facebook:

A friend of mine contacted me and she told me that in the business she is working in they wanted to make a small illustrated book, like a children's book, telling how the business came to be. It is short about 10 pages, double page spread plus the book cover and they wanted someone good and that worked fast. So I sent her my portfolio and resume. She told me that they chose me to be the illustrator and now I have been given the feel that they want me to work for free since I am a student. Her boss told her to tell me that maybe I could use this as a "Project" for my portfolio or school credit.

Several times I've written blog rants about the "it would be good for your portfolio" line, but never posted them because I figured that this subject has already been hashed over plenty of times. But then I saw this on Facebook and got all angry and constipated all over again.

If someone says to you "it would be good for your portfolio," they probably don't understand what a portfolio is. It's not a collection of every drawing you've ever done. It's a collection of carefully curated works, arranged in a fine-tuned order, specifically targeted towards whatever creative industry you want to get into.

You can create work for your portfolio whenever you darn well please. You don't need someone else's permission to do so.

People act like they're giving you the amazing opportunity to work for free by masking it with the "it would be good for your portfolio" line. But in reality, they don't know if it would be good for your portfolio and they don't really care. They just want free artwork.

I love you Ira Glass

18x24 Ira Glass Quote poster by 7Plums

This Ira Glass quote has gone to the end of the internet and back several times now, but I still love it. I guess a lot of people relate to the feeling of our work not having that "special thing" we want it to have. To know that this is something we can get through with lots of hard work is both encouraging and motivating.

The Nightingale - preliminary sketches

For my thesis, I am currently working on five illustrations from Hans Christian Andersen's story The Nightingale. I'm changing the story a bit so that the main character is a modern-day boy instead of the Emperor of China, and a few other things.

I'm getting pretty close to finished with this, and I hope to post the completed illustrations on my website soon. Here is a peek at some of the preliminary drawings I made. The finished drawings will look a bit different.

I plan on doing digital color versions as well as pencil versions of the four interior illustrations above.

River rock necklace

In the summer, everyone from my Dad's side of the family goes camping here. We've been going camping here since my dad was a little shaver. It's the most beautiful place in the world.

The river is crystal clear and full of colorful, interesting rocks. Last summer I found a small, grey rock with white speckles in it, and I thought that it might make a nice pendant necklace.

It didn't look that great when it was out of the water, so I painted it with clear nail polish to make it look wet again.

Since I have no jewelry-making supplies, I asked Linda of ButtonWillowCrafts to make this rock into a necklace for me. She actually picked it up in person, and the next morning sent me pictures of the finished piece!

I like wearing something that reminds me of my family.

The Oracle of Delphi...in a carport

This week our homework theme was "Greek myths." One of my favorite Greek myth characters has always been the Oracle. I don't know why, she just seems so mysterious and special and awesome.

image source

I came up with this composition where most of her body is in the light, but her face is in shadow. I drew a quick little thumbnail.

I knew that getting a photo reference would help a lot for this. The only tricky part would be finding a place with such strong light. Luckily it was a sunny day. I wrapped myself in a sari in a vaguely Greek/Roman manner, grabbed a shiny popcorn bowl and a dining room chair, and dragged my ever-patient husband out to the carport to take some pictures.

I was a little nervous about neighbors watching us, but luckily it was the middle of a weekday so no one was around.

So pro!