Visual Research #8

Hello There

by Hibbary

http://hibbary.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2qej9b

I have a deviant art account, and although I never check the thing, occasionally I spend a long time going over the piles and piles of images that have stacked up in my watch box over the months. This was a wonderful little gem I found. It is so cute and playful, the hard dragon in comparison to the soft little goat is very neat. The artist called this an accident, they did not intend to color it, it started off as a doodle on not very good paper. But I am glad that they did because this is a very nice accident in my book.

I love goats :)
~Chelsea

Personal Image #8

If you remember my post from a while ago about ravens and crows- well I made a quick photoshop version of the main idea. I am thinking I will make a painting of a raven, and make it alot more interesting than this one. The bird is just kinda there in this picture, it is not very visually interesting. Sorry... I just wanted to get my main idea out really fast.

~Chelsea

Assignment #8- Book

Okay so our final assignment for this class was to complete and 8 page book using InDesign. This is what I came up with! I figured that this would be a good time to print out my short story "Runaway", and lucky for me it fit perfectly! The printing was a pain though, I had to print out the pages on regular paper and cut them all out, I am eventually going to mount them on stiffer paper and actually turn this into a little book. :) If you want to read the story click on the pages and that should zoom you in enough.

~Chelsea

Personal Image #7

Alright so a long time ago, freshman year of high school, I started writing a novel. I continued to write this novel on an off till... now... it is still a work in progress. However I have not written anything in it for a good 6 to 8 months, I still continue to draw some of the characters because I know them so well they are easy for me to draw and experiment with. This is Rowan, the main character from my novel.
Lately I have been trying to keep my style consistent, because in the past it has often changed from drawing to drawing as I figured out what looked best. I did this as a test to see if I can stay consistent with a style through different expressions. Here I think the last two look like the same style, but the first one seems a little off, but it could be that it seems that way because it is slightly smaller. Let me know what you think.

~Chelsea

Visual Research #7

"thin white line running from rock to rock"

By Caleb Neubauer

In high school I was a part of the AP art class, and in this class I had the opportunity to meet many talented artists. One of these artists was my classmate, Caleb. Each member of the class had to create their own concentration of work to send in for the AP art portfolio, for my concentration I focused on the study of figures in both humans and animals.
Caleb's concentration was centered around two of Jack Kerouac's novels, On the Road and Big Sur. The art pieces are his interpretations of specific lines of text from these books. If you are interested in seeing the rest of his concentration you can go here: http://flickr.com/gp/mistyaeons/5M84WN
I chose to show this piece because I like it the most, although all of them are fantastic, I really like the feel this one gives off. The bridge is very imposing and frames the piece, and I like that most of the ink is on the left side and the right with the clouds seems to fade away. I am extremely jealous of Caleb's talent with pen and ink, take a look at his other pieces and you will know what I mean.

~Chelsea

Assignment #7- Magazine Cover

The assignment we had this week was to use InDesign to make a magazine cover, so this is what I came up with. The first magazines I could think of were like those "Dog Fancy" and "Cat Fancy" magazines, so I desided to make a moc one of those based on my favoirte breed of dog- the english setter. Visually I am not too impressed with the result, but this was my first time working with the program and I had to hurry to finish before lab time was over :(

I Really liked this photo, it was nice to show the contrast between two of the colors of english setter, the only way it could have been better is if they had a tri-colored one in the middle. I have a liver colored english setter (like the one on the left) named penny at home, and I hope to get a blue colored one (like the one on the right) when I have my own place.

~Chelsea

Visual Research #6

Okay, so here at college I have not been able to keep a regular TV watching schedule of any kind, so series' are impossible to follow. So I watch a lot of Animal Planet, because no matter what time of day it is there is something interesting on that does not require background knowledge. So the other night I was watching this show about the wildlife of the different regions of Russia, it was very interesting. But what caught my eye visually was when they were talking about how ravens are extremely intelligent birds, who are one of the few animals who act silly just for the fun of it. They showed these black ravens laying down on their backs and rolling down snow covered hills. The contrast was beautiful and the playfulness was just so endearing. It got me thinking about what the typical western perspective of ravens and crows, how they are dirty scavengers who are a sign of death. This image of them is entirely wrong, and this playful footage of the ravens shows that. I am really inspired to make an art piece featuring ravens and snow in an attempt to change the image. Not sure of what media to use, any suggestions?

~Chelsea

Personal Image #6

Did you see the movie, "How to Train your Dragon"? Well I did, and I loved it. The animation was fantastic, the characters were easy to relate to, and the story was actually pretty good too. But what I fell in love with most were the dragons. They made me really wish I had one of my own, so I drew what my dragon might look like if I had one. It is a nightfury, like the main dragon in the film, but it is not Toothless. I have not decided yet if I will be giving it any distinctive characteristics, so for now it is plain, awaiting for the day I will color it in and give it some life.

~Chelsea

Assignment #6- Papercraft Toy

Okay so this week we had to make a papercraft toy, and I felt like being a little ambitious. I found this template online, and although I knew it was going to be more difficult than a cube doll, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Just cutting out all the pieces took a few hours, then I had to glue them all together. Overall I think I spent a good 4 hours building this little guy. I found the dachshund template online, but I did customize it a little. I modeled it after this one really cute dachshund mix that was at the humane society a while back. In the pictures I used the Coca-Cola can as a reference for size so you would get a feel for how big it is. I was surprised when I was finished how big it turned out to be, it is larger than some chihuahuas I know!

~Chelsea

Assignment #5- Movie Poster

Here is the first of my two movie posters, I hope that it gives off the feel that I want it to. I intended the movie to be a kids movie, about dogs of course, probably told from the dogs point of view. I like the asymmetry created, that the dominant image is on the left, but is balanced by all the text being on the right.

For this poster I was going for that "Indiana Jones" action movie look with the text. I hope that worked. I would have included a head shot of Marshall, but I did not have one that was high enough quality.

~Chelsea Engelman

Personal Image #5

Over the weekend, my boyfriend, a friend and I went to Gold Beach to escape Ashland for a while. While we were there we ended up building a little shelter on the beach out of driftwood. I took this picture from inside our little shelter while it was in the process of being built. I really like this picture because of the way the drift would divides the image almost into thirds, giving it a neat asymmetrical feel. Plus the sun on the wave is just beautiful.

~Chelsea Engelman

Visual Research #5

Okay so this is a pin-up piece done for Coca-Cola by Gil Elvgren, who is one of America's first an best loved pin-up artists. He did many other pieces for Coca-Cola as well over the years, this was just one of my favorites. I really love pin-up art, always have, the style that the women are painted an yet seem very really is beautiful. I also like pin-ups because it reminds me of a time that had more class. Women did not need to be fully naked and doing something disgusting in order to be attractive, they could be fully or partially dressed and doing an ordinary thing and they would drive men wild. I have a classic pin-up calender in my room, and I have also tried my hand at painting a pin-up piece (it is still a work in progress).

~Chelsea Engelman

Personal Image #4

POKEMON!!!!!! Yes, yes that is a Vaporeon, good job for remembering back to your childhood. Well for me a bit more recent. You see, I decided to finish something that I started oh so many years ago, the Pokemon Yellow Gameboy Game. I received the game and system back in, I don't know, 3rd grade. And as a third grader I did not have the patience necessary to train and raise my pokemon up to their full fighting potential, and thus never finished the game. So this year I came across my old Gameboy, and basically made a promise to myself that I would finally finish the game. And so I did. For months now I have been playing on and off, and it has brought so many wonderful childhood memories back to me. So during one of the rare moments that I haven't been playing the game, I drew this picture of the Vaporeon I have so painstakingly raised from a little Eevee :) Drawn using Prismacolor markers (my medium of choice).

~Chelsea

Visual Research #4

"Transverse Line"

Wassily Kandinsky

Okay so the sketch assignment we had this week had me thinking about abstract art, how they take a blank canvas and make an image that is often not premeditated, unlike more traditional art styles that plan a piece. My boyfriend is really into modern style art so I spent some time looking at some of his favorite artists. Wassily Kandinsky was creating these very "modern" and abstract pieces way before the actually modern movement gained strength. So he is often credited with painting the first modern abstract works. I picked this particular image because, well I like it, but I like it because of the black lines and white background. All the edges and lines are very clean and the little amounts of accent colors make it subtle an yet powerful. This would be a piece you would hang in your house that a lot of people would walk at first then take a double take and examine it more closely.

~Chelsea

Assignment #4- Scratch

It's a bird. It's a plane. NO! It's SUPER BUNKER!!!

That statement actually makes no sense because Super Bunker actually does not have the power to fly. His one and only power is the ability to melt your heart.

Llama. Enough said.

~Chelsea

Personal Image #3

I drew this while in public speaking to keep myself from falling asleep. Hopefully it is painfully obvious that it is a octopus (its 8th leg is behind it). My reason for sketching an octopus is that I never really draw them and I figured I needed some practice because my friend asked me to paint her a picture of one. He is kinda stuck in that limbo land between realistic and cartoony that seems to be a reoccurring style for me. I can decide if I want to make the final painting entirely realistic or not. Anyway, I like how this guy turned out considering I used pen and couldn't erase mistakes if I make them. I usually try to avoid pen...

~Chelsea

Visual Research #3

"Blossoming Almond Tree"

Vincent Van Gogh

So for my visual research this week I choose "Blossoming Almond Tree" by Van Gogh because my friend recently bought a vinyl laptop cover for her new Macbook that was of this painting. I thought it was so beautiful that I looked online for it so I could figure out what its name was. It was a Van Gogh painting I did not previously know, and I think it has become my new favorite of his. (Sorry "Starry Night"...) I really like this piece because of the lines that the branches create, they are so elegant yet random seeming- they seem clean and messy at the same time and I think that is really beautiful. I also love the colors, it is a great shade of blue in the background, if I had a poster of this it would look FANTASTIC in my room.

~Chelsea Engelman

Assignment #3- Alphabet Soup

"A""E"

"L"

"O"

"P"

"V"

~Chelsea Engelman

Personal Image #2

My boyfriend was having a bad day so I drew this quick picture in an attempt to cheer him up. Yes I know they do not have faces. I do a lot of pose sketching that mainly focus on the positioning of the whole body rather than details. So a lot of my quick sketches lack details such as faces and fingers because it is time consuming and because they don't really matter. The image still gives you the same feeling when you look at it now as it would if it had all those details.

~Chelsea

Visual Research #2

MUSICAL CATS - 2D animated film

By Oha

http://oha.deviantart.com/art/MUSICAL-CATS-2D-animated-film-83303733

I found this in my favorites on my old DeviantArt account. It is an absolutly fantastic little video, it is nearly professional quality I think. If someone showed me this and told me it was a Disney short, I would have believed them. Videos like these are what I hope to one day be able to create. I haven't had any experience with makeing annimated videos on the computer because I have never had access to programs that would allow me to do so. :(

~Chelsea

Assignment #2- Picturing the Other

Okay so assignment two for digital media foundations was called "picturing the other", and what I pretty had to do was to get a portrait of myself, a friend, and someone that I consider different from myself. My idea for this assignment was to take advantage of my volunteer work at the Southern Oregon Humane Society to get photos of people with animals. SO... I did just that, and during lab day messed around with them to get the desired result. I made all the backgrounds black and white and kept the subjects in color. What I am most proud of is the "friend photo", I was able to get rid of the dogs "green eye" (which was a pain because unlike red eye there is not a button for it). Look at the earlier post to see the before, the difference is amazing. I also included two photos of the "other" because I could not decide which one I liked best. And for the final photo, I was just messing around in photoshop, but I liked the end result.

Self:

Friend:

Other:

Other 2:
Self 2:

Pictures for Assignment #2

SELF:

FRIEND:

OTHER:

~Chelsea

Visual Research

"Flutter Mouse"

by ~stephanielynn

Link: http://stephanielynn.deviantart.com/art/Flutter-Mouse-17643188

Okay so this is an image I found while checking out my old Deviantart account. I like the balance in this picture between fantasy and realism. Although the mouse has wings, it is a very real looking mouse. I also like the graphic element of the black outlines... I am biased because I do that with the majority of my drawings, but it gives the sense of the graphic novel style of artwork. I am also very impressed with the shading in this picture (it was done in colored pencils), it is beautiful. Overall it's a little whimsical picture that makes me happy just looking at it :) I hope it cheers your day up too.

~Chelsea

Personal Work #1- Zoo

Over spring break I went to the Oregon Zoo. I had not been to a zoo since I was a kid, so I was very excited. I took a TON of photos, but these are some of the best. Most of the animals were sleeping but the polar bears were awake and active. I got a couple great shots of the two polar bears playing in the water together so I cleaned them up so i could post them here. Photography wise I think that the photo of the meetkat turned out best, it is really clear and the colors are nice. I wish there wasn't a glare on the glass in the cougar picture, because that one could have been really cool. I just thought that the monkeys pose was too funny not to post, so there you go. And the hippos are just so cute :)
~Chelsea