The Mendenhall Glacier

For "Little things" I also thought of our glacier, the Mendenhall glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Glacial ice is pretty amazing, they put a chunk out in front of the vistor's center to show the tourists how the compact ice crystals are like a 3-d puzzle that you can pull apart as it melts. I am designing a t-shirt for a friend using the glacier as the main image... I put the logo style wording in for this post! It looks like I need to rotate it. I like off-kilter, but that might be a bit much.

IF LITTLE THINGS

Now I am up-to-date! Here is my concept for Illustration Friday's "Little Things." I heard a piece on NPR about Daimler's Smart car and they were test driving one. The reporter said that he was able to park it between the end of the curb and a big SUV; of course Hummer came to my mind!

IF EXCESS

Here is my rough sketch for last week's Illustration Friday topic "Excess." We had been experiencing a cold snap and it had been hovering aroung 20 degrees F. We dodn't have the snow (last year it was up to my waist by November 30), but I thought that I should combine the two excesses for this year and last.

IF HATS

I have been doing the Illustration Friday topics... I just haven't had it together enough to post them on time. So, here is "Hats" from two weeks ago. I had a picture of the hat scene from The Prestige where they find all the duplicate hats from Nikola Tesla's contraption (played by David Bowie; a foreshadowing of things to come). This was just a rough sketch of that basic concept (only with cute bunnies!).

My Avatar

Well I have been working on some things... just not sketching:( But I did finally finish my icon/avatar. I'm sure it will change as I get tired of it. I have been working on it using Ilustrator's Live Trace tool and I haven't been very impressed (!) I was really afraid that it would be the end of digital illustrators... but I don't think anyone needs to worry. You still need to do a lot of clean-up and of course layout and composition and line quality; the things that everyone takes for granted. Basically you still need to be an artist.

I found a new vector conversion tool at http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/. A colleague said her friends think it is better then Live Trace. It is good, but you don't have the same amount of control, although you can edit individual paths more easily. I combined the two, and still had to do a lot of clean-up. I would rather do it by "hand" with the pen tool. I will post some old digital illustrations I did in school. At my art school they did not focus on digital illustration and I had to figure it out on my own... I'm sure it has changed a bit, but they are mostly about cranking us out into the industry.

As for the one below, it still needs some work to mesh the two styles. (But) I felt like I really needed to put my identity up and it looks better smaller!

Here is one that has a fixed ear! Couldn't stand that dark line (looks like I'm wearing a headset!) :) 1.4.08 julie

I have been a blog slacker... and I haven't been sketching either... I should know better, as soon as Halloween hits the holidays have begun and I don't have time for myself (and I am too broke to go to the life-drawing sessions at the Ruby Room). It seems like it is non-stop planning, shopping, and celebrating starting there. My son's birthday is 30 days after, and of course Thanksgiving is about a week before that. This year is especially hard because Thanksgiving is so early and daylight savings happened so much later. It has thrown off more than one person's schedule, so I've heard.

We also had a family tragedy that happened a little over a week ago (very sad). The family is recovering slowly. We all had our own plans for Kadyn, but we especially feel for Angie and Steve; as a parent you worry about this from day one. I know that I don't understand the exact feelings they are experiencing, but I know how it would devastate me. I am a "struggle-through-on-my-own" kind of person and would get lost in the pain, but they have been surrounded by this huge supportive net of family and friends- I hope they know how much they are loved and how much we wish we could help take way the pain they are feeling.

Anyway, here is my tribute to Kadyn Robert Lewis. He was a really beautiful baby that we are very blessed to have known.

I am trying to get all my things in one place without a website. It's been fairly easy with all the new free services out there. Gmail has everything I need easily accessible through my email. I'm sure there are other ways, but I like everything in one place!

I have my sketch book set up in Picasa as well as the trees I did for Zen and my favorite, "Driftwood on Atlin beach" (hanging in my office- I look at it when I need to remember: I am an artist!)

The trees are hanging in Zen Restaurant in Juneau, AK. They are huge, approximately 5'8"x6', and they are Pastel on stretched canvas. Making pastels "drip" was no easy task! The drips look better in person.

The "Driftwood on Atlin Beach" was a project I did for my Advanced Image Manipulation class. I scanned the original photograph and a pastel drawing of it making a composite of them in PhotoShop. I then printed the composite as well as the original scans onto different types of paper and collaged them together. The effect is very cubist and I loved the way the handmade papers took the ink, but remained transparent when I added them to the collage. I hope to play more with this technique... I need to get my printer fixed or buy a new one first. I think I wore my printer out in school; it broke down a couple months after graduation! Hope you enjoy them *Julie

Hi again!

I meant to post these with my first post... I am going to set up the full sketches in flickr (unless someone knows of a better place!) Some of these are from 2006, and I have edited my book and only put the "best" here. I also wanted to have a little process here; the trees (two per page) were studies for the trees I did for Zen. They are the oldest, so they are pretty smudged up. I love the looseness of the lines on the colored one and I tried to incorporate the graphic elements from the more detailed pencil drawings into the finals (the hatch marks and directional lines to delineate the different planes of the foreground and background). I will post the pics of the pieces I did for Zen later. Hope you enjoy my little slide show! Here is the link to the picasa album with the larger versions of my sketch book. Julie:)

Hi all!

I have been sticking with my sketching and have even sucked it up and started attending life drawing sessions at the Ruby Room (juneaudrawing@gmail.com if you are interested). I thought I would be intimidated, because many of the people there are professional artist. My goal is to get serious enough to be considered "professional," so I need to put myself out there more. I went to school with some of the people there and have worked with others, so I didn't feel out of my element... it was good to get some serious drawing in. The figure is so different then objects, there is so much more to pay attention to and so much more personality and mood that comes out when you draw the human body. The model was very good and she had really long graceful arms and really pretty lines. I had nothing but good angles... I hate it when you get stuck with the worst views of the poses, but this was not a full circle were someone gets the back or what have you. So, I think everyone had good angles.

I am trying to get my supervisor to come, and she seems excited. She was wondering if there was a lot of discussion about technique, etc... there wasn't we were all pretty focused. I always get like that. I transport myself to another place. I have always done that. That is why I like night classes, because I like to walk out under cover of darkness... I guess that way the spell doesn't get broken:)

Here are the longer sketched I did. I ran out of large paper, which I prefer to work on, and did these in my little 5.5"X8.5" sketch book. I used pencils rather then charcoal, and you can see how tight my style is when I work like that. I am much looser and can get my compositions laid out better on large paper... I need to get to the art supply store. Julie:)

my first blog...

I have been planning on getting a blog going for a while. Not that I think that what I have to say is so great, but I always thought the picture-a-day blogs sounded like a great way to let off some creative steam. This will be more like a picture-when-I-have-time-to-create blog!

I love following artist and illustrator blogs to see how they deal with the creative process. I know that there is a process for each artist and I love to see how differently we arrive at our final piece. It is like offering a little piece of our soul to the rest of the world which can make one feel very vulnerable. I know for me I do not like the spot light and creating art is very personal, but there comes a time when you have to stop creating in a vacuum and get input from the outside world.

I am usually terrible at keeping up on my sketching, but now that my work life has evened out and I'm out of school I have a lot of creative energy bubbling over. My goal is to produce a body of work by the end of November that I can approach a "gallery" space with (coffee shop or some such!) I am going to explore my favorite medium, dry pastel, which I have been using on canvas with (surprisingly) a lot of success. Right now my sketches are just a way of tuning my eye; they don't represent my final subject matter.

I would love feedback... every comment is appreciated:)

Julie