Feliz Cumpleano....s?

A birthday card for my friend Thomas Guerena.... Inspired by Body Worlds and a candle I have depicting La Virgen de Guadalupe. And a photo of my friend Eder Ahumada wearing a sombrero. God, I was nearly done with the penning when someone pointed out that I had forgotten the "s" at the end of cumpleanos. Daaaarn it. But I added it, subtly.

I don't have much other news.... I had a few dank ideas for paintings today in my History of World Civ. class. And I had another idea today about fun Christmas present creations. I can't say either out loud! Or on a public blog, in this case. But I'll post pictures when I've started on the paintings. I want to try watercolors for my first time.

Hmm, what else? I finished reading Demian last night. Possibly the best book I've read so far in life. I also finished A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening, which was pretty interesting. Now I need a new book! I think Big Fish is next. But I should wait a while to allow time for homework to be done... homework and art... and music...

Mosque man completed....

click=big!

I decided to make him a woodland creature...

Yup!

Mosque man

So much creating! I thought I'd show you my drawing process in this post....

First I start with photos. Which means I spend hours sitting in front of the computer blankly staring at Google Image page after Google Image page. I managed to find quite a few good references.... Here are two that I ended up using.

I got this image off of Google Image. This is the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.

And here's a self portrait of the photographer In a Wrong Body, check him out! I'm in love with his face. Got this off of flickr. I usually like taking my own reference photos (or working from life) whenever I can, but I was on a time crunch and his face was too interesting to pass up.

Okay, so then comes the drawing bit. In this case I printed off a page with maybe 25 reference pictures on it, then sat down on my bedroom floor and tried to figure out how I'd combine them. I ended up using this guy's face (or my take on it), smashed a Russian hat on his head, and then used the Blue Mosque as inspiration for intricate design on the hat. This guy's left eye gave me SO much trouble!!

Okay, so after I'm finished the pencil part, I traced it using our family light board (how will I go to college without it??) onto my new pens-only paper. I traced the lines with an 005 Micron pen (very thin), and only did the basic features of the mosque. I could then take it off the light board and give it value, detail, etc....
It's turning out well! I think I may delete a couple lines from his face...and then I'll Photoshop in the colors. My next post should be the finished product. :]

Still Life

Hey here's the most recent still life I've done... it wasn't recently, but still. (Hahah pun.)

I love drawing glass in pencil. I haven't tried it in color pencil yet, maybe that will be my next still life challenge.

Yesterday I was in my History of World Civ. class down in Newport's community college, and we watched a part of a history series... anyways, I got really inspired by all the religious images, particularly by the Russian Orthodox. It also showed what looked like Islamic images, but they couldn't have been, since Islam forbids the making of human likenesses...and Moslems didn't start doing that until recently and even still...but there was definitely art that depicted Moslems. Wow okay back on track. I got home and Google Imaged a ton of religious art, as well as old photos of the Roma people and Russians and churches and mosques, etc. Now I'm working on a drawing of a guy with a traditional Russian hat (don't know what they're called but they're big and fluffy), which inside shows designs pretty much copied from the Blue Mosque. I really like it... eventually it will be traced in pen in my new pens-only sketchbook, then probably colored on Photoshop.

Wow that was a lot to say a little. Until next time, invisible viewers!

College art......

Howdy! I know I haven't posted in a while, but I haven't really been drawing a ton. That is because of the following:

1) I've been back in school (although my doodle-rate has skyrocketed)

2) I've been applying to college

3) I've been focusing a bit more on photography

4) The yearbook has been a nightmare to get going

It's actually because of #2, though, that I did the following pen & Photoshop creations.

This one is my tribute to Alphonse Mucha, a Czech artist who moved to France and became one of the best graphic designers ever to live (in my opinion). Mostly he did advertisements, which is why I call him a graphic designer. Anyways, this self-portrait is my take on his style. I'm obviously not as incredibly amazing, but yeah. I actually drew this a year ago (which is why the hand holding the necklace kind of sucks), but never got around to finishing it. I wanted to learn watercolor first, so that I could really be like Mucha. But watercolor is something that you're either extremely good at and it looks fantastic, or you're just okay and it looks like a kindergarten kid painted it. So I finished it in Photoshop in the last couple of days.
Hahah, these two I did in the last couple of weeks I guess. The second one was the first version, but then I wanted to make an animation with it switching. I think I'll do that soon, but I ran out of time before college admissions. Yeah, so they're self-portraits (that actually look JUST like me) of me making a zombie face. I was sick of being serious... Anyways, pen and Photoshop.

Again, check out my Flickr page! www.flickr.com/kaitycurryphotography is the place to be.

flickr

Hey I've posted some semi-recent stuff on my flickr account. Also I got a URL for the account and started tagging photos. So yeah... hoping that'll start being a little better. Although the photos still aren't all that amazing. Hopefully I'll be able to do some actual projects soon. I have ideas!

To see wonders, click the eyes! NN

Old Schtuff

Second grade (I had help):

Age 5ish (I remember this being better):