Hansel and Gretel E-Book

I illustrated an E-Book for the children's story app Farfaria. They're a pretty new start up so it will be interesting to see where they go with it. This was really the first proper illustration project I've worked on so it was good in that I came up against a lot of my weaknesses immediately. Learning to balance the practicality of time and energy with your own conceptual idea of what it should be is surprisingly rewarding. It broke the bit of me that was like "this has to be perfect" and instead it became "just give em' what you got!"

First version of the cover. Also the best version of the characters. Because I had to work on this between my classes I felt like I'd make leaps in ability between each illustration (I'm sure to the dismay of the folks reviewing) and so when it got to the cover the characters had evolved quite a bit from the first page.

My mom said that she liked his "haxen" (spelled Hachsen) which means both very large burly hands OR (I think) slabs of meat in German. Or at least when she says it I visualize very large meat hands.

The Story of Hansel and Gretel is kind of brutal and scary. On the one hand it's  a great story because you see a female lead that defy's her own learned nature to save those she loves BUT on the other hand it reinforces societal fears of aging women all while challenging children's trust in their elders. Did your brain just explode? Fairy tales are UNHINGED. It's unfortunate that now they get watered down through either removing the threatening elements, or over indulging the horror elements for adult film. These don't really act as a bridge from child hood to the serious issues of adulthood. I guess I like to straddle that inbetween in my work, just because it seems to reflect more accurately how people are pushed and pulled through the world. No matter how old we get, I don't think we should ever lose our sense of astonishment at the didactic range of human possibility. Cruel and loving all rolled up into one. We crazy.

Check the story out at Farfaria.com!

Bimbl 0

The Bimbl story for the show:

Alley Art Walk

So much to catch up on! There's been a lot of shifting around these past few weeks so updating has been the farthest from my mind. But long story short, I just graduated from the university of Washington, moved and am about to move again but hopefully everything will fall into place soon. I've only been out of school a little more than a week and I'm already wondering how being "in the real world" will effect my work. Though I won't have the same guidance, I can't wait to be self motivated when it comes to my art. Sink or swim right?

Anyway! Might as well start with my final project for my senior studio class. Our class collaborated with some students from I think the architecture department (urban planning?) who wanted to host an alley art walk with our class' work featured. I made zines and created a space where I would sit with people and trade my zine for some sort of creative payment, mostly doodles on their part. It was really fun, and though it was designed to make others understand some of the pressure artists feel in creating, I ended up being the one learning how taxing, physically and psychological something as under credited as drawing could be. I was there for three hours and by the end I was so exhausted! But it was so fun to talk to people. There was someone at my table the entire 3 hours but I only made 30 trades. Another interesting aspect of the experience. That it took 3 hours to make a mild connection with 30 people was surprising and highlighted how valuable real human connection is? 

Which is funny, because in the end it turned into a performance piece, and in my first meeting with my teacher Timea Tihanyi I was like "I'm not a performer" :/ walked into that one! 

I would draw goofy stuff like this:

And then get awsome stuff like this is return (Thanks guys!!):

Kind of an unfair trade in my favor right?

Done in the light of the television.

Embroidery for winding down and thinking. It really does feel like this process makes me more concientious in other aspects of my drawing. Probably because when you draw with thread you have to go so slow, and think of every stitch and how it will effect the overall impact of the object you're creating.

Side Doodle Central

thinkin' about girl talk at the beach

thinkin' about adventures and family

thinkin' about Bimbl and the believability of his design. Should cartoons focus on the mark making/ drawing or the creation of a completely believable world? What do the rest of his people look like, yada yada yada

Zinetopia

I devised a plan to make a zine so that I could explore this sketchy playful ink drawing thing I had gotten into. And so I showed my instructor all these half baked stream of conciousness drawings and was told that I was being lazy and that I shouldn't rely on my ability to make quaint charming imagery. Now, you can call me a lot of things, but lazy or un genuine is not one of them. Needless to say I'm now doing a linear comic/ story board  and all these drawings were kind of abandoned. 

Putting them together now, I can see that It was going somewhere really great.

Throughout the 4 years of attending art school, I'm repeatedly struck by the lack of patience teachers have or their flexibility when it comes to approaching their students different learning styles. There's no joy in the process and there's an overarching paranoia that makes some (I know, I know, NOT ALL) instructors jump in and try and save their students to just place them on a safe and recognizable path. I can see it in myself when I'm helping in the after school programs at SAGA, it's hard to see those put in your charge struggle. But dang, you just gotta grit your teeth sometimes and let them sweat and figure stuff out on their own. Especially in art where ones survival depends on finding a completely personalized visual language that bridges artist and viewer.

Yeah, So I like this.

I wanna see you big.

An Installation piece for the senior Interdisciplinary Visual Art's Honors/ Juried exhibition. I'm not particularly fond of the gallery experience so I threw a visual fit and made a very large awkward man for the show. He wants to be there and be imposing, but then on the other hand doesn't want to let you in. Also, I'd been playing with the idea of embroidery on a much larger and industrial scale so it acted as a small materials study for that. 

Since this piece attempted to be made for this event, photographing it wasn't of too much importance. Obviously now I'm kicking myself for not using a better camera though haha, especially to get the texture of the head covering. But alas, the idea that he would only exist for a couple of weeks, then disappear felt very important to me. The dismal quality of the photo's makes you wish you had seen it in person, huh?

Mark making.