In progress

A couple paintings I am working on at the moment.

watercolour. gargoyle lion thing.

oil. from a picture I took off the ferry heading back to the island one weekend. The clouds where pretty spectacular with the sunset.

Both still need a fair bit of work. but I'm pretty happy with what I have so far. Especially on the oil one I just made it through the part of painting that you're really not sure whats going on and if it's going to work. So, I'm excited to keep painting and see what happens.

My roommate and I are planing to start up a web comic in the near future. I think I'll be posting some character designs shortly.

She writes stuff.

One of my current projects is for my roommate who is a great writer. It's a great set up, she gets an in-house designer and I get a copywriter! Very convenient.
I'm working on her website (mentioned in the previous post) but also on her business card.

It had to be one colour and one sided and easily printed somewhere like staples. Something with a bit of cheek to match her tagline "she writes stuff". I'm pleased with the outcome. It was a fun little project. Its nice to have the advantage of knowing your client fairly well, also very convenient to yell down the hall for proofs.

I am available for commission if anyone is looking for business card designs etc. drop me a line @ elisestevens(at)gmail(dot)com

now onto sponsorship brochure for work. and go!
-élise

Summer time

Every summer I think "I'm going to get so much done this summer! It's going to be great!" and i make all these lists of things I'm going to do in my time off (hahaha). There are post-it notes all over my wall and my white board is full of list. I even have post its on my desktop. For one reason or another, usually work, I never get any where near my summer goals. But this summer I might have actually made a dent in some of my lists. Or at least given them a good start.
I'm working on getting my site up and running.
Also working on my roommates writing portfolio site up.
I'm also doing some design work for C&C Cakery.

My goals is to update this with some art this weekend. Lets hope this summers productivity keeps up, because i'm sure going to need it in the new school year!
-é

My evening

So school is finaly done for the semester and it is my summer goal to not neglect this blog. 

I finally pulled out my watercolours again last night. Figured it was time for a new profile pic self-portrait just to get back into the swing of things.

I took pictures of my process. I'm sure in years to come I will cringe, but thats part of the fun! right....

So here we go:

Reference picture, and start drawing. Halfway through a cup of earlgrey tea already.

Adding more detail and marking shade and shadow.

Ready to start painting. and get some more tea!

Painting in the darkest parts first. 

more darks.

Throwing some colour in there. This is where I kinda stop having a prosses and just go with the flow. Still painting dark to light mostly but i bounce between colours and just feel it out. It's fun and scary all at the same time :P

And time to make some dinner!

While that's going on I throw some more colour at it...i swear this looks normal at the end and not like my eyes are bleeding and my jaw is molding. Oh although maybe next time i'll do a zombie portrait. That would be fun.

I start smoothing some of the shade edges with that yellow thing. It's meant to clean between your teeth kinda like a pipecleaner toothbrush. But its great for smoothing out edges and lifting up paint to lighten areas.

Here we go, things are starting to come together.

Mmmm and dinner is ready. and almost finished my second cup of tea.

Watch some Star Trek while i eat...I'm not predictable...what are you talking about.

Little bit more colour in the face and neck, starting to look a little more like my skin tone. Adding a background wash of green. 

More colour in the hair. Also pulling some highlights back with that yellow brush thing, taking the colour off back to the paper. And a fresh cup of tea, peppermint this time, or i'll never fall asleep with all that caffien.

And there we are! I havn't decided if I've finished fiddling with it. I have trouble stoping painting once the painting is done. So i think i'll leave it as it for a couple days then come back and see if I still think it needs anything.

I've got another painting on the go so hopefuly i'll post that when it's done. 

My goal is to update this blog twice a week over the summer....wish me luck.

Also, my instructore Kiff Holland just got his website up @ www.kiffhollandartist.com and you should all go check it out. Amazing painter and teacher. 

He's going to have a blog up and runnign soon that will show his prosses and current paintings. I'll post a link when that is up.

Sketchbook

I've been working pretty hard on school stuff over the Olympic break, but with very little to show for it unfortunately. Mostly it's been a lot of organization and preliminary stuff.
hopefully by the end of the weekend i'll have a little more to show.

couple scans from my sketchbook.

More Sketchy stuff

A couple sketches from life drawing.

and a temper tantrum in the making. Got a couple of great reference books today, and I've been having some fun.
getting back in the drawing groove!

Life drawing sketches

A couple sketches for life drawing. We where supposed to be drawing really loose and finding shapes. So thats whats going on in the second one, didn't push it very far though.
a couple of preliminary  sketches on the right for a project about Canada and landscape.

More old photos

Another piece for illustration class based on old family photos.
This on is my grandma and grandpa and probably a great great grandma in the middle.(i'm not sure i'll have to ask my mom about that.)

Still a work in progress.
on the left is the watercolour i'm working on, right is the sketch its based of off, and the little picture in the middle is the original photo.

Lots of homework this weekend, but i'm off to play lazer tag this afternoon. I haven't gone since i was a kid. This should be very entertaining. Tomorrow will be  full day of homework.

portrait of a nun

An oil painting for illustration class. Using oil paintpen sharpies and oil paints over top. The reference photo is from a box of old family photos. (you can see the ref just above the painting)

I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out. It was really quick, probably about two hours total.

I've taken over my living room!

Currently I'm finishing up a poster project for illustration class and I've spread myself all over the living room.

Here is the poster in progress. Not to far off done I think. (the colour looks nothing like that in person just FYI. camera flash does terrible things to watercolours. :P)
I need to update this thing more often.

photoshop!

So it not the first time i've ever used photoshop, but ths first time i have ever finished anything in photoshop. I usualy get frustrated and leave it.

next stop, Illustrator!

right and wrong

For my conseptual design class we have to depict "Right and Wrong". Here is my idea: How to sit in a chair.

right.
wrong.for my Typography class here is the movie title to The Jungle Book.
I'm quite happy with it over all. It needs a bit of tweeking and cleaning up but over all i'm happy.

And this was also for Type class. We made playing cards and this is one of the jokers. My other card was the king of diamonds but it didn't export properly so we'll see that another time perhaps. 

School is almost finished. Only three days of class left. Craziness! Hopefully you will all be seeing a lot more work from me over the summer. 

It's been a busy time

Some new-ish stuff. 

I'm trying to get organized before the end of term. I have a little quiet(ter) time this week as all my presentations are now out of the way. Back to just drawing and painting. It's such a relife. 

This is a CD cover for one of my illustration classes. We had to create a cover for Peter and the wolf in an off beat, akward, or stylized image. 

Oil face. still working on it. also from referance. 

Calligraphy is harder then it looks... not quite happy with this, but it's on its way. 

More Illustration

More water colour. This time on a hot press paper (smooth surface)

The referance is one I took of my friend Lucy for a passed photography project. 

750 words is not that much.

Dosn't mean i want to do it.

I keep trying to get a start on my communications project. I don't really procrastinate about anything anymore, except for essays... If i can just get some info down now it will be less stressful later. One paragraphe, just one, come on....

yeah good luck me.

new semester!

Self portraits for illustration. I'm so excited we're getting into water colours!!! 

muking about with diffrent styles and aplications a little. I like the one on the right better. 

We have way more presentations and written work this semester. Also a good number of group projects. I kinda just want to paint all the time.

more illustration

Only two weeks left of this semester! I can't believe how fast it's going by.

I'm really excited to go home for Christmas break.

Heres some more school work

This project was to illustrate a scene of a story. This is from Castle in the Air by Dianna Winn Jones. The four year old princese Valerie is mighty unhappy to have been kidnaped by the djinn and is letting them know it. Watercolour

A comic we did to practice one, two and three point perspectives. done in ink

and a subwaystation using 2-point perspective. Done in watercolour.

More to come soon.

And more again

Once again, more referance work. These are moslty excersises to play with diffrent mediums. and again this is my friday illustration class.

Top: Ink washes on bristal bored

Bottom:watercolour and pencil crayon on watercolour paper.

more art

A couple more peices. (again, poor scan qualitie)
I've been meaning to update. But school kinda takes over my life. all of it.
But thats a good thing.
Anyway a couple more peices from my friday illustration class.
internet referances used.

Also if anyone is interested I still have IDEA calenders for sale. They are to support the thrid years on their cultural trip to New York. They are 16$ each and are beautiful. In two years my class will be donig the calender project. take a look at http://www.capcalendars.com/shop.html

Update on life

Hey everyone! Hey mom and dad!

There's a little snippet of whats up with me.

For those of you who havn't seen yet this is the IDEA website. Take a look and see what i'll be up to for the next three years!

Also take a look at the thirdyears page here.

So, as a mention in the vid, fridays are my favorits!

Here are a couple of peices from the second week of class i think.

They are done in grafite, one is meant to be high-key and one low-key.

they are both from my own photo referances.

Sorry for the poor scan quality. Its being a pain.