Character Design Improvements, Part 2

Thanks to some of the lessons I'm teaching my students in the final days of school (five weeks and counting, yay!) I decided to do some practice at character designing. This method is what I basically call the "Frankenstein" method. Basically, I take elements from different figures that I like, splice them together and paint over it. It allows for a more hyper-real (in some cases) look to the character and, quite frankly, saves a ton of time. Being the nerd that I am, I decided to reach out to a group of friends and have them send me descriptions of their characters. Enjoy!

Character Design Improvements

Okay, so life is still pretty hectic, and I haven't been posting nearly as much as I hoped I would this year, but nonetheless I am still drawing. I wanted to share a new piece that I'm working on. My newest character, Sibella. Not much to say about her, except when I compare her to my previous character, Rowena I see just how much I've grown as an artist over the last four years. That's a great encouragement, especially when I am continuously beating myself up for not drawing as much as I think I should.

Enjoy!

(On a completely unrelated note, I had not realized how much of an influence Disney has on my design until I took a look at her and saw how much she...unintentionally...looks like a Disney character...)

2017: The First Post and a Rediscovery

As part of my New Year's resolution this year, I'm excited to post the first drawings of 2017. My friend and I went to a local restaurant to hang out and got to spend some time drawing.

Part of the reason that (I think) I was reluctant to fill up my sketchbook was because I was too concerned about making things look like something people would be pleased to see. To all of my students reading this: That is a terrible mindset to have! I was so concerned about making each of my pages perfect that I missed out on the joy of creating. That should be one of the primary motivators of your work: the joy of creating.

In response to that, I switched up my drawing tools. Normally I work with my micron pens in my sketchbook and I don't vary it too often. Last night, I switched to drawing with one of my favorite tools in college, my carbothello pencils (a type of charcoal pencils). Now, this may not seem like a huge difference, but it allowed me to loosen up a little bit.

On a (slightly) different note...

Lately, I've been rediscovering the joy of creating. I'm excited to be working on a pet project of mine, a 3D Design class (covering animation and modelling); because I need to teach the material, I've had the chance to shake the cobwebs off. I haven't animated in 3 years...and the last time I animated, it was for school purposes. I had forgotten something: Animating is so much fun! This is a rough pass (a very rough pass), but considering how long it's been, I'm also extremely pleased with it!

My 2017 Resolution

Over the last two years I have been adjusting to a life where making art does not comprise the majority of my time. It certainly has been a weird adjustment and I am still figuring out how to budget my time so that I can regularly create my own artwork. 

In the hopes that I will let this inspire me to create more artwork, I have decided to create a New Year's Resolution specifically for my artwork. This is going to be loosely based on a set of goals that I created back in March.

New Year's Resolution (Art Edition)

As my art is still an important part of my life, I resolve to devote a portion of 2017 to the creation of my own artwork. I resolve to create, blog, and exhibit throughout the year in the hopes that I might inspire both myself and others with the work that I produce. These are my goals:

• During normal work weeks, I will schedule time each week to work on some artwork (sketching, painting, etc.). This does not necessarily mean that I must complete a drawing or painting every week, but I resolve to work on some sort of artwork on a weekly basis. 
• During vacations, I will devote a portion of my time to catching up and starting new projects. These projects are to be worked on in the hopes of exhibiting my work locally. 
• Throughout the year, I will develop a plan for improving my figure drawing skills, including regular sketching, with the possibility of devoting a sketchbook to figure studies.
• I will establish a connection with other artists in the area, including establishing a connection with the Multicultural Arts Center.

These goals may be simple, but it is their simplicity that I hope will inspire me to actually complete them. Writing these goals in such a public forum is somewhat terrifying , but I wanted to post them here in the hopes that it will help hold me accountable for my work. My work may not always turn out the way I want it to, and that's okay. The way to create better artwork is to continuously produce artwork. I will remember that even 15 minutes a day is enough to get started. 

December 21st, 2016

Artwork with a purpose

As soon as I posted my conclusion to 2016 post, I realized that I wanted to post one more project that I completed this year. This was perhaps the largest project that I have completed and one that I am immensely proud of.

The whole process was amazing. I went to discuss Creekside's website design but ended up leaving with a new job. Over the course of one week, every hour I could spare was spent painting our mission/vision statement on our sanctuary wall. It was somewhat scary for a number of reasons...

I'm not great with heights and this job required me to be up on a lift and very tall ladder.

The act of committing to painting on a wall that was not my own also made me nervous...

In spite of my nervousness, it was exciting to complete this. Here are the rest of my progress photos:

The completed project is about 9 ft by 5 ft (I think...) and I am immensely proud to have used my artistic gifts to complete this project for my church family!

A Conclusion to 2016

With Christmas Break comes an opportunity to catch up on all of those projects I haven't had an opportunity to work on over the last semester. One of those projects is this blog; in November when I was at the Adobe Max conference, I got inspired to redesign the blog and I am extremely pleased with the result. Now the goal is to actually make art to put on this and perhaps even continually update my official portfolio website: laurenpetiti.myportfolio.com (shameless plug...)

For the past month and a half, I have been meaning to update my blog with posts from Inktober...even though it has been a long time since the actual Inktober took place. Busyness should not stop me from keeping an Internet presence for my art (small as it is...).

Here are the highlights from an Inktober that I am extremely proud to have completed. Did I finish all 31 days? Absolutely not! But I set a goal and managed to accomplish it; next year I want to set an even higher goal.

Watercolor Wednesday 2016 - Some Archived Work

Being an artist as a student is very different than being an artist as a professional....particularly when it is not your full time job. As much as I try to believe that I will make art spontaneously while working full time and going to school, it doesn't happen. I'm not that perfect.

Instead, I have to be intentional about my work. This means actually setting a reminder on my phone to paint/draw/whatever. Last year I did a semi-weekly thing where I did watercolor paintings every week. Thankfully, my busy summer month (June) has ended, leaving 6 glorious weeks of nothing to really do...I may even try to paint while on vacation in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, I've actually been able to do some watercolors before starting up on my blog again. In addition to today's watercolor, I have included a couple that I've done over the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!

I'm looking forward to continuing with this series over Winter Break!