Here is the link to my interview with artist Colleen Phelon Hall: https://youtu.be/tO5-PBk_5ds
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I really enjoyed watching the interview with Kelly Alder. I was surprised by his journey into teaching at VCU from never teaching before, but I thought it was interesting that he said he probably should have started teaching earlier. I also appreciated his commentary on how illustration has changed since the introduction of technology. On one hand, students and teachers have many more influences and information available to them, and on the other hand, photoshop and online design is very important in the field compared to when all illustrations were just hand-done. I thought it was interesting that he still advises that people work outside their field and mentioned that he still does observational drawing and oil painting outside of just his illustration style I also previously was not aware of the old way of getting your work out where you find a person you want to work with and would send postcards of your work and hopefully they would respond to see your entire physical portfolio. His specific project with the Richmond Folk Festival was also informative as he said the framework limitations they said (can't be about one type of music but has to mention it and has to incorporate all of the band names) actually helped challenge him to create a unique piece. He also touched on the process that goes along with the design where he submits usually three thumbnails, waits for a response from the art team with minor variations, before making his thumbnail a complete refined piece (usually bigger than it actually needs to be) before turning it into a digital file and adding computer coloring and shading with photoshop then. Overall, I appreciated hearing his story and learning more about how an illustrator works.
This week I finished the second project of Q2. I had difficulty getting the skin tone right as it kept showing up almost gray, but I tried to increase the saturation and use more burnt sienna which I think helped. I think the blending could be a bit better, but it was much more difficult to keep the acrylic paint wet compared to the oil paints I worked with last time. Because of this, I'm leaning towards using oils next project. I am pretty happy with how the lips and teeth turned out. I tried to emphasize the highlight and the red in the lips to match the red background. I still want to add some more highlights to the hair and possibly add visible folds to the fabric of her shirt. The placement of the mushroom was also something I struggled with as Kennedy didn't have one when she took the photo so I kinda had to super-impose it and hope it didn't look weird. I think it turned out okay, but it does seem a bit small. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this piece and the series in total turned out.
This week I got to work starting to paint. I'm having some difficulty getting the skin tone to not look too gray, so I may need to do some research on that. I went ahead and started painting her hair and lips which i think made the skin tone look a little better. The next step is to paint the fork and figure out where the mushroom will be. I don't love the idea of not having a real reference for it, but I'll try to make it look realistic anyway. I also have to think about the background color. I'm leaning towards red right now, but I'll probably try a few options once I get to that point. Definitely still have a lot to do.
This week started out a little too slow. I decided to finish my series about food and taste, this painting being umami. I did some research and decided on mushrooms as my umami food. When doing the thumbnail, I kinda struggled to figure out a composition that was different than my other four pieces. Once I decided on a composition, one of my friends took the photo (I'm going to superimpose the mushroom), and I did the sketch on the canvas.
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June 2021
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