Now This is Real Life

It's finally come, the end of my final (real) semester as an undergrad. I say (real) because next semester I'm only taking 6 credits, which are bookbinding and frame-building. Brutal, I know. So basically, I'm free of (real) school! I'm actually graduating and becoming a real person, what a lovely thought. All I can say is it's about time.

Here are a few pieces from the my last (real) undergrad semester EVER:

piece for "A Thousand Cranes" poster

piece for "Tartuffe" poster
(wasn't actually used; oh well, at least it can go into my portfolio)

The Past Few Months of My Life

This semester I worked like mad on my BFA show. The idea for the project started winter semester 2007 when a couple of us decided to pull some grant money together and head out to New York City that summer for internships. This then evolved into a mentoring project that included two other illustration students plus our professor as a mentor. We stayed in New York City and interned with illustrators for a month and a half. Ten of those days were spent with our professor going around the city gathering influences by sketchbooking, painting, taking photographs, going to museums and visiting illustrators. These pieces are the final product of that experience, and the actual exhibit includes work done by each participant.

In this series I focused on food and the people that eat it in the city. One of my main goals for this series was to push my process and further develop my style. I experimented A LOT throughout this series with color, texture, line, media and painterlyness. Overall, I feel like something is working. I'm really excited to keep going down this vein and developing things even further, oh it's been so much fun!

Right now I only have two pieces photographed, and the other two are currently hanging in the exhibit so I won't be able to post them until later next week. If you're in Provo and want to drop by the exhibit, it will be up through December 14th in the HFAC B.F. Larsen Gallery (the main floor) at BYU.

"Lunch at Cha Cha's"

"News for Company"


"Lunchtime Mechanics"

Brandon, this one is for you

Here are a few oldish/recentish/this semesterish head paintings. The first two are of my friend Brandon, who ever so kindly took the time to pose a couple of hours for me, and who has been waiting patiently to see these, and who doesn't actually have a lazy eye...I just painted it that way...I don't know what happened.

The third painting was done in-class. Usually I see my colors too hot, so this time I decided to help my colors come out cooler by thinking of really cold thoughts while painting--like Antartica, streaking during a blizzard and pistachio ice cream...mmmmm, pistachio ice cream. Apparently I should think colder thoughts more often, because it worked.