Friday, May 18, 2012

Set sail for the kingdom


I'm looking forward to bringing everything I experienced in my first year at UMaine into various projects over the summer. I will definitely be making art in my free time as per usual, and I have been getting some comic-drawing books at the library to work with, but I am excited to see what I can do with some of my new or increased skills gained through my art classes! Especially in terms of my glacier sketches when I head out to the North Cascades for the 4th consecutive year in August!
Below is a progression of glacier sketches from the 5.5" x 8.5" sketchbook I have brought with me the past 3 years, as well as some of the works I have completed once at home!

Talus and cliff view from campsite at Columbia 7/27-28/09

Lupine by Columbia 7/28/09 - Day 2 of my first glacier trip!

View from ridge above Columbia campsite, looking towards Blanca Lake. I started and did a lot of this my first field season, on 8/29/09, but I continued it my second year, on 8/3-4/10!

Rock with flowering heather growing up the back, at the Easton glacier campsite.

View from our Sholes and Rainbow Glacier's campsite on Ptarmigan Ridge.

Camp Kaiser, near Mt. Baker, on Ptarmigan Ridge. I started this my first year on he glaciers, and continued it on the second, although there was much more snow and ice the second year!

Mokey Paw sketch at the Columbia campsite, 8/2/10.

A sketch I started off our tents in the foreground and Mt. Baker in the background, at the Rainbow/Sholes campsite.

Michael's Sword, a pinnacle on Daniels, I observed it from the Iceworm Glacier.

The third field season I experimented by bringing up a small set of watercolors instead of colored pencils. I liked it more for some subjects, such as flowers, and showing snow, ice, and water, but showing the rock and trees with paint was more difficult for me.

After we worked on the Lower Curtis Glacier on Mt. Shuksan I painted some of the flowers nearby - some variations of small, purple Phlox, narrow, purple Penstemon, and my favorite, the bright orange Indian Paintbrush!

I painted this from Lyman glacier, the area surrounding the water is actually rocky, but I liked the form of the ice on the water on its own.

Below is artwork I completed for my AP art drawing portfolio (the concentration section) my senior year in high school, in random order.

Enjoying Mt. Baker from a nearby ridge, the beauty and serenity one feels in this sort of place is represented by the magical flowers.

The same hiker returns, but now the glacier has receded greatly, and exposed bedrock and blue ice, as well as run-off streams, have resulted. The mountain and its glaciers are still incredible, but their dwindling power and presence decreases the natural beauty, and thus the magic that causes the flowers to grow.

The glacier's on Mt. Baker are all gone, and although the mountain is still awe-inspiring, it is nothing compared to what this hiker saw as a girl, and the same magic is no longer there.

I painted this after my first field season in the North Cascades, looking up from just below the base of Columbia Glacier. 2009

I didn't end up including this in my AP concentration, but I did put it in the breadth section. It is a view of what Columbia glacier may look like once it has melted away, with two lakes, and bedrock that has not yet begun to  grow much plant life. It is beautiful, but not in comparison to the glacier. I like the contrast between the top one done in acrylic paint and this piece done in watercolors. 

This piece was also in my breadth section, it is a cropped view of one of my crampons that I wear over my hiking boots while climbing on glacial ice.


An illustration of me, jumping over a crevasse! I showed the layer of snow accumulation seen in the crevasse, but this piece as meant to be more illustrative than exact or scientific in any way.

I painted this  for my dad's birthday in October after my second field season! It shows him in the foreground, making his way up the Lynch Glacier on Mt. Daniels! In the background we can see members of the documentary film crew that followed us around that year!

My nordic skis, their Peltonens, gliding through the snow like magic!

Snow girl! she represent me, seeing snow as beautiful, represented through the magical plants around her. On the bottom the growth is shown: as the snow picks up, the plants grow taller and bloom.
Snow girl walking through the new fallen snow. The idea that she and the snow together form the magic is shown through the growth the of the plants which spring and then bloom as she approaches.

Snow girl portrait
She is painting the snow back onto Mt. Baker, giving its glaciers life and a positive mass balance!

This year at UMaine I was taking all the beginner art courses: Drawing I and II, 2d and 3d design. So, I didn't do much art that wasn't observational, or pretty regulated by my professors, but I learned a ton. Our last project for Drawing II, which we worked on in and out of the classroom, was a landscape diptych or triptych. I chose to do two views of glacial spots that went well together!
Iceworm Glacier

Camp Kaiser


The diptych!



Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Swinging with the Old Stars

Over spring break I decided to draw something on my free time that would just be for fun, something I could keep, whatever I felt like. I thought that it would be great to do a series of portraits showing me and some of my closest friends at home and at UMaine! I chose pictures of the online, then drew them out in pencil, inked them with pen, and added some color! I had a lot of fun doing this, and it was cool to show it to all of them once I finished. On the left are my friends Maya and Joe from Maine, then my friend and roommate Robyn, my boyfriend Jackson, me, my sister Megan, and my friends from home, Andrea and Magda! 

Good portraiture practice! A few of these I got the face down on try one, but some - especially my own - took a bit of erasing and re-drawing!

Me n Jackson


Done with inking, fun, but you don't want to over do it

Finished after a week or two!



Me and Jackson after a formal for his fraternity, ATO

Starting out spring break at Jackson's! We had barely had any snow on winter, but as soon as we left, on the drive home, there was a little snow storm! We made this that night in the dark.

At the end of spring break I flew down and stayed with Megan in her dorm at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia! It was awesome, the weather was really nice, the city is really pretty, and I got to meet all her friends and her boyfriend, Zach.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Bright blue ripples

This is the rest of the artwork from Drawing II at UMaine that I haven't previously posted! Our final project was primarily in class, although I spent quite a few hours out of class working on it as well. We had to create a landscape diptych, and I chose to try my hand at two snapshots I'd taken in the North Cascades on two different glaciers. The two pieces could be one continuous scene, but separated into parts, or different places of perspectives that went well together. I chose a scene off our group walking around the small beautiful melt bonds on little Iceworm Glacier in the Mt Daniels area. On the right is a view of Camp Kaiser, a cool area on a hike to Mt Baker. I wanted some of the lines of ice, snow, water, rock, and sky, to somewhat flow into one another between pieces, while also creating some tension since they don't match up. I enjoyed working with a dry media because whenever I have done large landscape I have always painted with acrylics. Also, after my first year of school, it was fun to try out new method of mark-making to build up the two views!

Glacial landscape diptych

Camp Kaiser, so beautiful! A popular mountain goat hangout
Iceworm glacier, small, so a good day to take a break from tons of measurements and sketch!
A homework assignment while we were drawing the figure in class was to depict a figure in any environment, and show their interaction with it. I created this after the first drawing I did of Jackson in a previous post in which the mood "isolation" was conveyed. I had him pose for me, and he gave me the idea to have him sit in this tree. It is a large tree on campus, those are the actual size of its branches! We call it the dinosaur tree because it seems like a thick brachiosaurus neck you are sitting on! I did this in a mix of charcoal as well as ink that I painted on!

Jackson in our secret dino tree!

Close-up
I am not a huge fan of drawing things with reflections such as in glass and water, so I wasn't that excited to get a assignment specifically telling us to: "draw some sort of glass vase with a metallic utensil inside, filled partway with water, and resting on some sort of cloth or paper". This is one of the few homework drawings that it was harder to interpret in an interesting way (at least for me), the guidelines were stricter than usual. I was going to Jackson's house for his parents' birthday weekend, and so I took advantage of stuff they had. the elliptical view of a round vase or cup at a tilted perspective is somewhat difficult, so that is definitely imperfect, but it doesn't really bother me. I did have a fun time working on this, but it is a somewhat difficult and not quite as enjoyable still-life.

Twisted reflections
We did a couple of abstract "draw to music" type of assignment towards the end of the semester. I spent good time on them, but they were a nice break from all the observation assignments the rest of the semester. The top one was simply responding to loud and soft sounds, and the bottom one was done while listening to Zoe Keating's "Optimism". 

Which dominates - loud or soft?

"Optimism" is a beautiful piece, it is calm and happy
I really loved figure drawing. We had one male model come in for about 5 consecutive classes and pose for us. I have tons of newsprint piece filled with quick gestures of him, from 30 seconds to 3 minutes to 10 minutes. Towards the end of class, after warming up for a while with different types of gesture drawings, we did longer pieces, either in charcoal or pastel. I am really looking forward to taking a figure drawing and anatomy class next semester, as well as a painting class!

I bet he got uncomfortable during the long poses - he got to move around every 20 minutes
First day longer pose
Probably about 10 to 15 minutes


About 45 minutes

All green!


Sunday, May 6, 2012

Spinning Threads to your Throne

I am home for summer vacation, my first year at UMaine completed, and I will be able to photograph and post a bunch of my new artwork soon!

This would be an awesome tattoo!

Veronica Fish, I love this
Marion Bolognesi, amazing watercolor portraits
Casey Weldon, Illustrator




Casey Weldon



Casey Weldon, Calvin and Hobbes