Awhile ago, I got asked by Jordan Shiveley of Grimalkin Press to create a cover illustration for Hive 5: A Somewhat Quarterly Comics Anthology. For the illustration, I stuck to basic concepts. I took some inspiration with the title “Hive 5″ sounding similar to “high five” the hand gesture.  Since I had a nice ink drawing of a arm with a bee gracing the top, I took that as a starting point and progressed to the final draft of the image. Mark Leicht, Hive’s designer propose the possibility of a vellum dust jacket to separate the image layers to mimic the layering in my thesis prints. I’m excited to see the final design.

Started off super minimal and black and white. Placed temporary title design to work around the illustration.

Added some more atmosphere similar to my thesis prints.

Worked with color and nixed the title since that’s a design decision for Mark to handle.

The “final draft,” Mark Leicht will take the image and finish off the rest of the cover design.

I gave up on just using the arm and decided to include the figure that’s attached since it still felt so disembodied. I was stubborn about it since it felt overused in my thesis work, but it translates really nicely for the design.

Hive 5 will be on sale in the next few months, which I’ll be sure to announce along with showing off the final design. You can buy previous issues through their Etsy shop and see more of Hive/Grimalkin Press at their blog. They’re nice people, say hi.

I graduated with my MFA! It’s good to be finished. Now I get to spend the next six months to a year to adjust and manage an art life outside of school. Whoohoo?

The art page is updated with the Thesis work. It’s going to be awhile before new work will be seen. I have no studio or printshop access. Have a good summer everybody!

Work is up!  The installation was kind of stressful and things kept falling on me, but it’s up! I’m on a different wall now with more prints showing. Now I just need to hammer out that artist statement…

Summer 08 (before MCAD):

Fall 08 (First semester at MCAD):

Spring 09 (Second Semester):

Summer 09 (Summer Break):

Fall 09 (third semester back at MCAD):

Spring Semester ’10 (Fourth and final semester, although work-in-progress):

I had another committee meeting that went well. The work is coming along and now I just need to wrap prints up in the next few weeks then name and frame!

Keep in mind that these are mostly still works in progress. They’re probably change again before the show. Also they’re not photographed as well as I like, my fault though.

This one above is being traded for an etching by Graham Judd. Whoohoo.

This one is really blurry and I’m pretty sure the colors are still wrong. Actually, it looks down right awful in comparison to the real deal. Most of the ink I’m using has metallic sheen to it, so photographing and adjusting later has been a pain.

This one has an “Alice in Wonderland” fall down the tunnel feel.  Kind of trippy. Wolfdogghost is technically in there, but the layers obliterated him to be super transparent.

This one I mistakenly printed over a flipped version of the same figures and created a mirror of four figures. At first I thought it would be a throw away print, but I managed some recovery out of it.

I have more to show, but I’ll spread it out through the week. There’s not going to be much posts for this month since I got to prepare for the show and graduation. Work work work.

I was testing different faces for some of the earlier drawings. I didn’t want to keep using the same 2 portraits so I made two more to interchange. I’m not sure if it works yet. It still feels unresolved…or I’m getting accustom to overproducing the drawings. Meh.

“New” faces, but really old faces. I have to keep resorting to older pieces because of time constraints. I can’t wait for when I can spend more time on drawing. Outside of that complaint, I messed up a little on the second portrait’s left eye (well more than just the eye… *cough*…). I thought about leaving it alone, but seeing it small like this, it looks horribly like a black eye. I’ll probably fix it up in photoshop.

Also, I scanned Wolfdogghost:

Ugh, I want to print finally, but there are papers to write.

Okay, this makes me feel a little better. I’m finished (maybe) with another character for the prints. I’m calling it wolfdogghost. It’s like the wolf from Red Riding Hood or Three Little Pigs, but a more pathetic version. It kind of reminds me of my dog a little, only she gets pity because she’s beastly fat.

I’m seeing some similarities.

Just a new post saying that I updated the art page with all my drawings for the silkscreen prints. I’ll probably update it again with 2-3 more at a later date.

Onward!

I reworked the image more in photoshop. Since people liked the image, I worked out the issues that I wasn’t pleased with, namely the symmetry. I think the figure  is better with three arms. She’s still insect-like and the three arms reinforces more of the trinity aspect of the figure.

I might fuss with the right hand more after it’s printed on film, but it’s nearly there.