Gotta Get Back Into the Art Swing of Things

For the past several (graduated!) months I have been working a full time job for my school. Now I have dropped down to part time and I hope it will leave me some more time for my art. Coming home after an 8 hour day every day and finding the enthusiasm to do art is really difficult, I'm hoping with my extra time now I can be productive. So first project out the door is this card I made for my boss as a thank you for all he has done to help me over the past three years. He liked to ask in the morning if I -obviously the color astute artist- thought his tie matched the rest of his outfit. Since I will no longer be around to help out I made him this handy interactive color wheel...

 

The first layer of shirts is painted in watercolor than placed on top is a circle made of acetate. Painted on the acetate in gouache are the ties. Holding the two pieces together are those things you use in the punched holes of reports to hold them together. So the top layer of acetate can spin around on top around and vary all the ties with each shirt. Like this handy .gif demonstrates...

If you click on the image, it will move.

Illuminated Letters

Recently in my attempts to get myself to do art post-graduation I have been working on an Illuminted Letters Alphabet. Originally I was just going to make one 'A' but then I got caught up in it, so now I'm moving on to the whole alphabet. Each letter is inspired by an obscure or unusual word.

 

A was before I really had any idea of a theme. I guess in retrospect A is for Aviary.

 

I then experimented with some color, scanning in old test strips of watercolor samples. 

Still not quite sure if I like that look or not yet.

B is for Bric-a-Brac: Small, usually ornamental objects valued for 

their antiquity, rarity, originality, or sentimental associations

C is for Cornucopia.

Then I got bored with D and skipped to H, which is for Horology:  

the art or science of measuring time

Currently in progress is E for Entomology

This Post Is Way Overdue

A few months ago I completed the work on my senior thesis project which ended up being a five spread pop up book, based on the novel "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" by Salman Rushdie. After hand making two books I finally found the time to photograph it and here it is:

The cover

The first spread, including title page.

  The second spread -the little boy at the door opens too.

The third spread.

The fourth spread.

The fifth and final spread.

But the book ended up being a whole lot longer than this, it included a graphic summary in the back talking about my process and the creation of each pop up. That can be seen after the jump:

The Glass Castle

Recently for my mask making class we had to make masks based on stories from our heritage. After making the mask we would then photograph it and collage it into a final illustration. I researched my Polish background and found very little, but I did come up with one story: The Glass Castle. This is the story of a princess who lives in a castle on top of a mountain of glass. Many knights try and reach the top, but all fail to climb the mountain or are devoured by a giant eagle who watches over the castle. Finally a young, unpretentious man climbs up the mountain, grabs onto the eagles feet and flies to the top of the mountain. In the courtyard of the castle he encounters a tree the grows golden apples, fruit which wards off the dragon who gaurds the castle. Finally he makes it to the princess who he marries and they live happily ever after atop a glass mountain.

Here's the sketch for the mask:

Then I built the mask/headpiece out of wire, masking tape and plaster gauze, and painted it with acrylic paint. The glass mountain was built out of watercolor paper.

 

Then I photographed myself wearing the mask.

I painted individual pieces in watercolor to scan into the computer

and collage digitally.

Finally I took the whole thing into Photoshop and pulled it all together.

 

I think the end result is kinda unsettling.

Bark Fur Art: Benefit for the Boston MSPCA

On Thursday, April 28 (from 6-9), I will be participating with several pieces in the Bark Fur Art event, which benefits the Boston's MSPCA. Half the proceeds will go to the MSPCA, so come out and support animals in need! My cohorts Amanda Lo and Kerrian White will also be featuring their art for the animals.

More details at the Facebook event:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bark-fur-Art/

Mailers, Mailers, Mailers

In the past two months time has been moving outrageously quickly and graduation looms on the horizon. Meanwhile in my portfolio class I'm working on getting ready to be an illustrator in the real world. Part of this phase is making postcard mailers and business cards to hand out to art directors and other professionals. Here are mine:

 

Also, with all this career building comes a somewhat more professional website, which is now available here:

www.alicestanne.com

Chameleon Mask

So here's the planning, execution and illustration of a chameleon mask I made. I'm not incredibly crazy about the mask but it was really fun to make and the final illustration is something I really enjoy.

Sketches, trying to examine the mask from all different sides.

The mask, made of wire, masking tape and painted in acrylic. Photo by Cherry Au.

The final illustration of the character in it's environment (watercolor).

To see more cool masks check out the class' blog:

http://illustrativemasks.blogspot.com/2011/02/project-1-masks.html

It Is Not Only Fine Feathers That Make Fine Birds

So this is actually back from in December, but I finally got around to photographing it. The tunnel book depicts one of Aesop's Fables called "The Jay and the Peacock" which goes like this:

A Jay venturing into a yard where Peacocks used to walk, found
there a number of feathers which had fallen from the Peacocks when
they were moulting.  He tied them all to his tail and strutted
down towards the Peacocks.  When he came near them they soon
discovered the cheat, and striding up to him pecked at him and
plucked away his borrowed plumes.  So the Jay could do no better
than go back to the other Jays, who had watched his behaviour from
a distance; but they were equally annoyed with him, and told him:


 "It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds."

This is the tunnel book in all its three dimensional glory.

This is a scan of all the flattened layers. It just captures the color better.

As usual, its all watercolor (although this time with a bit of gouache in all those feathers).

Senior Thesis Show

   After a years worth of work the Senior class of MassArt is putting on our thesis show. Despite the fact that I have been a slacker about posting up my actual work from my Degree Project on the blog it will all be there. There is some really incredible work worth coming out to see. These are my pieces that show, keep in mind they are literally small pieces of bigger whole pop up spreads illustrating Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of Stories." Photographs of the final pop up spreads will be up soon, but for now...

 

All the pieces are Watercolor on Arches Paper

 

Horsies!

Now that the semester is over I can fill my sketchbook with pictures of whatever I want. And I want to draw pretty pretty horsies. I love drawing horses, their big bodies on tiny legs and their wonderful muscles. Throw on nine or so years of horse back riding and you have an obvious explanation as to why I'm a horse girl.

After A Brief Hiatus...

I have been spending the past month slaving over final projects for school and today my classes are finally over! So the first place to go is quite obviously here, to show off some of what I have been doing for the past while.

This watercolor and gouache piece was done for a competition in the illustration department at my school titled "8th Deadly Sin." I picked 'Waste' as the 8th Sin and this is the final result. Painting all the detail in the trash bags took forever but was totally worth it for the final result. The final piece is about 11 x 17 inches and will be reduced down to 2 x 3 inches to be displayed on a business-type card, which is too bad for the detail but will be nice to have.

This is a smaller part of a larger piece titled "Communication" I did at the beginning of the semester. While the rest of the piece didn't quite turn out the way I wanted, I really like the way the wolf is rendered.