First Application for BFA

The last several weeks have been an absolute blur- I've been so grateful that I decided to only take the 6 credits.  Getting ready to apply for the BFA program has been very stressful...

Currently my office looks like this:

Yes- it is that crammed full of paintings, sketchbooks and other odds and ends- my chair is in the middle of that ocean as a loan island I can swivel around on. 

I had a really hard time narrowing it down to 20 pieces- at the same time I had a hard time finding 20 pieces that I felt could really be considered 'portfolio quality'.  Below are my selections.

It being the final hour I now have a few that I would like to swap out- but I am also completely out of time.  SO the drawings and paintings above are what I am turning in.

We'll see how I do- I should know in a few weeks if I make it or not.  I honestly don't anticipating getting in this time.  There are so many applying and most of them are absolutely AMAZING artists, and I know that the number of applicants getting into the BFA program will be less than the amount applying. 

In anycase- I'll have an application in- worst case I don't make it this time and I have the summer to work on paintings and drawings and I can try again in the fall! :D

~Alicia

Checking in

I have a second google+ account: AliciaHawksArt@gmail.com

I mention this because I will be moving my art blog off of the account it is currently on and over to the new account within the next week or two.

There are a couple of reasons I'm doing this.

#1- I get spammy.  I run multiple blogs and I know that they'll show up in my followers feeds- sometimes without them subscribing to them; and not every wants to know everything that I post...

#2- my brain really really likes organization and categories- so art with art, family with family.

There are some other reasons; but I'm rather exhausted while writing this post... so they aren't coming to mind.  Really nothing should change- the blogger address and the content will remain the same- just my google profile will be different.

In other news- my portfolio to apply for the BFA program is due this Friday- and I'm super stressed... I cannot wait until I have it turned in and I can be done with the whole thing.

~Alicia

Fashion Illustration

About a month ago I started to write a post about what had happened to make me fall off the earth- I never finished it; and it has been long enough that I'm not feeling particularly compelled to finish it today.  So I'm going to move on :D suffice it to say life happened, I'm alive and everyone is ok.  (I got busy with school and reorganizing every room in the house- twice.  I found the library book- but the local library wants my head now)

One of the courses I'm taking this semester is an Advanced Figure Drawing class- what this translates to is a class about abstraction and stylization of the figure.  These are things I need a LOT of work in- so I've been practicing like crazy to get better at my craft.  This is one of those wonderful senior level classes you can take 2 times for credit- this is my second time taking the class; and I wish I could take it a third time.... I just learn so much.

The unit we just completed was on fashion illustration.  I have a kind of love/hate relationship with this particular branch of illustration; I love drawing super idealized/stylized people... but the extreme proportions in most fashion illustration kinda bugs me.  With that said I've completely enjoyed this unit.

I'm typing this from the school so I don't have my setchbook from last year- which is a shame i'd love to show the 'then vs now' improvement.  I'll make do with what I have on my ipad :D

Like with everything we started out with gesture drawings to help us understand the proportions- we were told to make the legs 2 times as long as the torso.  Let me tell you this is harder then you would originally think.   Most artists- myself totally among the- tend to draw legs shorter than they are in reality.  You don't realize how badly you are doing until you try to elongate the figure and the professor comes up and says 'yea- looks like good proportions; but now you need to lengthen the legs' I thought I was.  I had major issues with it the first time I took this class- this time I knew more of what to expect so I had a slightly easier time from the first.

Those are displying backwards- but I'm sick of fighting the ipad for control over my blog... the lower right was the first one I did, lower left second, and the the ones on the top were after a bit of practice.


I definitly found I enjoyed the fashion figure- at least in gesture form.  Now onto some practice drawings.  

 

It was around this point that I realized I *really* needed to establish my own symbols and proportions- 'cause shooting in the dark was NOT working for me.  

So this is what I did next:

The top half of each page are copies I did from fashion illusrators that I like- the bottom half was me trying to figure out my own interpretations.  

This helped a lot.  

My drawings improved greatly at this point- but I still wasn't satisfied with the way they were looking.  So I decided to do a bunch of head studies from photographs online- I was exploring hair styles and also simplifying features.

Sketches improved again.

The curvy fashion figure below is my favorite by far.  

So with all of that done- I finally felt ready to start working on my project for that unit.  First I established the proportions I'd be using.  

then many thumbnails....

finally a comp of a sort

Honestly I still wasn't 100% happy with it; but I was also out of time.  I wanted to do something original.... so I went to far off the deep end- it's not really a fashion piece but it has fashion figures... so that's something.  

Below is the progress on the watercolor paper from ink to water color.

I don't have a photo of it matted... because I forgot to take one before I turned it in. I learned a LOT not only about fashion but also about using ink and water color.  I'm not the best with either yet... but hey! gotta start somewhere!

~Alicia

(forgive all of the bad shots of my sketchbook- there is pretty terrible lighting where I'm sitting)

2015 Art Goals!!

One of my resolutions is to be more confident about my art.  This is going to be hard for me because my natural instinct is to hide everything I do- because it is scary to put yourself out there.

So I'm going to be trying a few new things this year.

#1- Blog post once a week- at minimum.
#2- #365sketchallenge on instagram- join me on this if you'd like!
#3- start a youtube channel (not sure when or even what I'm going to do on that- but sometime between now and the end of the year I'll be starting a chanel)
#4- Finish my webpage
#5- enter at least 2 non UVU shows
#6- go to the Salt Lake Comic Con for real this year.

Those are the main goals.  :D I'm still coming up with schedules for everything- but I wanted to publish these goals so I could reference them as the year goes on.

Alicia

School Week 3

Totally crazy week- 3 paintings due in a row- and sadly I didn't finish any of them.  I REALLY need to learn to paint faster.  Granted my 'not finished now' is WAY above where I was in my 2000 level classes... but it isn't to where it needs to be yet.

I wanted to share where I got with the paintings BUT I forgot to take pictures- so hopefully I'll have them back next Saturday so I can post them as well as the process on the new ones I've been assigned this week.

By the end of this semester I will have done 32 large paintings (4 of which will *technically* be mixed media drawings; but honestly- they'll be more like paintings when I'm done with them)  I hope that out of those 32 pieces there will be some that are good enough that I can put in my portfolio for this spring.  On top of all of those I REALLY need to get some personal projects done as well.  We'll see if I have time for that :P

This is a short post- mostly just to keep up posting weekly on my blog.

Here is digital painting #2:

It was supposed to be a high-key image based of the illustration friday word 'radio'.  I went with kind of an Edgar Dega theme... but I didn't really get the same kind of beautiful brush strokes that he pulls off.  I painted this one on my ipad in the app Sketchbook Pro.  I fully intend to go back over it this week and bring it to a higher level of finish- and fix a few of the compositional issues.  (Ballarina's are to short, Radio is to big and to far forward in space, the baby doesn't have as much grace in her form as I'd like... stuff like that.  In general I feel like it is really flat.)

See ya later!
~Alicia

o.O

I couldn't come up with a post title- so that little emote will have to suffice.  It is now the end of the second week of Fall Semester- and already this has been one of the most stressful semester ever.  I don't even know where to begin.  Until yesterday I had no idea what my schedule would be- crazy things kept happening.  I had a few classes drop.  One class I walked into and after sitting through the whole class realized I was NOT where I needed to be artistically to do well in that class- so I had to drop it- then came the fun of trying to find a class to replace it.  Which I have.  I have a VERY full schedule right now- 15 credits.  Of course adding on my cute kids, the portfolio that I *HAVE* to finish this semester and the fact that I really do want to do Salt Lake Comic Con in April (though that is a lower priority at the moment- but it sure would be nice if I could fit it in) and of course keeping our living space in some form of repair.  Oh yea- and I do want to exercise.... The fact is I am BUSY.  However- I'm pacing out my time and so far I'm ok.  Hopefully that continues to be the case.

So one of my courses is Digital Painting 1- I've never painted digitally.  It's a very new thing for me.  This:

Is my first ever attempt.  Honestly I had a lot of fun doing it- more fun then I thought I would painting digitally.  It is clearly not a finished piece- though that is the level of finish I got it to to turn it in.  The more I look at it the more I see wrong with it, but it was a start in a new medium.

Anyway- I'm going to update this blog at least once a week.  I'm going to attempt to do sketch dailies and upload them to my social media accounts; also I'm going to try to be more active on instagram and twitter specifically this semester.  I hope to have links to my social media accounts on this blog soon.

~Alicia