For starters here is my Society of Illustrators piece. I enjoyed doing this piece a lot, because of the use of vibrant colors and the subject matter was something I enjoyed painting. I liked that there was a strong light source across the subjects face so I was able to play with shades and highlights a lot. The most challenging part of this painting was the background. It was difficult to make the background visually interesting, but without taking the perspective off of the main view point. This piece was one of my favorites to do all year, considering the size of it wasn't the funnest.
Next I have my book cover of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." I won't lie, I was dreading this project, because I'm not good with coming up with a new idea for a book that has been republished 100x and not making it look cliche. Of course it turned out cliche with the use of using Huck on the cover, but I wanted to use two forms of Huck's character to remind the reader of the life Huck was running away from. I did this, because when people think of Huckleberry Finn they just thing of him on a raft with a runaway slave and completely forget why he was running in the first place. It was difficult to illustrate the two Hucks, because they obviously had to look like the same person, which is a struggle for me. The background was also a HUGE struggle. I ended up going home and slopping water onto paper and painting blue and green streaks, and lucky for me when it dried it turned looking like a cloud in the sky with ground and maybe a river by the levy. As much as I was hating this project it turned out better than I had thought and I ended up liking it. But I wouldn't be heartbroken if I wasn't able to do it again. :)
My third piece is my Abraham Lincoln piece. This painting started off as a struggle, because I chose to use gouache and I had not played with it enough to know exactly what I was doing. The coloring in Lincoln's face and jacket did not turn out how I had thought, but when the colors blended together I actually liked the outcome. I wish the yellow in the hat had turned out darker, but I still like the way the hat turned out. And like everything else the background kicked my butt!!! I was nervous to lay down the background after I had already finished Lincoln, because I didn't want it to be ruined. I know that you're supposed to focus on the background first, buut I wasn't even sure how the main subject was going to turn out. I wish I would have expanded the background a little more and dropped a little more color into it, but for being an experimental painting, I liked the final turnout.
And for my last piece, its the classical music cover. I also hated this project as well, because I have trouble portray old fashioned stylistic objects. I chose to just paint the composer in order for people to know that it was a classical album and then chose dark blue, yellow, and red to give it a romantic/dark mood. The red did not turn out as dark as I had wanted it to in some spots, but I didn't want to over do it and ruin the entire painting, so I left it as is. Surprisingly the hardest part for me on this piece was the coat. I enjoyed doing the face and hair, but to highlight and darken certain areas of the coat was challenging. The paints kept lifting up or not turning out how I had wanted, so I would just darken the areas to help with the blending. Coming up with the background idea was hard, but completing the background wasn't. I wish I had made more structure to the piano, but I attempted to go into PhotoShop and paint in a little more structure than there was. Overall, for as challenging as this project was for me I like how it came together in the end.
