At Semester's End

Well the end of the semester finally came, and I'm sure it was a welcome arrival for all. I look forward to painting a lot over the winter break (not so looking forward to my wisdom teeth extraction on Saturday), and working out my thesis project for the spring semester. :"D

And now on to the artwork:

My final assignment for my Illustrating the Edible class is posted up at the class blog, but I'll put it here as well. It's a seed packet! Shown is the front and back.

But then there was thesis, am I right? I've been pretty tight-lipped about my senior thesis project this semester. I didn't really mean to be - I planned to share the entire process, really I did - but working through the project proved to be very nerve wracking.

I am a painter; I always have been, and always will be. But I also love to draw, and as much of my more recent work (the past year and a half or so) has become flat and graphic, I feel like I've been growing tighter and tighter and less and less comfortable. My use of the medium began to feel more like a paint-by-numbers or coloring a coloring book. All of the life had drained from painting for me, and so last semester's Concepts final was all ink wash and over the summer I buried myself in Photoshop. But I had to face painting again sometime, right?

My first couple pieces in my thesis series represent that more graphic style that I've been developing, and I while I enjoyed drawing them, I really hated painting them. The pencil lines stressed me out, and I think I part of me wanted them gone, but another part of me was afraid to paint without them.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardobe

I realized at some point afterwards that I had grown too used to working nearly the exact same way for too long; I didn't feel like I was growing, and that was a bad thing. I needed to break away from the past year or so and try something completely different.

I decided to focus on the environments and the mood of each piece as opposed to a particular scene or characters from the books. This is the first time I've ever paid so much attention to any kind of environment so these were really an interesting challenge for me.

The Magician's Nephew

The Horse and His Boy

The Last Battle

The Silver Chair

There's one last painting that I have yet to scan in, but I'll update this post in a few days with its final version.