Work

So I will admit that I have not be updating this blog as much as I should, but mainly that's because I've been trying to work on my website:

 ShelbyCanDrawToo

I will add some of my new artwork tonight or tomorrow before class.  This is all :)

Subject Statement

For my visual essay, I have chosen to document animal shelters, particularly dog shelters such as the Tunica Humane Society.  The shelter is over run with dogs and is adding to that burden everyday.  Whenever someone wanders into the shelter to look around, they are overwhelmed by the massive amount of animals there.  New kennels are being built by volunteers on a weekly basis to try and keep up with the demand for them while the county tries to cut the budget that the no-kill shelter lives on.  With only half of their originally proposed budget, the shelter is trying even harder to get their animals into good loving homes.  Because of how many animals are there, it is difficult to focus on one animal and give them the attention they deserve.  I know this first hand because I volunteer at this shelter every weekend.  This will make gathering information on site easy and I will draw out each dog there.  The dogs will all be rendered in quick sketch form reflecting the feeling of trying to give full attention to one animal whenever there are so many to look at.  These drawings will all be presented as jumbled together in the end, while in the middle there will be 4, 11x17s in the format of a window.  This window represents looking in or even viewing the lives of these animals.  The dogs in the 4 larger pieces will all be rendered in a much clearer fashion than the ones all around them.  The dogs surrounding the finished rendered pieces will be done on smaller pages and will be in different sizes and even colors.  The area around will be overwhelming and suffocating in the massive amount of drawings.

5.2 Ideas

So I decided to just draw some quick sketches of dogs.  I was able to complete all of these within about five minutes.  This led me to the idea that maybe I could base my piece, or pieces off the humane shelter in Memphis and how it is over flowing with dogs.  If I can do this many dogs in only five minutes, imagine how many I could do within a month's time.  Perhaps I could even do so many as to fill up a wall.  It would be the same as walking into a dog shelter.  There are so many dogs that it's hard to focus on just one.  Since you are constantly looking at these dogs, you cannot take in all of their details.  You see quick sketches of what you think they all look like.

Reworked 5.1 Illustration

Illustration 1.5 In Progress - Updated

Updated version at the bottom....

So I woke up at 3 am last night with this idea.  I hate the flower and I'm going to change it, yet it'll still be a flower.  I also just noticed the product placement thanks to the website behind the photo.  But yeah.  This is my idea so far... an intimate couple with a flower sprouting from the woman's mouth.  I'm going to go in and do the flower in a much more realistic manner and also do it at a perfect vertical.  I honestly have no idea what I'm doing and I'd love some feedback.  No. the oval is not going to stay there, it's just to help me visualize things.  It'll still be a basic oval, but I will have parts of it broken up to give a push and pull between the two weird purples.  Let me know what's going through your head.  I could sure use the help.

UPDATE

Okay, so I played with breaking up the oval thing that this couple is in and I changed the flower to a more realistic and also a better straight up and down vertical that breaks the top of the oval just barely.  The flowers and the background is still a BIG work in progress, but I'm beginning to get happy with the couple.  I want to come in with them and give a few shadows to show mass and volume, but besides that, I like them.

Here it is again with this weird feather texture background.

UPDATE

So I hate the texture on the background, but I still feel like I'm missing a big piece to this.  I took some of Olivia's advice and erased the linework over the legs so that they don't go straight to the edge of the oval and then stop.

COLOR CHANGE!  I LIKE IT BETTER NOW!

And a big change....

So get rid of the weird geometric crap coming out of the oval and take away their outlines and this is just getting... weird.  I actually don't care for it much anymore, but I'm going to change that!

A few more contours and also a line art color change coming up!

So on the first one, I went in and dulled down the brown color I used for line art.  The second one is a blue shade and the third one is a pink/purple shade.  Earlier I played with putting back in the facial expressions and details along with keeping the contour simple, but I realized that I didn't like it.  Now, I see the strange thing going on with the flowers in the corner, but I can fix that after I get a little feedback on the contour colors.


This kind of art is different than what I used to do, but at the same time it's what I always wanted to do.  I admire artists who work with strange subject matter such as this and can convey it in a very fantastical, almost scifi effect.

First Project - Thinking

UGHHHHHH!!!!!

I want this illustration to prove how unique and original I am!  Because I am totally a beautiful butterfly that nobody else looks like!  Right?!  Ugh!  I'll have an idea... yeah... tomorrow.... this sucks.