The Ship Has Set Sail...

...meaning I'm fresh out of art school (fresh meaning...I've been out for a year trying to gather my bearings). It's difficult, that first year out of art school. You are tossed into an unrelenting sea with other lost and confused artists wanting to make a mark in the world. They always say the first year is the most difficult, yet I've been incredibly lucky. I landed a job with the Church Health Center in Memphis, TN as their digital design assistant. Not exactly what I imagined myself doing after spending four years running away from graphic design, but it provided me with plenty of opportunities. My illustrations have been published in two of their magazines, the Church Health Reader, and I've tentatively tried my hand at graphic design. Turns out I really love it.

One of the most common traps artists fall into is the full-time job/no-time artist net. You work nine to five, five days a week. When you get home, you just want to collapse into bed and watch Netflix while snuggling your kitty. Unfinished projects stay unfinished. The unpublished book stays unpublished. How can this vicious cycle be ended? That is a rhetorical question, because I do not know. I do know that it's all about mind-over-matter. Besides that, I'm still trying to figure it out.

I read this book a while ago, called Art and Fear. It talked about our own personal fears being our most challenging obstacles when pursuing art. Fear of rejection, of ridicule, of our vulnerability is what prevents us from putting our work "out there."  So we've discovered the source. Great. But how do we move forward? That's the tough part. I can only tell you what people have told me.

1.) Keep making work, no matter if it's commissioned or not. The drive to create should be stronger than the need to be recognized. It takes time and it will happen. 2.) Keep posting your work online. You may get 12 likes. You may get 100. Just keep posting your work (that means in-process work as well). People will start to notice 3.) Don't worry about perfection. If you are creating a piece for fun, you are creating it FOR FUN. Even if it's just a doodle in your sketchbook. Give yourself room to experiment and grow. 4.) Surround yourself with supportive, creative people. Work on art with friends. Become a member of some art society. Just don't get bogged down by someone who is a negative-pants all the time. 5.) Get inspired! Go to museums, art openings, galleries, craft shows, follow your favorite artists on Instagram, go to art conferences...sometimes you just need a creative pick-me-up.  

Most of this is common sense, but you get it.

Anyway, this is my first post in a long, long time. Check out my website at terriscottillustration.com!

The Biker Maker

This is a project I've been working on all year, and I'm really excited to share it with you!  It's called The Bike Maker and it's a short, very short chapter book about a boy named Miles whose father is the famous Bike Maker of Sweet Grass, Louisiana.  When his father dies, Miles must overcome his grief, make friends, and become the next bike maker.  That's the simple version.  There is a lot of symbolism personal to me, since the story is inspired by my dad, who built these weird, unridable bikes before he died.

This piece will go into my final senior show at Memphis College of Art.  I plan on developing the story much further after graduation.  In the meantime, here's a sneak peek!

(pssst:  this is the cover)

DAD'S TALL TALES

Okay, so it's been a while...and I mean A WHILE!  The past year I've been working on a series called "Dad's Tall Tales," inspired by the exaggerated stories my dad told of his childhood.  I may have mentioned it in previous posts, but I hardly remember any movies I watched last week.  So I'm going to tell you AGAIN!

In my Illustration 3 class (2012), I painted three paintings for "Dad's Tall Tales," which I submitted to the Communication Arts annual.  It didn't get in of course, but never quit submitting!

Anyway, that spurred an entire body of work called "Dad's Tall Tales." Here are the first three.  All are the same size, 9x16", and are painted in acrylic.

These are the pieces I did last semester.  I did a total of seven pieces, but these are only three.  I'll post the others as soon as I can.  

I'M NOT DEAD!

It's been a while (about a year?), but now I'm back and ready to share what I'm up to…which is quite a lot actually.  Let's start with what I'm currently doing!  Can you say…FIGHTER PILOTS IN SPACE RIDING ON BOOKS?  Yep, I can!  It's my design for the Memphis Library Card contest, due today.  I originally wasn't planning on designing a card, since I'm working on my Bachelor's of Fine Arts piece (I'll get to that later).  But I figured this would be a lovely break from doing class assignments, or should  I say "opportunities," since I need to stop thinking like a student.  So here you go!

It started as a pencil sketch, then I scanned it into Photoshop and painted it digitally.  Here are my favorites!

Macbeth 4

Okay, so here is a more revised painting.  I amped up the contrast and thought maybe it'd be more effective if I blended the middle witch with the background.  I added more definition to the witch with the shear veil over her face and tweaked the shadows on the arms of the two flanking witches. 

Macbeth 3

So here it is!  My final, digitally painted Macbeth poster.  Or my "final" for now anyway.  

 

MACBETH 2

Here's a color study and it's variations, with line, without line, with text, combined with the value study, etc.  I will definitely exclude the line and use a painterly approach.  I'm really enjoying the painting part of digital illustration.  The colors are a complementary color palette of reds and greens with accents of golds.  It seems to fit with the theme of Macbeth.  Green is envy, red is seduction/murder/blood.

Fill colors

Value study and color study combined

Without the line looks best.  It's softer and more sinister.

MACBETH

New assignment!  For our next assignment in my illustration class, we are creating either CD covers, book covers, or movie/play posters!  I'm so excited, and as the title shows, I've decided to create a play poster for my favorite Shakespearean play "Macbeth."  I'm not entirely sure why this play, of all plays, stands out to me the most.  Probably because it's all about how unhealthy ambition can be your downfall.  I'm super ambitious just so you know.  Also, this play as some of the strongest female characters than any of Shakespeare's other plays (unless you count Taming of the Shrew).  Lady Macbeth is evil and awesome!  She is the true villain and manipulator.  Also, the three witches are simply iconic. I love to quote them..."Double, double," "All hail thee Macbeth, thane of Cawdor," etc.  It really surprised me, when watching my favorite Harry Potter movie, the Prisoner of Azkaban, that the  students sang the witches' poem from Macbeth.  Love, love, love!  Anyway, so here are some of my sketches and studies for my poster.  I really love the idea of ambition being seductive and tempting.  In my thumbnails I went back and forth between showing Lady Macbeth tempting and coaxing Macbeth and the witches coaxing him.  I decided on the witches, purely because I wanted to show a trio hovering over Macbeth.  Here are some thumbs.

I then took very specific reference photos using friends who were sweet enough to pose for me.  I came up with this sketch.

I then scanned the sketch in and turned it to line art.  

This is a quick value study.  

Now for the text.  I really do love Garamond, mostly because it's the font used in all of the Harry Potter books.

Color studies and other fonts and placements are on their way!

Faces and Backs

Okay, so I forgot to include my back design for the cards in the previous post.  So here we go:

These are for a COMPLETELY different project for a different class, but this blog isn't strictly for illustration.  I'm trying to double major in illustration and painting, and this is what I'm doing in my painting class currently.  These paintings (and there are more) were influenced by 3D stop-motion films and the production of these films.  These pieces are meant to reflect that sense of unity and teamwork involved in stop-motion.  Also, I've been using pattern as a framework, or net, that provides structure and reinforces that idea of unity.  So yes, always trying new things.  These are done in plaster gauze and acrylic paint.  

Creation. 30"X36"

Feeling Whole Again. 11"X18"

Card Borders and Backs

So it makes life, and art, so much easier and better if you just make your own textures.  Especially if you want a specific look.  Using the paint tool or the burn tool on Photoshop didn't give me the desired effect, so I just burned my own paper.  I suggest not burning paper in an enclosed room like I did, unless you want your smoke alarms to go off.  So the backgrounds are actual burned paper.  The dark lines (the "eyelashes" that frame the ovals and suit signs) were done in pencil, scanned in, and manipulated on Photoshop.  I thought that looked better than using a brush, and it is more consistent I think.  So one problem I noticed, however, is that when printing and cutting, there's the possibility that some of the edges will get cut into.  That's always something to think about when you're designing something meant to be printed and reproduced.  

Revised Travel Poster and Postcard

OKAY!  So here are the revised-revised travel poster and postcard.  Granted, it's not in my usual style (if I even have a style), but it's more of an experiment really.  I played with different textures that I created using graphite rubbings.  I also looked online (I do not suggest using other images unless they are your own, but glass is difficult to photograph.  But don't listen to me).  The poster is mostly influenced by art deco posters, especially Metropolis.  Fred Burton, one of the craziest and most influential teachers at my school, got on me for my lack of movie knowledge.  So he made me watch Metropolis and I LOVED it.  The postcard, however, was influenced by the decorative elements of art nouveau.  I've been on a pattern kick recently, so I decided to sneak that into the postcard.

Travel Poster Color Studies

Okay, so these aren't actually revised sketches.  They're more revised than the thumbnails, but not quite there yet.  These are some examples of color schemes I want to go with.  This first set of five are the designs for my travel poster;  the second set, for my postcard.  For the actual designs, I'm working on a more revised sketch that incorporates more of the bike idea.  Possibly adding a gear facade onto the building or paving the road with gears or wheels.  I definitely need to work on the people, since they're in the foreground.  So with that said, here are some possible color schemes.  For this first set of five, I'm leaning more towards the second, the purples, greens, and golds.

These are the quick color studies of my postcards.  I played off of the Kanye West "blinds" glasses idea (I have no idea what they're called, but they have horizontal bars that remind me of window blinds).  I've also added some examples of the highly patterned and colored plant life of Madda.  I like the first and the third one, mostly because blues and oranges are my favorite colors to use with each other.  The postcards are more art nouveau than art deco, like the poster is.  

10 Card Designs

Okay, so for those who don't know, I was anti-digital the first two years of art school.  I hated it, it took forever, too many shortcuts to remember, and I felt like an elephant learning how to paint.  Then I talked to some fantastic illustrators at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live, wrote an excessive amount of notes when my teachers would give demos, and interviewed and picked the brains of other illustrators and classmates.  This card assignment has provided me with the perfect way to practice, so I've been dedicating about 6 to 12 hours each week working on these.  I have 52 cards to design.  I believe I have the first 10 paintings at a finished state.  I can't afford to dwell on them for too too long.  I'm almost finished with the next 10.  What I really need to focus on right now is designing a border for the front, the suit signs along with the typography (I really love Garamond and Snicket uses it in his books), and the pattern for the backs.  I also need to speed up production; I tend to dwell on detail.  I'm going to change these backdrops below, mostly because the burned edge texture looks bad in my opinion.  I want to actually burn paper and scan it in.  But these are just to give you an idea of where I'm going.  

                             Aunt Josephine                                             Klaus reading

                                 Uncle Monty                                                  Count Olaf

                               The Reptile Room                                        Captain Sham

                  Sunny and the Incredibly Deadly Viper                          Stephano

                                 Violet as bride                                             Sunny in a cage