Print Paper Book Project 1: The Odyssey Group Collaboration Book

So our Print Paper Book class on the first day jumped right into making a book! How sweet! Jody Williams is a super fun neat teacher too love her quirky self to death so far she's super wise too, she'll be a great teacher. We got the topic of Odyssey and immediately i thought of Scylla one of the two monsters from when they were sailing their boat through that like strait or whatever well here's some history:
In Greek mythology, Scylla (pronounced /ˈsɪlə/; Greek: Σκύλλα, Skylla)^[1] was a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite its counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait were within an arrow's range of each other—-so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass too close to Scylla and vice versa. Scylla was a horrible sea monster, with six long necks equipped with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth. Her body consisted of twelve tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail and with four to six dog-heads ringing her waist. She was one of the children of Phorcys and either Hecate, Crataeis, Lamia or Ceto (all of whom may be various names for the same goddess). Some sources, including Stesichorus cite her parents as Triton and Lamia.

So, yeah I chose to do a chick with frickin dogs heads on her torso and a shit ton of tentacles essentially, done in my own style started with a sketch on some tracing paper transferred to a rubber block then cut away with an incising tool. The stamp was then held on red ink and transferred onto paper that I had repeatedly copied the text:

"...they writhed
gasping as Scylla swung them up her cliff and there
at her cavern's mouth she bolted them down raw—
screaming out, flinging their arms toward me,
lost in that mortal struggle."

Which is an excerpt from the Odyssey by Homer.




This is a test print I did and then I turned in another one after I made a little wave stamp too. I finished first in class ^___^ because I'm a quick little worker bee.








The cover is like a hard card board we wrapped in this soft semi blue semi green paper Jody provided us and put the title on which was a sticker Jody also provided us.








This is the inside we had to saddle stitch the pages and that dark blue-green cardstock together and then procede to glue the dark green cardstock to the hard covers we wrapped, the hard part was getting the cardstock placed evenly because it curled from the glue since it wasn't a strong paper and the PVC glue we were using dries really fast so you had like 3 seconds to move it before it was just stuck in place.




This is the first spread you see when you open the book my print is on page 2 we decided as a group the order of the images we all made and I made page 2 yippe! Thats what the print looks like too with the waves and the text in the background and the prettyness :) I'm very pleased with it as my first real rubber stamp and book making experience.





This is what the book looks like opened from the outside I stained the bottom right of the back with glue woops XD











This is a better view of my saddle stitching I was the first to finish it in class and I helped teach some people how to stitch their books too yay class!
^____^









I am so pleased with this assignment how cool to go to class the first day and jump on a project and then have a finished book you hand made yourself to show by the second day of class! <3 this class is gonna rule!

Print Paper Book Project 2: The Blood Countess Relief Print

So Print Paper Book is immensely fun so far, great choice schedule wise and I recommend it to others. This project is a relief print using a linoleum block. The topic was open and since I didn't know what to do I asked my friend Julian what I should do and we saw Daybreakers (good movie) like two weeks ago so he told me I should do bats. I liked the idea so I came up with a sexy Victorian lady who is most likely either a human snack for the vampire dude in a top hat behind her or freshly turned vampiress. Most likely I like the idea of her being some like snack for him. The vampire figure in the top hat is standing behind her with his back to her and his vampire wings are positioned to make it look like she has wings too. Kind of like she's evil by association with this undead socialite. There are tons of little bat siloheuttes too.
This was done on tracing paper, but this is how it will print.


I changed the dress the girl was wearing and this is how it looks on the linoleum I started carving it last week. Joy. All lines on the figures are carved out and will show up as negative and the background will be negative too. We have to do 9 editions on various papers, so I'm going to buy some cool papers, try newsprint, and try to experiment with some acid-free scrapbook paper I have too. It's a 9" x 12" block. I'm printing on Tuesday evening in the shop so I'm pretty stoked to see how it's going to turn out. I'll post the finished carved block after I'm done getting all the background hacked away.

Roundess Trick in Still Life Drawing

for marlon just a helpful trick for very round objects like gourds, bottles, vases, even works well with skulls, and bones. cheers!

Digital Ill pt 2

This is the second rough draft run through of all three the hibiscus, tree bark, and lotus. They were not well accepted during class, so I will be revising them, again. Sometimes, I wonder why I even care to change my ideas, but if I show up to critique next week with the same thing I will be lynched.

Instead of working more on revising my ideas, because at this point at time I am uninterested in class and I can't make myself do something I don't want to I started doodling in Illustrator of my friend Julian as some sort of tentacle octopus head thing holding all the tools from Illustrator thinking about how he can turn his mythical pagan art into something digital. Definitely, more productive than working on my project at the time [:

Digital Illustration - Patterns Week 1

We started with 30 thumbnails/quick rough sketches and are supposed to make a 2 inch by 2 inch image that can be used as a pattern and the assignment said to focus on shape and form, and have very minimal colors. These are my sketches from in class, the circled ones are the ones my teacher thought I should push further.





This is the first idea i pushed further, and it's like an up close sample of tree bark. To get right down to form, i decided to focus on abstracting the plants/nature objects i chose as themes to really objectify the form and lines i found in the natural specimens. I was keeping in mind that this little patch would be replicated multiple times to create a larger pattern, so it can connect and expand off of itself.

The second idea i pushed was one of the hibiscus on my sketches page that my teacher highlighted he commented that the little stem things inside of the plant were very interesting, so i focused on that element and again abstracted the form to simple geometric shapes, with petals overlapping in the back and again it can fit together to make a larger pattern of itself.

The third idea will be the lotus petals, which my teacher also liked and then i will refine all of these and post the finished stuff after i'm all done. And thats my first project for digital illustration so far!