While searching through my illustrations from earlier this semester, I was shocked at how different the older illustrations look from the more recent ones. These sensations made me feel a little better about the watercolors from the past few weeks that in my mind I’ve deemed terrible. Here are a couple examples of the beginning work compared to where I am now technically.
This is an example of one of my first line and watercolor illustrations. Dreadful, I know. The line is incredibly too thick on most of it. I also used it just to outline, not to add depth. The use of color also resembles more of a coloring book than modeling and shading and washes. Despite the abundance of negative comments I have on this, I do like the edge of the shadow of the flower sitting on the windowsill.
On the upside, these shoes look much better! I think using a monochrome palette helped with a lot of the issues I was having. I was able to achieve a better range of values, creating the folds in the fabric. The painted line was also pretty successful in this one. It added the right amount of structure without looking like a coloring page.
I know that I still have a long way to go, technically speaking. And as frustrating as this process can be sometimes, it is encouraging to see the progress I’ve undergone already.
It's done!!! ...hopefully. I made the puzzle pieces a little bigger and a little more square and even than they were in my last sketch. The process still took about 3 hours longer than I had anticipated. I think it looks pretty good though...it's hard to read some of the organization names right now, but I think that if it was done up for real, then there would be much more space to work with and the names would fit in the pieces much better. I'm just so glad it's done!
This one turned out pretty fun, I think. I had fun doing it at least. I wish the color of the actual lipstick was a little flatter...I was going for a more graphic feel. But this works too. 
This is pretty disappointing. Should have drunk some of that coffee first I guess. The left side got pretty muddy and the shadow could be miles better. The logo is starting to look ok, but some of the outside line work could have a little more weight to it.
Community. Campus. Global Diversity. Bleh. This is what we had to work with for this mural for the Ryle cafeteria though. I came up with a couple ideas. The first one showed nested rectangles, gradually increasing in size. The smallest rectangle represents Truman campus then growing out geographically. The second idea is just a graphic design, featuring some of those "key words". The last idea shows bold letters spelling out TRUMAN that are made up of puzzle pieces. Each puzzle piece then would have the name of a different student organization, showing the diversity on campus that relates to global diversity.
