Boredom can be a beautiful thing.

Within just a few days of returning home for the holidays, I found myself extremely bored. No more early wake-ups or firing on all cylinders through the night... Although I loved sleeping in every day and gorging myself on delicious home cooking (as well as plenty of holiday sweets). Many of my friends had not yet come back, or even finished school, so I decided I had to give myself some work to do. So, I asked all of my friends to send me good photographs of themselves for me to do a digital portrait for them. I flew out of the gates by cranking out 5 on the first day. Production quickly trailed off, and I still have a few more to do before I retire this project, but I'm happy with my progression. I learned a lot about discerning colors among tricky context differences, and rendering reflected light. I've done 16 of these since I started a few weeks back, and these are some of my favorites:



















All of these portraits were first sketched free-handed and then painted from reference (no tracing, paintovers, or eyedropping). I used only 1 layer for the sketch and a second one for the paint. Took 40 to 90 minutes (if I got caught up tweaking brush options for the hair) each.

Thanks to all of my friends for helping me out and encouraging me!

I did it

This morning I found out I will be continuing my studies in industrial design at Western in the fall.
I had my portfolio review yesterday afternoon and I wasn't sure how it went. I rushed through my 15 minutes and I didn't feel like I said everything that I wanted to say. I felt really numb after I came out and sat around for 2 hours with what felt like a hole in my brain.
Eventually I got my ass out of the building, bought a donut and a Sobe and took a nap to kill time. Because that night was going to be one of celebration for all of the hard work we did that year. It started with a movie with a handful of ID majors and then we hit the party put on by the juniors. It was Adobe themed, and it really kicked ass.









These are my presentation boards for the review. I was really self-conscious about how if I had taken away the second board, it would look like I was going into a review for illustration rather than industrial design... But I tried to get across that I have a specific set of skills that I can offer to a team of designers, and my experience with online artist communities have given me extra experience in giving and taking criticism (thanks, Eatpoo, C9, Conceptart, and apedogs!). I'm super-excited and I'm looking forward to working with my classmates next fall.

I'd like to thank my classmates for working so hard and sharing their discoveries, skills, and supplies; the juniors and seniors for helping so much and sharing their insights, my professors for putting together such an awesome program, and especially my friends and family for supporting me and keeping me sane and helping out in whatever way they knew how. It means a lot to me.