England Pictures!!!

Hi everyone, just wanted to quickly share these images from our time here in England. We are still in Colchester but will soon be heading for London and then back to the US. We rented a car and drove around the countryside and stopping in some of the smaller towns around London. We stopped at Cambridge, Bath, and Stonehenge.

Chris and I standing on the upper level of the Roman Bath Spa in the heart of downtown Bath. The city's abbey can be seen behind us and is probably the original spot of a Roman temple.

The bath spa itself, the water is that green and may have been in the earth for about 10,000 years before being pushed to the surface by the natural spring. The Romans believed the water was warmed by the goddess Minerva and contained healing properties.

Stonehenge!!!

Playing Catch Up

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long delay between posts, July has been extremely busy so I’ll giving you a huge delivery of new stuff and updates on the general craziness. Here’s some of the latest sketchbook work. I’m experimenting with showing more inanimate objects and environments, not just figures. I’m enjoying the switch, but figures are still my favorite subject.

Traffic lights at the corner of Main St and Liberty in Ann Arbor

Plane ride from Detroit to St. Louis en route to Denver

Pearl Street in downtown Boulder, Co with coffee shop patrons

Now for a Bernanke Update, here are a few details from the progressing painting. I’m playing with painting on Gatorboard with has an extremely slick surface, causing the paint to make streaky patterns when it’s applied to fresh board. I like the spontaneity of the strokes right now, but who knows, it may change. I’d love to get feedback on it.

Detail of the figures behind Bernanke

Now here’s the project that pulled me from Bernanke. It’s a wedding present for my friend, Heather, who just got married in Boulder, CO (hence Colorado sketches). Heather studied for a semester in Florence and totally fell in love with the city. I’m still about four or five hours from completion, but I am immensely proud of this piece. I’ve spent about three days on it so far, so it’s moving very quickly. I really feel that it successfully combines my sketchbook style with a painterly approach. At some point, I may offer prints of this on etsy, I’ll keep everyone posted.


The minute Chris and I got back from Colorado, we packed up and flew to Paris. Chris is currently teaching at a program in Colchester, UK but we figured that we’d do a few days in Paris.

We visited as many museums as we could with the Musee D’Orsay being our favorite. The Bonnard painting below is from their collection. Another favorite was the Rodin museum. We spent most of our evenings exploring different neighborhoods and shooting tons of photographs. I’m hoping to create another piece like the Florence for Paris.

So, we are now settled in Colchester and I am trying to work on developing a few personal projects and getting drawings ready for my next big illustration project. I didn’t bring any major art with me due to the difficulty of transporting it safely, but that helps me focus on my sketchbook and more mobile projects. ☺
Hope you enjoyed the update, we will be here until the middle of August and then will begin packing for the move to Seattle. I will do my best to post regularly.
Cheers,

Erika

Color Study

Here's the color study for Ben. The suit looks a bit lighter than planned, so please imagine it around a 90% gray if it's not correct on your screen. I wanted to create a feeling of depth with the light background, desaturated medium-medium toned middle ground and bold, dark foreground. Let me know what you think. :)

I am so excited to start on the final for this piece. All the feedback everyone has been kind enough to pass on to me has been a huge help. Thank you so much to everyone!!!

Bernanke Update

Here's an updated drawing for the Bernanke piece. I'm almost ready to transfer it to board though I'm still working on figuring out the colors for the final. The color study should be finished in the next day or so.

Bernanke Portrait

Hi everyone, I just finished this comp for my next piece and would love to get any feedback or suggestions any of you may have.

The main concept concerns the challenges that Ben Bernanke faces with the current economic crisis. One of the options is for the Fed to print more money, "dough," which may lead to inflation and a loss of monetary value. I also wanted to show the public frustration with the bailout of Wall St. and the feeling that any Federal money and assistance will go to the men and women on Wall St. as part of the bailout money.
I hope that comes across, I'll be work on color and value studies over the next couple days and will soon post those.

Seattle Sketching

This first piece was actually created in Youngstown, OH and in downtown Chicago. I like the illusion of a person tutoring a cityscape in math. :)

The flight from Detroit to Seattle is about five hours which leaves lots of time for playing in a sketchbook. This piece took a little let than an hour and allowed me to experiment with line quality and perspective. I really like the worm's-eye view in this piece and the usage of color to communicate distance.

The musical duo on this page are part of the Tallboys, a country and bluegrass group. The girl would occasionally stand and step dance to enunciate the beat of the songs. Really cool stuff and nice people.

This is a collage of people I saw while I wandered around the city and hung out at various coffee shops. I wanted to created a seamless collection of people that carried an ambiguous narrative. I've been thinking of creating paintings out of compositions directly from my sketchbook or inspired by the people and places in my sketchbook. We'll see what happens.

Awww, sleepy Chris.

Penguins!!!

During my trip to New York, I had the chance to talk with the AD of a childrens' publisher. He suggested that I do a few childrens' market samples to make my portfolio more marketable. I decided to focus on penguins from an old CCAD assignment and figured that penguins are cute, huggable animals that all kids like. So, here's a rough look at the process behind my sushi-loving penguins.
After making detailed sketches, compositions and color studies I sculpted the penguin characters for the painting and shot photos.

After transfering the final drawing, I painted transparent glazes of acrylic paint to give the piece a medium tone, next I added the darks and then started glazes of color.



A few friends have encouraged me to flesh out a story and write a childrens' book inspired off this piece. Right now I want to concentrate on other pieces to get more diversity in my portfolio, but I may return to this concept sometime soon. We'll see what happens. I hope you like it, let me know if you have any suggestions. :)