Choosing from a wide selection of scrap fabric left over from past sewing projects, I crafted myself a four-pocket sleeve that could hold my iPad in its flip-cover, my cell phone, a small notebook, and other small accessories like a microfiber cleaning cloth, business cards and pencils. I drafted my own pattern essentially directly onto the fabric using my iPad as a sort of stencil. The outside is vinyl: waterproof, and easily cleaned with a damp cloth. The inside is made of olive and red rectangles of cotton. The closure is made from a wooden button and a loop of vinyl which is fastened to the back of the case.

The whole case only took me about two hours to make. I think vinyl is a great fabric choice for projects like this because it doesn’t need to be hemmed. In fact, because vinyl is so thick, its almost impossible to hem. That saves a lot of time and frustration when working in small scale.

This pouch will be featured in my crafting gallery, and as always, you can view more of my work at http://shaunart.net

Thanks for reading!

During the steam punk con, there was a side show in the hallway. The performers included an escape artist, a knife juggler, and a contortionist! I was so struck by the contortionist, and the way that she had trained her body to move in ways that appeared to be so unnatural, that I decided to do a piece on her. One trick of hers that was particularly disturbing and dazzling to see in person was the contortionist walking around her own head. It was absolutely insect-like! I interviewed her after her haunting performance, and she said that she had all of her bones, and didn’t have any sort of special adaptation that made her more capable of these contortions than anyone else. She was naturally flexible, but had to train for hours every day to do what she does.

This got me thinking about the other ways that people, specifically at this convention, also modify their bodies. Most of the women, myself included, were wearing corsets. Corsets are a well-known form of body modification. Worn to an extreme, corsets can cause quite a shocking transformation to the human torso, but generally speaking, they do not cause out-bursts of shock and horror like the contortionist’s performance did. I knew I needed to make a piece comparing the two.

The animations in this post are my finished products: a comparison and comment on what we as a culture view as extreme body alteration. Corsetry, which is popular and accepted (I practice it myself) is totally unnatural. It involves tying whale-bone or steel bands to the skin, and tightening them gradually to reconfigure a person’s waste line. Corsetry provides the benefit of good posture, a pleasing silhouette, increased internal pressure, and relief from back pain and hernias, but it can also cause shortness of breath, immediate muscle atrophy, and in extreme cases it can restrict blood flow to the internal organs (because they’re being rearranged). Corsetry is a very unnatural practice, and does very little to improve your overall physical health, yet it is one of the hottest search terms on the internet, and a symbol of femininity and beauty.

Contortionist, on the other hand, is a totally natural art, but it is met with repulsion by those unaccustomed to it. These gymnasts train hard to be both flexible and strong. Many onlookers are shocked mostly because they imagine that the contortionists might hurt themselves, but in reality, being very flexible is the best way not to injure yourself during physical activity. Contortionism does not cause muscle atrophy, it strengthens the body, and it improves posture and coordination.

Contortionism pushes the body to its natural physical limits, while corsetry pushes the body to its garment-assisted physical limits. My animations are simply meant to make you more aware of your own reaction to these two types of body modification.

The animations themselves were hand-drawn using tracing paper and markers. They were then scanned into photoshop where I put them all together and added the tinted background.

These animations, along with my other videos can always be viewed on my website, here. http://shaunart.net/pages/video

Nothing too special or complicated; this happened in about 10 minutes. Eric took the picture for the background and I did the bike, balloon and text in photoshop. A rush job, but I think it still looks cute.

You can download the single for free by visiting this page.

Today I have the second painting, which happens to be the last full-page spread in the book. If you know the song “There’s a Hole in the Bucket,” then you know that Liza and Georgie don’t end up fixing their bucket, however in my sub-plot, they need the bucket in order to water seeds that they have just planted in an effort to brighten up their dreary forest. Fortunately, in trying to fix their bucket, they come across a magic knife which makes flowers grow, though it won’t cut a damn thing. Preoccupied with the bucket, the pair don’t even notice the flowers as they grow, but readers will find that on the final page, seen below, the forest is covered in bright flowers and leaves. So it’s okay that they didn’t fix the bucket after all, they still accomplished their goal!

This painting and the one posted yesterday are quite large. If you would like to view this painting a little larger, you  can see it on Flickr, here.

Both paintings were created using the same techniques. I laid down some basic washes with acrylic inks in order to build up some color quickly. Once I had a good foundation to work on, I did most of my rendering in watercolors. I then reenforced my values and added texture with colored pencil. There was a little going back and forth between mediums in the process, but that is the basic idea. Because these paintings are much larger than how I normally work, I spent an awful lot of time on them! I can’t say exactly how many hours, but I was very glad to finally be finished….

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my work at http://shaunart.net Thanks for reading!

We did thumbnail after thumbnail, planning out the entire book. We then had to draw the entire book in pencil, and put it together with the words in a binder; this is called a book dummy. From the dummy, each student picked two full page spreads to illustrate. The painting below is one of my illustrations for the book. It is the first page of the book intact, and features Georgie the tortoise, whining to Liza the grasshopper that there is a hole in the bucket. If you know the song you know the story already, but basically, Georgie doesn’t know how to fix the bucket, and Liza try to guide him every step of the way. However they can’t complete a sing task because every instrument involved in fixing the bucket can’t work without the bucket. Sad, really.

I added a sub-plot in my dummy to make the story more interesting, which is this; Liza and Georgie are trying to plant flowers to make their dark and dingy forest more cheerful. They need the bucket, to water the seeds. But there’s a hole in the bucket! Liza instructs Georgie on how to fix it because she’s a grasshopper and can’t fix it herself. Georgie, however is a tortoise, and is therefore very slow, both mentally and physically….. In the process of trying to fix the bucket, they find a magic knife which doesn’t cut the straw, but does make flowers grow. Convenient. Liza and Georgie don’t notice the flowers growing because they are fixated on repairing their bucket, but readers will notice that at the end of the book their forest is filled with flowers! A happy ending.

This painting is quite large, so if you would like to see it up close, you can view it on Flickr, here.

A post for the second painting will be up tomorrow! See you soon.

All complaints aside, I have, after many hours of work, managed to make a few important changes to the website. First of all, I have redesigned the header, and got all of the background images for each design field to line up! Yay! I also decided to add my latest two (relevant) blog posts to the homepage of the website. Now, I have been looking for ages for a way to have my blog on the homepage automatically, but I can’t figure it out! So for now I’m going to have to copy and paste each new post to the home page. I’m hoping that it will save visitors a little bit of time; they can go to the homepage, and get all of the latest news right there, instead of needing to redirect to my blog to find out what’s going on. When a blog post is exceptionally long, I may put part of it behind a link, but I am going to try and avoid that as much as possible.

There were other minor changes to the styling of primary images and I updated my age on the about me page. I just had a birthday!

In other news, today I have received a “versatile blogger award” from johnkpatterson.wordpress.com Now I have to work on my own versatile blogger post…. Maybe tomorrow! I’ve been on the computer all day and there are some things that I want to start sewing.

Now for your enjoyment, here is picture of my Christmas tree:

Here we have my last painting for the advertising illustration class that I finished this past semester. Our assignment was to design an album cover. Now, album art is a very broad subject; it varies as widely as music does, so this was essentially an open assignment. Our image just needed to fit into a square composition.

The music that I listen to today is pretty heavy. I am a big fan of metal, hard rock, and alternative. However I don’t like to take myself, or my music too seriously. Therefore I wanted to create an image that is so badass that it approaches the line of being comical. When I was little, one of my favorite things to draw were lizards with big scary teeth. Now that I’m a full grown and fully trained painter, looking over my portfolio I didn’t seem to have any lizards in it! What a shame. This was the perfect opportunity, I thought, to add my favorite lizard, the Komodo Dragon to my animal repertoire. Other things that I liked while growing up were fire, and space. In this painting I am combining all the major visual elements from my childhood into an extremely personalized painting.

I am really happy with how it turned out, even though the fire ball did give me some trouble. I am very confident when it comes to painting solid surfaces like skin, rock, and even reflective surfaces like ice and metal, but give me a fluid surface like water or fire, and I have somewhat of a more difficult time conveying that fluidity and translucency. Most of the painting is done in watercolors and colored pencil, but the gaseous nebula and fireball were painting in opaque tube acrylics because it is much easier for me to paint light coming out of darkness using an opaque medium.

For this little gift box, I actually had to build the box that appears under the wrapping paper. So I cut up a tissue box and put together my own jewelry display box. I found a little bit of tissue paper to wrap the gift inside in, and then I wrapped the home made box in my brown paper. I wanted to make it more exciting than that though, so I decorated its sides with a stamp, glitter, and puffy fabric paint.

Here is another view of this box.

For another gift, which I helped a friend to wrap, we once again turned to this brown paper. We didn’t have to make the box inside, and forwent any frilly embellishments here and instead accented the box with a simple black ribbon and hand made bow.

And another view….

Im really enjoying this brown paper wrapping, and I think I could have a lot more fun designing my own packaging when I get home and have access to more crafting materials.

Right now I am waiting for a layer of paint to dry before I can hopefully finish this last assignment for advertising illustration. Then I have two very large two-page spreads to work on for book illustration class. In addition, I have final projects to wrap up in three independent studies. The one nice thing about independent studies is that I can set my own deadlines. Still, I will be working up until the very end.

I wanted to write this blog post as a general checking-in update, since I haven’t had much time lately to update the blog, and as a way of relieving my stress through journaling.

I am painting fire right now and it is really causing me some headaches. This is like my forth attempt on this area of the illustration, but the process has renewed my appreciatiation for tube acrylics.

I hope you enjoy these progress pictures of what I am currently working on.

Okay, that paint is dry. Will post again soon!