The Leafy Sea Dragon

The other night I finished a painting of a leafy sea dragon. I saw one of these beautiful fish a week or so ago on TV and decided that it would be a really fun thing to paint. I hunted down a couple of different reference pictures online, and from those, drew out an original pose and composition.

The painting is mostly watercolors on cold press paper. I worked from the background to the foreground, laying washes and building up shadows one layer at a time. When the painting was nearly complete, I went in with colored pencils and outlined areas that I wanted extra separation in. The end result looks a little like a shadow box: flat layers built on top of one another to create an illusion of depth. You can view this and more of my work by visiting my website: Shaunart.net This painting is for sale as a print on Etsy!

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Custom Christmas Card

Here is a commission that I finished some time ago for a custom Christmas greeting card. This portrait of a house was done in watercolors on cold press paper.

As always, I worked from a photograph. Starting with a sketch, I refined the drawing and transferred it onto my watercolor block with tracing paper and graphite paper. I did an outline in ink, which is especially helpful for geometric objects like this, and then I went to work with the paints. Most of the piece was rendered in watercolors, but the stars and lights were added in afterwards with colored pencil. You can view this and other commissions in the commissions gallery on shaunart.net

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Blue & Pink Fashion Illustration

Here is a fun painting! Like my others lately, it was a quick one to finish, taking only a day and a half to complete. I wanted to try something really whimsical and free-flowing, while still defining the form of the face. I had a lot of fun with it, and I think I am slowly getting this loose-ness out of my system. It is really fun to experiment and I think that this period of loose experimentation will help me paint faster in the future, even when I am working tightly.

I notice that when working in only two colors like this, it is harder to get an accurate representation of the piece out of my scanner. Or at least I notice the differences in the colors more. I am not working with the best scanner in the world here. In fact, its a very basic home model. Fortunately I have a lot of know-how in photoshop and can, with lots of tinkering, get my pieces to look pretty close to the original.

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Have You Seen The New Studio Page?

I have given my studio a permanent home on Shaunart.net with its very own page! Complete with address, visiting hours, directions, and postings about upcoming events. The page is small right now but it is sure to grow and change. Check it out at: http://www.shaunart.net/pages/the_studio

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Two new sketches

Here I have two pieces just added to the Sketch book gallery. Done back in the Spring as practice for field sketching, the first is a watercolor sketch of the Hog River in CT on a rather dreary day. The second is a copy in watercolor of a Hopper master landscape.

Both have a permanent home in the sketchbook gallery on shaunart.net

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Blue Chameleon

Here’s a little painting that I did a while back but haven’t had a chance to talk about. This is my Blue Chameleon; he is done in watercolors on cold press paper, and took about three hours to paint.

He is currently in a cute little green frame along side my turtle mascot, which is in a matching green frame. The two of them will be hanging side by side at my open house this Saturday, Aug 4th, at 122 Western Ave, Lowell, MA 01851, Studio #527, from 12-5pm.

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Chicago Poster

Another painting from senior year that fits with my thesis on art for the theatre, this is a retro-styled poster for the musical Chicago.

Here I am show-casing the main character, Roxie Hart. I wanted to add several elements from the musical, such as the stage, and Chicago night life in the 1920′s. But because the women in Chicago are deadly, I also added some jail bars into the set.

Painted in watercolor and colored pencil on cold press watercolor paper.

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Portraiture

Part of my senior thesis project was to do a series of three. I chose to do a series of three portraits, of three women, in three different modes of costume, interacting with three different classifications of animals.

The first portrait is of a woman in a tradition costume. A garment invented in the distant past, worn today for celebrations or special occasions. All three paintings started with photo reference; each model dawned the appropriate clothing, and was photographed either outside or in a studio setting with adequate lighting. The next step was to do a final sketch, transfer to illustration board, and finally, begin painting.

Each painting consists of a liquid acrylic under painting, watercolor, and colored pencil. The second panting is of a a woman in a contemporary, normative mode of costume, or as most people know it–street clothes.

The third and final painting in the series also happens to be a self portrait, to fill another requirement of my senior thesis project. Here I am wearing an obscure, decorative form of costume, or the sort of stuff that most people think of when they hear the term costume.

One of my favor animals since childhood has been the Komodo dragon, but I can’t fit one of those on my arms, so I settled for the Australian monitor lizard instead. It is closely related to the Komodo dragon, and is just as smart, but a lot smaller.

You can view this and other brand new illustrations in my color illustration portfolio.

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Cinderella

This painting is more concept art, but this time for the musical “Into the Woods.” This musical, if you haven’t seen it before, takes all of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and combines them into one great big story. Cinderella is a major character in the play, and as you know, her mother has died and she is forced to live with her evil stepmother and step sisters, having no fun being deprived of her right to attend the ball/festival. You may not know, if you are only familiar with the Disney version, that Cinderella doesn’t have a magical godmother, but instead she has a magic tree. You see, when Cinderella’s mother died she was buried at a gravesite in the woods. Cinderella visited that grave everyday and cried there, and her tears watered the ground, prompting the slow growth of a magic tree. On the night of the festival, the magic tree speaks to Cinderella while she is sobbing over her mother’s grave, and offers her a dress and slippers with which allow her entrance to the festival.

To execute this painting I dressed a friend up in garb from my extensive costume collection, and photographed her under a beautiful vine covered tree. The whole painting was done in watercolors, except for a few small details in the magic bubbles which surround the tree.

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Little Shop

For the next few weeks I will be blogging about the individual pieces that made up my senior exhibition. In no particular order, I would like to start with this re-imagining of Audrey II, the monster from the musical ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ For my senior project I choose to make a large chunk of art about theatre. This piece is new concept art for a classic musical theatre character. Audrey II has been interpreted on the stage in many different ways, but in my opinion, the large costumes always felt a little too stiff for the character; bulky is a word that comes to mind. I wanted to reinterpret Audrey II with a more fluid, animated look. Longer, leaner vines and a totally new silhouette makes the plant feel more graceful in its movements even if the mechanics of operating a costume like this will always be a little awkward. Audrey II is a predator, and a very smart one, and so I think he should like a smooth and cunning carnivore.

I also wanted to take more visuals from actual carnivorous plants in my design. I have seen Audrey II on the stage with huge, white, shiny teeth, which clearly belong to an animal, not a plant. I don’t care if he is from outer-space, I think that this intelligent plant should look like it took a similar evolutionary track as our earth plants, and the big shark teeth just aren’t working for me. So I did a little research, and adapted the ridges, grooves, markings, colors, spines, and vines from carnivorous plants alive on earth today.

The painting itself was executed with watercolor on cold press paper. For reference, I built a model of my initial sketches with clay, then lit and photographed my sculpture. Overall I had a fantastic time painting this piece. Painting monsters is liberating because they can look anyway we want them to; there is no right or wrong with a monster. I never paint very scary things but I think I may want to continue incorporating supernatural creatures into my work.

You can view this and other brand new illustrations in my color illustration portfolio.

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