THE END IS IN SIGHT....for this semester, yay!

So! It's been super stressful and busy. But what's new, right? The end is in sight but I've been neglectful about posting anything so here's a quick thing for an Illustration 2 assignment. We were to illustrate for a short story on www.tor.com and I picked Wild Things, a love story with haywire magic gone weird. One of the characters was caught in a magic outbreak in the swamp and was thus turned into this tree-man. I was imaging him unconscious and the roots and vegetation wrapping him into their embrace as he sank away, to be transformed. Kinda romantic and sexy-like. Here is the image i produced:

 So my next post should be putting up work from this (prolific compared to others) semester and perhaps a quick (or long) reflection about it. I am going on holiday(as the brits say), to SLO and S.D. to see family/friends so after that ya'll see lots more stuff. So if this is the last post till the next year (unless the apocalypse happens), enjoy you're special time with the people/pets/beer you love most.
-ChicaArtista

This work by Abigail P Rocha is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Illustrative Process...not entirely annoying!

      So I thought i might try something different with today's post. Instead of just showing you the finished product, i thought i might show you the process I go through. Just in case, like myself when I first started, you were clueless on how illustrators approach a piece. They really problem-solve!
     My usual practice when approaching a piece is just go at it with a medium of my choice and not really brainstorm/sketch too much...with mixed results. Ever since I've switched to the illustration major, I've had to slow down my process and re-do sketches like, a million times before it's "done", and i admit, with better, more cohesive results. It was frustrating at first because i'm naturally impulsive and a tad impatient, but now I can see how it can be really useful.
     So here's how it goes, our professors act as Art Directors and give us an assignment/job and we bam out thumbnails. This assignment was for an in-book illustration in graphite: I chose Game of Thrones because I'm a huge fan. We sketched 12 thumbs (about 4"x5.5") in all but here are some ideas that actually made the cut:

Ghost with a zombie arm.

Melissindre giving birth to a shade. I think the faces are so funny in this one.

Arya plucking a grave worm from a skull in the house of black and white.

We are given feedback (proportion, contrast, crop, composition, references, etc.) and we do final sketches of the 3 and from there the instructor (or in real life, the art director) chooses one image, makes further suggestions for changes and gives us he green light to do the final artwork. These are the 3 final sketches(about 5.5"x8") I provided to pick from....

This is the one my profe green-lighted with still more corrections to do...

      So after all that push and pull, drawing and re-drawing I did the final piece....

So yeah, this is how i'm working now a days. It's better to have a plan and revisit ideas than to risk doing one of these....

Stay classy my friends. <3

Abby does a Mini comic about herself...Gah. Sooo Self Absorbed!!

But in my defense it was a class assignment for my Comic Book Seminar Class. I seriously LOOVE this class. We talk about comics, read comics and draw comics. It's perfect. It's taught by Eisner nominee Matt Silady who did The Homeless Channel, and he KNOWS comics. He's a really insightful and observant about the medium. Anyway enough gushing about him, lets turn the focus back to me, the self absorbed artist. Kidding....or am i? Please read, comment if you'd like, and I hope you get a chuckle.
Oh and sorry about the so-so quality, it was done quickly and it's been riding around my backpack for a little bit. :O

Illustration 1: Self Portrait Project

Quick post up of a few self portraits for an ongoing weekly assignment for Illustration 1. This is week 6 so i have a few more to make before the semester is done. This is actually a really fun assignment done fast and dirty ( since most times i do it the night or morning before class, but don't tell my professor that). We pick an artist/Illustrator we admire and do a S.P. in their style. So far, I've picked:

 Marice Sendak (Where the wild things are)

 

Hiroaki Samura (Blade Of the Immortal)

  

Bill Waterson (Calvin and Hobbes, yes i'm Hobbes ;P)

 Russ Mills (Album Cover Illustrator)

R. Crumb (Professional Bad Ass Cartoonist! Fritz The Cat and other marvelous things)

Stay tuned for more later, kids!

Not always cutesy all the time.

So this as for illustration 2 and it was an Op Ed piece for a story about Guantanamo bay and indefinite detention. For those of you who know me, you might not be surprised that i have strong opinions on this abhorrent excuse of  American justice. Anyways, a little dark, hmmm..? Ink and nothing else. 12"x18" on Bristol.

Quezti is awesome.

Just a quick toss in here to show what i've been doing. Illustration for kids cultural myth and legends assignment for Illustration 2 class. I did the Aztec legend of corn with Quetzalcoatl in Sepia ink wash with brush. Woo!

Portfolio Documentation 2012

This is the portfolio that got me into CCA. I really didn't get as much feedback as I'd wanted at the time of the interview except..."Well let's not put you in painting 101, k?". huh. But in retrospect, this is all raw student work in their eyes. Work is stifling my art time but I'll try to remember to post up more recent work. Thanks Eric, for kicking my ass about it from time to time. Good friends are there when your posterior needs it, eh?

Photogram

3 Bunnies

Dahlia Study. Colored pencil

Foot Study. Conte and colored pencil

Hand Study. Conte

Hand Studies. Ink and wash.

SP1

SP2

Three

Courbet and I. Oils,

Miss 1947. Acrylic.

Nightmare 1. Oils.

Nazi Prosti Victim

Hatched Self Portrait. Micron Pen.

Sex and Honey. Oils/ Coldwax.

A leaf on the wind. Soft pastels and Conte.

Ginger Study. Conte and colored pencil.

Nightmare 2. Acrylic.

Octopi-baby Candlestick. Papermache/wire/acrylic paint/found objects.

WolfShoe. Graphite.

Anatomy Class and the Bart Station on fire.

Hi everyone! This is my first entry about my work as an artist/student/chicana. I'm going to try to make this blog about my personal art documentation, reflections, and a journal of sorts of my life. Not entirely sure how to start this thing but perhaps a short introduction and some artwork documentation to start this thing right?
My name is Abby and I'm originally from San Diego which is where the sun lives, apparently, since it seems to only visit the fog-ridden bay area where i reside now. I moved to Oakland for school and due to life getting in the way I'm about to turn 30 as I enter my 2nd semester at CCA for my 1st Bachelors. Being the slightly older student at a college full of 20 somethings can be challenging...

Some Young Thing: "OMG guys I'm having my 21st birthday this weekend and we're going into the City to get HELLA trashed (insert giggles)!"

But I'm trying not let my old show:

Me: Oh look a Sublime CD, let's pop this in while we work. I LOVE sublime!
18 year-old Hipster: Wait, who?

Hopefully now that I have cleared some basics classes, this semester i will get do deal with similar creative minds so the age gap will seem less. I hope.

Anyways, below is about all of the work I've done for 1 of the 5 classes i took last semester(first time I've taken 15 units and not the last, for sure), which was Drawing: Anatomy. This was an exciting and challenging class for me and I feel i did fairly well considering the work produced and the better understanding of the human skeletal structure i achieved. I still only got a B so i must work harder next semester which is fine, I'm always up for a challenge. Bring it life!

1st living room floor full of drawings followed by a second one...

That's it for today. Work is in a 3 hours and I heard on NPR that traffic commute into S.F. is hell this morning. Something about the West Oakland station being on fire.
O_o
Just another day in the East Bay, my friends.
Take care and be good to each other.
-ChicaArtista