Old-fashioned

1680s pompadour dress with a fontage (the thing on top of her head)

Colonial/Georgian style dress

Barbara Villiers, copied from this painting by Sir Peter Lely.

She was a (the first?) mistress of Charles II.
I like post-restoration dresses in England. I like just thinking about it: in the decade of the 1650s under Cromwell, dress was controlled by Puritans and "morality police"; but then when the king returned to the throne in 1660, BAM! boobs are back! 

That's it for now! Happy drawings!

"Virtue Rewarded"

I'm still enjoying my new found inking tool in Adobe Illustrator! I did a drawing today of Pamela from Samuel Richardson's "Virtue Rewarded". Ooooo, robe `a la polonaise! So much want...

Started with a pencil sketch; then inked it in Illustrator; then went crazy with it in Photoshop!

 "Virtue Rewarded", written in 1740, definitely does not speak through the centuries.... very chauvinist and preachy - not to mention that Pamela has a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome. Here's the full text, and the Wiki page.

I almost made it to the end of the book, but the last 25% was... sickening. Non-stop adulation and swooning, and even after she marries Mr. B (the guy who locked her up and tried to rape her repeatedly), she refuses to stop calling him "Master" (because she likes the sound of it). There's a beautiful story of how, when the novel was first published, a whole village was so enraptured with the story that they would gather at their blacksmith's to hear it read out loud. After hearing about that, I was really interested in reading it... but there have been too many cultural changes since 1740 for me to relate at all with the characters... plus, there were too many parts where I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh at Pamela or cry for her.

About the illustration: to be honest, it's far more colorful than how I envision the story in my head (my mental movie is full of blue and sepia), but I kinda like the irony of a colorful, modern-looking illustration for a gloomy, incredibly-old-fashioned story XD

Video Game Challenge

(right click and select "view image" for zoomed in view)

This was a fun thing to do. There's a DA group called "Design-a-Character" that gives bi-weekly challenges for things to draw, and the above image was for the most current challenge.

I've never designed a video game character, or have never even drawn a video game character, so this was definitely an experiment for me. Instead of making up my own video game, I went with WoW, and designed a new species - Naga Elf :D I completely neglected to give her any sort of gear or weapon, but it's always fun drawing a svelte female form ^_^ That goofy thing in the lower right corner is the second part of the challenge, in honor of the new movie "Wreck-It Ralph" (awesome awesome movie!!): to show what the video game character would look like in a 70s-80s arcade game. Part of the personal challenge was to stop laughing every time I looked at it...

In continuing with my self-teaching, I've now broached the barrier of learning how to ink my lines using Adobe Illustrator! I'm also continuing to hone and, indeed, just find what my style is. I love the human figure, and drawing women in particular, and I can't seem to separate myself from realism. I adore cartoony styles, though, and my admiration continually pulls me away from my comfort zones. This is where I'd love actual coaching like I'd get from a class - self-teaching myself how to develop my style is difficult! But how I'm progressing has been very very rewarding, and also free :)

I've been using another Deke McClelland book to teach myself Adobe Illustrator: "Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One". Very nice book! I also really like this youtube video that shows a super easy way to ink things on Illustrator, but you still need some knowledge of how Illustrator works in order to learn from that video.

Happy drawings!

Marble Tie-Dye Mermaid

(Right click and select "View Image" to zoom in)

For the mermaid image above, I was experimenting with brushes, different layer modes, gradients, and textures. Good fun!

Learning how to ink digitally

Continuing in my progress of learning Photoshop, I've finally busted through whatever barrier was holding me back and risked using the pen tool. And it's a wonderful tool! I think my trepidation was from reading that it's a tool that takes time to master, but indeed, I enjoy the organic looking lines that I achieved :)

Here's the before, with pencil lines:

 Here's the after, fully inked in photoshop:

The drawing was a quick sketch of a gown that I saw at the MN Opera production of "Anna Bolena" (Italianized version of the name Anne Boleyn). For those not familiar with who Anne Boleyn was, she was the second wife of the British king Henry VIII, mother of Queen Elizabeth I, and beheaded on trumped up charges but really because she couldn't produce a male heir. Very beautiful opera, and seeing as how her story was so sad in real life, you can believe that the opera was a tear jerker. Haha the man sitting next to me (who I think had come with his wife) kept nodding off, and distracting me - but this was a good thing for me, because it prevented me from releasing the full water works ^_^

This particular dress was worn by the woman playing Jane Seymour (third wife of Henry VIII). While all the dresses were beautiful, this one was particularly striking to me: she had red hair, with a green hair piece, a lavender dress, and fur sleeves.

Also, it's Thanksgiving week here in the United States! I'm very thankful for the opportunity I got this year to expand my artistic skills and pursue a new path in my life :) I hope everyone has a nice holiday!

Organizing and Regency

Starting in late August, I began to teach myself how to use Photoshop (PS5) using books, blogs, and experimenting. It has been a challenging, but fun, journey so far. I've skimmed only one-third of the two textbooks that I bought, so in no way am I through learning all I can from them... but creating will always be dynamic!

I'm spending this week organizing. I've been trying to come up with cheap, effective ways to keep my canvases and sketchbooks organized. The additional challenge is to come up with a way that also deters the cats...

In the meantime, I got a chance to draw the above girl in an empire/regency era dress. I was pretty pleased with the speed I was able to render it (1.5 hours)! Just a month ago, my speed was slower because it took a lot of time to apply the brand new techniques I'd just read about, on top of the time it took to repeatedly look things up to make sure I was getting it right. That being said, I can't wait to learn more new stuff :D

Hello, November

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween! I was the only one of my roommates at home to greet the trick-or-treaters, and for the first time in the six years that I've lived here, I ran out of candy D:

On the theme of Halloween, I did another illustration of a scene from a Terry Pratchett book, featuring two witches. From Carpe Jugulum: Agnes says, "I didn't know buoys had glass balls," but Nanny Ogg is too worried to even grin at this word bomb. The lighting was the absolute funnest to do. I realized from making it that I want to improve on my line art technique, and will see what I can do to achieve that goal. Learn, learn, learn :)

Also since my last post, one of the paintings I've done is a lounging green-haired mermaid. I can't seem to pull myself away from the subject matter of mermaids: they've taken over my brain! They're beautiful, sinuous, and colorful.... a winning trio. 

Portfolio: we have lift off!

Big news! (prepare, have a seat, take a breath, then click the link)

Portfolio is done!

http://andreaurei.daportfolio.com/

That's it, right there, just above this sentence, in case you missed it ^_^ Or click the word "portfolio".

It's exciting for me bc it took a while to get one up. I'd been determined to have my own domain name and something fancy and glorious, but instead I found a nice free portfolio that DeviantArt provides :)

In other news: I'm helping at the merchandise tent this upcoming weekend at the BareBones 19th Annual Halloween production, "Chicka-Boom". I donated three paintings, with 10% of profit towards the theater. Good show!

Got a few drawings here to get into the Halloween spirit/ghost:

Again, right click and select "open in new tab" to be able to zoom in (I think I said left click in my last post..)

The second picture is from a Terry Pratchett book, Carpe Jugulum:   "Agnes met the gaze of a thin girl in a white dress, with very long black hair and far too much eye makeup. There is such a thing as hate at first sight."   They turned out as rather stiff poses, so I gave Agnes the broom to hold to try and liven it up. And it's hard to see in my uploads, but both of the women in the 1880s gowns are vampires. Note: larger fangs needed :)

das doodlen

((If left click edit:right click and open in new tab, then the images can be zoomed in.))

Doodles = things I drew with no purpose and just for the heck of it, usually at 4 in the morning.

The first compilation ranges from late August to October. The red dress and the blue-and-green dress are both loosely based on the 1940s. Then there's the Edwardian lady in the lower right: wow, Edwardian corsets made for weird posture! Doing the see-through cloth on both her hat and on the running 1940s woman's stockings was quite fun and easy, and I think something a bit more extravagant with see-through fabric is called for in a future doodle :D  The upper right is a girl who's come to lecture hungover and has had the luck to sit next to the class hermione, which never happened to me, I swear...

Second compilation is all from August, and I posted it to my Deviant Art  a while ago. Mostly random pretties, some mermaid bust ideas, characters, and obligatory period fashion drawings. The character with the orange braided hair (who I've named Imogene) I like and would like to do something with, but her lover looks strangely like mine... so much potential psychology in why I drew him with another girl! XD Or maybe it's more that I'd like to look like here, which yes, I would!

Peace and doodles!

self-portrait

 

Self-portrait! Same process: pencil, then color in photoshop. And I kinda fixed the top of the hat, and moved my ID. And this she-creature you see is from when I had long hair, and was trying on a hat at the Renaissance Fair.

Lady Sybil Ramkin

I don't like Paul Kidby's version of Lady Sybil Ramkin-Vimes at all (she's 8 characters down on that link). FYI: this is a character from Terry Pratchett's discworld series, a series which has gripped my brain and hasn't let go for at least the last 7 years. Anyways, Kidby's version is way too fierce, but this is actually a good thing! All his other discworld character renditions are superb*, which means that I have a hard time drawing any myself without copying his. So I'm glad I don't like Kidby's Sybil, bc then I can try to render how I imagine her:

line art:

 colored in photoshop, with my id moved to the upper left:

Trying to capture a character who I envision as aristocratic, large, motherly, down-to-earth, well-endowed, tall, and fierce when she needs to be. I don't think I captured the "tall" part of her character, but am satisfied that I got the other features. And I think I could have exaggerated her bosom a bit more: the reason I dressed her in Edwardian/Victorian garb was bc that era had massive chests. This era also worked for her hair, which is described as big and chestnut colored, and which is actually a wig since her hair has been singed away by her dragons' burps lol. She's also holding a shovel since she's probably on her way to muck out the dragon pens, and I purposely stuck out her pinky finger, since she's still aristocratic at heart. I love that Pratchett writes big, gentle girls into interesting characters <3 Who else does that? (seriously, does anyone know of anyone else who's done that?)


...awesome, the discworld bug has bit me again. I think I'll reread "Guards! Guards!" (again) :D


*I always hear "superb" in my head in a snobby east-coast accent, something like "soo-pawb" or similar

Scanning in arts

For the past week, I've been focused on scanning in as much of my old artwork as possible. The original goal had been to scan these in so I could get my portfolio website up, but I discovered that I had a lot more pieces than I'd anticipated.

A light sampling:

From 2003, freshman year:

more recently, when I bought a book ("Perspective for Comic Book Artists", by David Chelsea) bc I wanted to learn more techniques about how to tackle perpective:

from 2008, some lifedraw pictures (from a drawing class I took that was so not worth it's cost in tuition, but I took it anyways bc it was an excuse to draw instead of studying my actual major ^^). and i suppose it was worth it since that was the class where i met the guy i've been dating for almost 5 years now  :D

For other arts, I also recently started a DeviantArt: kayananas.deviantart.com


Coming soon: a website |D lololol my original goal had been August 30th, but turns out you can't learn the interwebs in just a few weeks, darn-didditty-darn.

Pretty dresses from September

Line art:

Colored in Adobe Photoshop:

Line Art of Disney's Merida, from their movie "Brave":

Colored in Photoshop:

It's been since 2009 that I've posted anything to a blog, and it's nice to start a BlogSpot, since it links to my gmail account :)

Here's my old blog.