Sunday, September 9, 2007

Stephen Colbert Skateboard


Yes, the title says it all. Allow to present my tribute to the man behind the desk of Truth: the Stephen Colbert Skateboard. Painted in oils on a skateboard deck, this was the other of my major summer projects. If only Stephen could see it. Not the best picture. I'll try to take a better one.

Viv



It's been a long summer of no posts. Now, back to school, it's time to post my summer creations. This is my second Softbot. Her name is Viv and she's full of energy. Viv is mostly made of felt. She flies around the living room in search of fun and shiny things. She frequently crashes.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Sprout


This summer I've been working for a clothing company that is just starting up. It's called Sprout and they make baby and children's clothing from bamboo and organic cotton. Bamboo is an amazing fabric! It's so soft, I love it. Here's one of the little graphics I designed for the clothes, which come from California. To see more, including the website I did go to http://www.sproutkidsclothing.com/

Friday, June 8, 2007

Olio



This was for a final project, it's a start of many. Olio is my first Softbot. The lower image is the tag on him. He's made of several different matterials including felt, jersey, polyester and cotton. I did the tag in illustrator. I have another one in the works that will be done soon.

Spirited Monet


This was an oil painting done for life drawing. It's a visual collage, and a tribute to a Monet.

Oil on Canvas. 18" x 24"

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Kelsey: The Movie

This was a large format self portrait done in water-mixable oils. It's on a 30" X 48" Maronite board. I wanted to approach this self portrait in a more illustrative way. It's inspired by movie posters like the kind done by Drew Struzan. Rather than imitate his style, however, I opted to make each aspect of myself in a different style. I think I turned out pretty well especially under the short 3 day time frame.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Nigerian E-mail Scams




These three were done for a narrative project on Nigerian e-mail scams, you can read the scam I picked here. It has an embattled president, blood diamonds and secret identities. The woman in the e-mail asks you hold the money in trust for her until she and her sons (husband apparently gets left for dead) can join you in your country. It was an interesting project and I chose to put a sort of humourist spin on the situation, casting the characters of the story as cold and calculating, rich and hardly in need of help. All three are acrylic on illustration board. They didn't scan very well so I may post better versions later.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Infographics



These are some infographics I did last semester. Both are done in Adobe Illustrator. The first is simple instructions on how to build a fort. Unlike Ikea, I don't make you use an Allen wrench. The second is a poster for the Flickr website. It's a network diagram of all the pictures of people posing with wax celebrities. The celebrities are divided into categories, some very talented people fall into more than one. TH graphics at the bottom are about popularity and the inappropriate touching of the wax celebrities by the people in the pictures. I once had my picture taken with a wax Patrick Stewart.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Paste




This was a subscription card project, I chose Paste magazine. Paste comes with a free CD of new and upcoming artists, mostly on the Indie scene. This started out as print making and ended up digital after some things went awry. The large dark area at the top of the front piece is actually a window, which I cut out and attached acetate to so the CD can be seen.

Photoshop Painting





More photoshop painting today. The first is an album cover for Carley Simon's You're so Vain. The background is scanned in acrylic on masonite, but the rest is Photoshop.

The smaller pieces are spots for some strange facts. The facts are the following, in order of the illustrations they go with:

  1. Minimum # of shopping carts that went missing from LA area stores last year: 6 220 000
  2. Pounds of radioactive produce grown near Chernobyl that were confiscated in Moscow markets last year: 1820
  3. Chances that an unprotected PC will become infected with a virus within 10 mins of being on the Internet: 1:4

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Editioral/Interpretive




The first illustration was done in acrylics and was for an article about how people defined success. The statistics listed below the painting are from the article.

The second is from a fortune cookie, the text below the image was the fortune I received in my cookie. This one's in watercolours.

The third was for an article on women's libido. This one is also done in watercolour and gouache.

Memento Mori




This is a little photoshop painting I did for my best friend sometime ago and made into bookplates and stickers for her. Her little skinny pig, Mortimer, died recently and I've decided to post this to honour his memory. Rest in piece little guy.

Monday, February 5, 2007

The Wayward Fire




This was a graphic design project from last semester. We made up a band based on a series of random words that we we given for a few typography assignments. My band is The Wayward Fire, their new CD is called Exposing Crumbs. I used Photoshop to design a CD, gate-fold CD case and tour poster for the band.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Saphronia





These four illustrations were done for a narrative project: the short story was called Saphronia. They are all done in cut and paste paper with a little bit of watercolour for shading and skies. It was a fun project but the cut and paste method was rather painstaking. Still I was happy with the results. The story is about twisting the expected. The circus ends up being the permanent part of the town while the municipal buildings are packed up and moved on.

Friday, February 2, 2007

Overheard, Understood


This project was all about eavesdropping. I this conversation between a a guy and a girl while I was at work. The girl was buying a huge pile of textbooks when she told the guy she didn't study. Whether or not he was really trying to pick her up or even if they knew each other, I don't know. But I interpreted the situation as a total rejection. He got shot down. This was a really fun project and I gave a very "high school", naive sort of feel to reflect what i understood to be going on. It's collage and inks. The original is 12" x 20" so the note paper I actually made by hand using a one-hole punch and blue and red ink for the lines.

Defying Gravity Made Easy


This was a recently completed project for Interpretive Illustration. I wanted to turn my focus towards children's illustration because that is one thing I'd really like to do when I'm done school. I haven't had much of a chance to do this yet. The goal for this piece was cute and colourful. I think I've been successful in both. The penguin makes me smile. I'm still not 100% happy with the text so I plan to adjust it some more. The original is water-mixable oils on illustration board, it scanned in and the text was added in Adobe Illustrator.

Let's Get Digital




I've been having some serious internet issues lately so this post has been a long time coming. I've written it out so many times and not been able to post it... so long story short: digital work from first year.

1. Chocolate bar drawn from life, done in Illustrator

2. Spongebob juice lid drawn from life, painted in Photoshop

3. Made up dragon combined with photograph, phantom techniques in Photoshop

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Little Paintings




Today, some small paintings done for a life drawing last semester. I was happy with the way the turned out, especially the laundry one. Laundry is done in coloured inks and watercolours on illustration board. The second is in oils on illustration board. The creepy drawing manikin is oils on Masonite.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Experimental Grounds





Works from last year again today. Some little paintings with different textured grounds. The first one is an owl in acrylics on gesso mixed with flour to thicken it (on a Masonite board). The second one is in memory of my Chinchilla, Loki. It's acrylics on a ground of wood shavings mixed with gesso and glue on a Masonite board. His whiskers are pine needles. The two different pictures show the texture. The last is my Zodiac sign, Capricorn in acrylics on a 3D ground of sculpted Supersculpy. The background it also Supersculpy and the whole thing is glued to a Masonite board.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The Toastosaurus





This was done for a project last year where we had to paint on a found object ground. I had a toaster that didn't work very well and it always burnt the toast. So, I threw in its last two pieces of bread and then it went extinct. Toastosaurus is a herbivore and has two rows of toasted enriched white bread slices on his back for protection from preditory appliances like the stove.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

New Painting!


I just finished this one last night. It has some neat glazing effects that didn't really show up on the picture but my camera needs to be charged before I can try for a better one. It's oil on newspaper/water cooler instructions (glossy) on Masonite. I'm happy with it and I did some adjustments in Photoshop to make it my new desktop. Special thanks to Steve for helping me work out a compositional problem that was bugging me. These are Luna moths. They are native to North America and rather fascinating. I chose them as subject matter for there interesting colour and shape. This was just a personal project I've been doing over Christmas break.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Oil Paintings



Today, two oil painting I did at the start of summer last year. The first is was for my mom who wanted Raphael's little angels from his Sistine Madonna for her redecorated bathroom. Rather than just copy them exactly I've added my own twist. I was pretty happy with the results.

The second was for an alumni gallery show for my high school's 50's anniversary. I was invited to participate and I wanted to do something new for it. I based this off another watercolour I'd done earlier for Media class. Unfortunately, this was right at the end of the year and I didn't have as much time as I wanted for it. I was OK with the results but feel I could have been better.
All images copyright Kelsey Pettit. All rights reserved.