Childrens Book Examples

These are not going to be published, but were good practice. For my illustration class at AAU last semester.

Fragrance

10"x19" oil on canvas.

Envy

Pastels, red analogous/split complement. Dont know the model...The colors I chose combined with this photo just seemed to fit a theme:

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on...”
-Shakespeare, Othello

As I sift through the political and social problems of our world, I keep coming back to the sad truth that no public policy can eliminate envy--the root of all evil. A Book of Mormon prophet saw our day, and said: “There are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts…unto envying” (Mormon 8:36). How sad, how true. The Savior warned, “Beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Luke 12:15). Charity is the opposite of envy. O that we might know and act according to the precious truth that, in the eternal scheme of things, your gain is not my loss!

Portrait: Stefanie Correne Nelson

My dear sister. I really enjoyed doing this one, and sure love my sister Stef-- one of the mildest, kindest, randomest, bestest people in the world.

Portrait of my Father*

A portrait of my father* done in pastels.
* just kidding

Sfumata

Another head drawing, a little more than head this time, for grad school again, this week's focus was "sfumato" which means "smoke" in Italian and basically means "make soft, lost, smoke-like edges so that the hard, crisp edges at the focal point are more interesting." I decided to name the girl Sfumata.

English Convert

I thought this fellow looked like one of the many early LDS Church converts who emigrated in the 1800's from Great Britain amid hardships and sacrifice, but to their utter joy and satisfaction.

Caiaphas

This recent set of drawings are actually all from pictures provided by AAU where Im doing grad school online. However I think some of the drawings look a lot like Bible and other religious figures, in this case, Caiaphas.

Yezekiah!!

Until recent ancient amazing tattered documents* were discovered, no one knew that Hezekiah's twin brother was named Yezekiah! There is also some speculation that this is just a redo of a grad school head drawing assignment. Unless elusive facts are verified, the world may never know...
*location and veracity of documents incredibly uncertain

Costume Art

Happy Halloween! Here's some costume art. I'm a lamp. (Thats duct tape and a flashlight on my chest). What are some good costumes you've seen?

Shane-San

My corrected drawings of Shane Warner, my good friend and former roommate. Well, actually one is of Shane's brother Dwayne who almost looks like him but not quite. :)

Hezekiah

A drawing for my Head Drawing class of the Old Testament figure Hezekiah. I decided to use a somewhat weathered black and white photograph of the king, found with the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran (thanks Dr. Seely!) The ancient photo was really fuzzy and tattered, so I decided to restore it in pastels. TA-DA! (Fun Fact: Until this photograph's discovery, it was virtually unknown that either cameras or t-shirts existed anciently!) ;) (kidding of course...photo provided by my grad school of some random man)

More Head Drawings

I say he looks like a Seth, and she looks like a Deborah. And her hair was fun to draw. Nothing deeper to say about the drawings than that honestly, "sorry folks, nothing more to see here...move along"...

Head Drawing - William Maughan

These, along with the subsequent head drawings using the same technique, are exercises done for my head drawing class under the direction of Bill Maughan, a great illustrator and artist who emphasizes edge control and shadow shapes in his classes to best achieve depth and likeness in any drawing or portrait. One learns so much by just focusing for an extended period of time on simple, but tried and true principles!

Ball

So here's the thing: If you can draw a ball right, you can probably draw a whole lot of other things right. This ball took me 47 hours*.
*Just kidding about how long it took