Slowly working...

So I haven't actually finished anything here recently, I've started and continued several different things, however nothing's been completed...



Something I was doing as a demonstration of how a tablet worked for my grandma :)



I took this into Corel, traced it, and started coloring it... I don't think I like the bedspread yet, I might actually try and do some sort of patter on it and see what happens...



...yeah I have no idea what inspired this or really where it came from... I'm pretty sure this is one of those drawings I was working on at 4 am trying to produce SOMETHING, and that something was a faceless chick with a mechanical leg :D I would like to get it finished, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do with it afterwards...

I was going through my sketchbook today and found some really interesting sketches I'd forgotten about.



There are so many things wrong with the mouth and chin here, but I still absolutely love the way it turned out. It's so fun and happy!



It's hard to draw emotions sometimes, especially in the face. Sometimes you have to rely on the rest of the body instead to convey the emotion, which is what I was trying to do here... I also want to take this into Corel and color it and see what it'll look like...



I can't believe I'd forgotten about this one! I was working on a series of drawings pairing up the 4 seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) with the 4 elements (Air, Fire, Earth, Water). This one is supposed to be Fire and Summer, I never quit finished it, I'm going to work on it a little and see what happens. I think it also is in desperate need of color...



This is something I did late last year. It's an Angel sitting on the roof of a clinic that performs abortions, holding an infant. The caption says "The unloved are never forgotten."

June has been a busy month, thankfully I have been able to get some creative work done :)



This is within the same series as my earlier Ragdoll drawing. I like how it came out, more of a romantic/Valentines type...



Along the same line as the pink and blue Butterfly.

In other news my Portfolio, which I entered into the San Diego County Fair a few months back, took home 4 ribbons! 1st Place, Best of Class, Best in Show, and received a Donor Award from the California Graphic Arts Education Association. I gotta say it was quite the event and an amazing accomplishment. The Award Ceremony was this past Saturday and I got to tour the Student Showcase exhibit, which was fascinating. So many talented artists and designers! All that's on the Fair website is a list of names, mine is on the third page nearly halfway down...
http://www.sdfair.com/fair/pdf/10entry_results_student_other_class.pdf

Here are a few shots of my Portfolio. I kind of wish there was a way for it to be open on a table for people to see, but I guess unfortunately that's not exactly possible or safe. And again, the link for my portfolio website: http://gc.palomar.edu/33175/33175cnorris1394/

Old vs. New

I found an old Illustrator drawing I had done I think last summer or the summer before for a project, and I decided to fix it up on my computer, cause I really like this drawing. I mean it's not particularly outstanding, but still I'm pretty fond of it. Since I don't have Illustrator on my computer yet, I retraced it in Corel. I also brightened up the color a bit and added some shading. And I'm trying to remember if the pink squiggly's were intentional or just me doodling :)



This is the older one. Pretty cute, I'd say :)



And here's the newer, revamped one :) Enjoy

Wow, busy month. Just finished with all my projects and finals for this semester, so now I have time for updating! I changed the banner to a more colorful, summery picture. I took a bunch of my sketches, scanned them into the computer, and inverted them in Photoshop, made some quick stars and color changes and voila! I rather like it, it's fun and different.

I'm going to do a bit of an art dump here, these are drawings I did for a bunch of stickers for one of my classes, I got a lot of input from friends. All of these were done in Corel Painter. I'm rather getting the hang of Corel and I really like using it. Works well with my cartoony style for these kinds of drawings.

I'm also going to put a link up to my Portfolio web-slideshow, it's just a simple slideshow with a link to email me: http://gc.palomar.edu/33175/33175cnorris1394/ -(I can't get the actual link to work here, you might have to copy/paste into your browser, sorry)- This Portfolio was actually a final project for my Portfolio Development and Presentation class this semester, and I'm really happy with it. I've also submitted a hard case Portfolio to the Del Mar- I mean- San Diego Fair this year. (sorry, it will always be the Del Mar Fair to me...) I hope it does well :) Now, on to art



Who doesn't want to be a Pretty Pink Princess?



Deadly ninja assassin... it's kind of a recurring theme with me and my friends, I know.


In a conversation with one of my friends, she was commenting on how there seems to be such a feud between Pirates and Ninjas, and she couldn't understand why. You can have the cunning and stealth of a Ninja, sneak up on your opponent, and "Hi-yargh!" take him out :) She asked me to draw this for her immediately afterwards :)



My friend wanted a monkey ninja, I misread it as Monkey Island ninja... this was the result :P (I do not own Guybrush Threepwood or anything from the Monkey Island games)



Anyone who's ever played Ocarina of Time truly wants to do this to Navi (I do not own Link or anything from The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time)



Mr. Ant and Mr. Spoon frequent my sketchbooks, especially Mr. Ant.



We've all fallen asleep at our desks and taken trips to Dreamland, don't lie.

Well, I think that should do for now! I'm looking to get a few of my final projects up here soon, so keep an eye out. :)

Anyone who's ever seen any of my school notebooks or gotten a letter from me knows that I doodle on every piece of paper I come in contact with. It keeps my hand and mind busy, and usually I wind up with some neat ideas for projects or drawings from these doodles. (having an abundance of sketchbooks doesn't deter me from doodling everywhere else, by the way. You'd think it would :) ) It's nice I think to be able to look at some of the early sketches and doodles, you can tell a lot about someone's work that way. So here are a few doodles that I have, that may or may not turn into something else.




These I did at work once while on break on the backs of little notecards I found in the office. I really like the center one and did it up a little bigger in one of my sketchbooks:



Obviously it's still in the sketch and plan stage (if you look hard enough you can see some faint notes I put in there :) ) This would look nice on maybe a t-shirt as a nice graphic tee or maybe even on a tote bag. I'll continue to play with it.



This is something I did in my notebook during a history lecture. It took me a while to finish as I was copying down notes at the same time (no really, I was!!) but I liked it so much I traced it and brought it into my computer. I think I'll take it into either Illustrator or maybe even Corel and clean it up a little. Something else that would look nice maybe on a tee or tote or something like that... maybe even another notecard...



And this one is a more finished piece from a doodle I did in Corel, I was playing around with the Artist Oils brushes and I like the texture and the way it lays paint down on the canvas... I'll play some more with this one too and we'll see what happens.

Hope you enjoy and hey if you have any suggestions or comments I'd love to hear them!!

Something old and something new...

I've decided on giving up on finding a scanner for now, I'll just use a digital camera instead. With the right camera, no one can tell it wasn't scanned. (well almost :) )

This first one is my very first painting, done 3, maybe 4 years ago. Acrylics and I never really got along, but for this one little project I think we did marvelously well. At least I'm proud of how it turned out, I'm not much of a painter so my opinion may be a bit skewed.

This next one I just finished only about a week ago, inspired by a good friend of mine via text message. (thanks :) ) Just goes to show you never know when, where, or how inspiration will strike, so pay attention. (doesn't hurt to ask your friends sometimes, too) Done in pencil on a cotton sheet. The shading could have been a lot better, I know, and the faces are... yeah... but for what it is I really like it.

Whew, long time no update. Was in a small car accident which kind of prevented me from really drawing or getting anything up here. Isn't life fun sometimes? Anyways, onwards to art!

This is something I've been working on for a few weeks, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I'm hoping to turn this into a series of little Rag Dolls for greeting cards or postcards. This is just the Illustration and what one of the cards might say. (If you aren't able to read the caption it says " We can still patch things up") Done in Corel Painter.

This is something done for my Press class, we made little notepads and the requirement was to have something on the notepad (it was more of an exercise to use the press, not really a creative exercise...) Done in Illustrator, with the brush tool, (which is my favorite tool in Illustrator) just a simple little heart with wings.

Enjoy!

Assassins

So, a very sick (but fun) group of friends and I are part of an elite Assassin group :) These are all drawings of the members, each with their own code name, weapon choice, and quirks. The banner of my blog is the one I did for myself, I'm rather proud of it :D These are all done in Corel Painter Essentials 3. I'm not fully comfortable with this program but I'm learning.

Attack Kitten, with her very own attack kitten :)

The more professional Assassin, with throwing knives, sharp scissors, and heavy volumes.

Lethal, yet somewhat adorable, combination of Art and Nursing.

What? An assassin can't have a pokemon?

Sophisticated, classy, and deadly.

Do not mess with the McSquizzy. It's just not smart.

Bringing up the rear is the heavy artillery.

So I'm trying to keep some form of consistency between this blog and my DA account... These are just two pieces I have on there and forgot to put up here.

This is just something I did in Photoshop for a class... lots of layers and other pics masked and laid on top of a photo...

This is something I drew and hastily colored in Photoshop a looooong time ago... it's not very good but I still kind of like it...

Hopefully I'll be getting some new stuff up here soon. Yay!

Some old stuff

So here's a bunch of older files from some of my Photoshop and Illustrator classes. All digital, all photos used were taken by me.

This was done in Photoshop, just a bunch of layers put on a picture I drew for an exercise...

Again, Photoshop and filters on a pic I drew. This one turned into a project later on.

This was a final for my beginning Photoshop class. We had to create an Earth Day poster, and this is what I came up with.

This was something I did for InDesign, we had to create a candy wrapper. (I made this brand/candy up) Everything was designed in Illustrator and laid out in InDesign. We got to print it out and fold it like an actual bar. Sadly I don't have a picture of it.

Still getting used to the whole "blog" thing. I want to customize the page a little bit... we'll see how that happens and how much help I'll need. :D

This one I started when I got my tablet in December. Finally finished it. Used Corel Painter Essentials 3. I'm still getting used to the program (I'm used to Photoshop and Illustrator) It was inspired by stories of the early Christian martyrs and their graphic deaths... I can't remember if I was basing this off of one in particular or not....

I also went and got a deviantART account! Woot! My username is latenightcathie. The real trick is going to be keeping this and the DA updated :D Enjoy!

So I've finally gotten my art blog up and running! Go me! I'll try to keep this related to art only, though I might share a few stories as well about my artwork... Bear with me for the first few entries, I'm getting used to this whole "blog" thing. I'll try to keep updated regularly, the first few posts might be some older stuff... I'll get the about me sections and all that ready too.

I guess the first post warrants a bit of an introduction. My name is Cathie Norris, I am a student going into the Graphic Design and Illustration line of work. I'll graduate over the summer with an Associates in Graphic Communications and Publishing (basically Graphic Design with an emphasis in print) and then next year I'll be swept off to Florence, Italy to attend the one year Graphic Design program at the Florence Design Academy. While I really like design, I do a lot of life drawings, hence the interest in illustration. I didn't always know I wanted to be an artist but I've been drawing since I was a child, mainly getting into trouble for filling my school notebooks with doodles. :) I've actually only recently began doing design on the computer, everything else has been pencils, inks, charcoals and paper. I own about 16 or so sketchbooks, 12 of which have been filled, the others are in the process of being filled.

So I guess the first thing I'm going to put up is probably one of my favorite pieces. For an Illustrator class, we had the opportunity to create a skateboard deck design and actually mount it on a skateboard. This is what I came up with. To this day however, I have no idea what he's holding in his hand, I've forgotten what it was supposed to be. I also have the greyscale for the little dude. I'll get more up here soon, a lot of it still has to be scanned into the computer. (I'm so behind the times sometimes :D )

Next up are just a couple of sketches I have hanging around... done in pen. The black and white one is actually a sketch of Connor, Murphy, and Rocco from the Boondock Saints movie (highly recommended movie) the blue one is just something I doodled in class waiting for a teacher to show up. Scribbling out little doodles like this is probably the best way to relieve stress. :) Enjoy.