Brown Bear Play

It's exciting to see people posing with the cutout I painted for the play  “A Brown Bear, A Moon, and A Caterpillar: Treasured Stories by Eric Carle.”  on people's facebooks and blogs! This Saturday the Governor is going to be at the Theatre to read one of Eric Carle's books. Wonder if he'll stop for a photo opportunity.....

On The Go Chicago

Cavedrawing

Cavedrawing was the final image for my Advanced Illustration class, and I don't want to be done, but I feel like at this point doing anymore could possibly be over-doing it.  My inspiration for this was mixing themes of educational children's museum artwork with behavioral development issues.

This Friday is the BFA show at Kosar Studios... and again, here is the link, and everyone is invited!

American Academy of Art BFA EXHIBITION - 2012 ILLUSTRATION at KOSART GALLERY

So many more things and illustrations to come!!!!

BFA 2012 Show and Brown Bear

I wanted to make a post of 2 events coming up (and already happening).

Chicago Children's Theatre and the Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia are presenting  “A Brown Bear, A Moon, and A Caterpillar: Treasured Stories by Eric Carle,” at the Biograph May 2nd to the 27th.  It's ideal for kids aged 2-7 and the cutout I painted (see above middle image) will be there!  There are fruit on the back of it, and I wish I got a picture of it... but I will soon!


Chicago Children's Theatre

The second event is for American Academy of Art 2012 BFA Show/ Fresh Talent Spotlight Exhibition.  I have 2 works of art there, ready for sale, and it runs May 11th through June 14th at Kosart Effects Studios & Gallery 

Address: 760 Burr Oak Drive, Westmont, IL 60559.

Students participating:

• Kerri Aitken
• Andrea Basting
• Erich Bihlmayer
• Amanda Chervinko
• Anthony Christopher
• Sara Cooley
• Samantha DeCarlo
• Garrison Dixon
• Kirsten Hansen
• Kathleen Joyce
• Matthew Kocanda
• Amanda Kraenzle
• Richard Magundayao
• Nicolas Martinez
• Alexandria Ortiz
• Michelle Pine
• Hillary Richter
• Lucy Tang
• Daniel Torres
• Elisa Vera
• Gregory Wilson

There will be food and artists and we would love for people to come!  I also plan to have boomarks made!

AAART Fresh Talent Spotlight Exhibition

Tracks

This is for the novel Tracks by Louise Erdrich depicting the character Fleur and a Native American forest demon.  It was originally created for my digital illustration class .. not completely finished yet, but I might need some feedback before I continue.  But I hope to place this in the Kosar Show May 11th along with Power of the Nose.

Anyways, last day of school tomorrow!

This is progress in the Cave drawing piece.  I'll say more when I put the finished piece up.

I'm going to need to do more work on this, hopefully after school is out, and hopefully before the NAVS deadline May 4th.  I was doing alot of experimentation on this, and I learned a lot, but I feel like it turned out sloppy.

If you haven't done so, check out my website!!!!!!

Kathleen Joyce Website

I wanted to do a quick update of what I have been working on.  I'm trying out a new technique that combines what I love about traditional and digital artwork.  With traditional watercolors, I love the textures and I feel more comfortable with my drawing.  I hope to one day be able to draw successfully on a tablet, but for now, I like my pen and paper.  But with digital artwork, it's usually done faster and the colors can change.  With traditional watercolor, once it's down, its down.  I don't know if this new technique is any faster, but I feel like it's staying within my own style.

These are the pencil and watercolor tests that I might use as a bio piece for my website or something... It's supposed to be me, but I made myself look too young, time to start doing studies of old people......

These are pencils for what I'm currently working on.  The first one is for the novel Tracks by Louise Erdrich.  The second image is about child behavior development.  I used a 9B to get the lines really dark but smooth.

These are the ink washes that help me figure out the tones of the work.  The cave-family one is still being worked on.

Close-ups

Tracks and Cave family Sketches

This is my next (and last project for school!) It's about child development and behavior problems with a historical aspect.  I plan on spraying a workable fixative over it and then a wash, and finished with digital color.  I'm still experimenting with this new process 

These are for my digital illustration class and would go with the book Tracks by Louise Erdrich.  It's supposed to be Fleur... shes evil and scary.  I still have alot to fix on it.. the first image is alot looser but messy, and the second one is clean but too dry.. i have to make things more elongated and deep.  I used tracing paper to trace the sketch... everything moved at one point and it ended up being chaos.  Light tables are so much better... the problem is, I don't own one.

Finals to come soon!

Rainbows Support Group for Kids

This is a poster for Rainbows International, the Support group for kids dealing with a loss or divorce.  They're popular with schools and I remember a lot of kids leaving class and coming back with all these cool projects and ceramics that I never got to do.  I considered lying to be part of that group, they made cool arts and crafts in kindergarten!

Anyways, I wanted to do a positive promotional image of kids painting and interacting with each other.  I'll eventually place some type and place it in a formal setup.  The lines are graphite and the rest is done digitally.

I was kind of uncomfortable using an explosion of rainbow colors, I like to limit my color pallet and this image really stretched my limits to the number of colors used.  I just don't like throwup art.

Circus Boy

This is for my digital Illustration class/ NAVS (for animals).  Not many would know, but I modeled the boy after the kid from Circus Boy who later grew up to be one of the Monkeys.  It was a TV show where this kid lived with a circus, I don't know too much else about it. But the theme of this project was "Speak for the Animals" and everyone else has done an ape or some type of animal with a closeup on his mouth, the mouth stitched up, or looking really sad with a closed mouth. I wanted to do a more illustrative approach that could work for a children's book.

I'm also trying something new, a hybrid of traditional and digital media.  I was inspired by Corey Godbey and studied his blog to figure out how he got his images.  Look him up if you haven't.

I start off with a smooth graphite and digitally color it with and overlay and multiply layer.  It's so much faster this way and I still get to work traditionally.  And the watercolor textures were done really loosely on cheap bristol paper (im out of paper now) with black ink and then used as a multiply layer.

Graduation coming soon!

This project would be for The branch of the Girl Scouts that promotes girls being independent and unique in order to become successful in life. All digital...

Probably not finished yet, but I'm taking a break from it for now... graduation is coming soon!

Power of the Nose FINAL

This is the final for the editorial in my Digital Illustration class.  I wont say much more, I have to get some sleep before my exit interview tomorrow.  Pulling all nighters this week has been a bad idea.

This was a quick digital drawing (with pen scanned in) of Granuaile (Grace O'Malley), the Pirate Queen of Ireland.  I was obsessed with her in high school and for my AP art class, all of my artwork that semester revolved around her or a modern day version of the queen.  She was a spirited soul who didn't let men order her around, and she supposedly smelled a lot. Just as a disclaimer, this is not the girl from Brave , the newest Pixar movie.  I guess they look alike, but this woman is real and I suggest you look her up.  I have been to 2 of her castles, and she is quite the lady. 

And by the way, the pin she is wearing means clarity.  It's a feminine celtic symbol.

I think I finished this in a day, and I realize that she looks very young, I just tend to make all of my characters very young looking, probably a thing to work on.

Ballerina Pencils

This is a pencil for a promotional piece for To Get Her There owned by The Girl Scouts of America.  I really wanted to do something that had to do with girls being ok with their uniqueness.  I feel like girls today (and in the past as well) feel pressured to stick with the standards of being a "girl" and that being normal is the safe way to go.  

It's sad how many girls I know wanted to play hockey of football but were told by parents or teachers that they couldn't, that they would get teased.  I wanted to play gaelic football when I was younger, but they didn't have teams for girls.  They did have "co-ed" teams, but I was told no girls were on them.  We shouldn't be scared to be who we really are.  

 I'll upload the final this week!

Dozin with the Dinos 2

My updates, updated version of Dozin with the Dinos.  Probably will still need more work, but with the limited time I have, this will have to do for now. If I had all the time in the world, I'd make a dinosaur parade, maybe for the future.

By the way, my website is up and running, please check it out!

Portfolio Website