To show my Commercial Art I illustrations, I think that they have improved in the second assignment since the first. My shading techniques alone improved and I felt that I was able to convey more of a story than I had in the first assignment.

In the first assignment, we were supposed to create a story with two 10" x 15" panels, one panel portraying an outside scene and the other portraying an inside scene, each with at least four people. My outside scene at best was mediocre. The people in it were not anatomically correct, and the whole piece in my opinion was just a disaster. The inside scene was a bit better. It had better shading, better facial features, and was more anatomically correct. I felt that I conveyed that the children were smaller than the woman. But my issue with my shading is that you can see my lines. The shades and tones don't just blend together, and that's something that I need to improve upon.

Assignment #1
Outside panel
10" x 15"
Pencil on Bristol

Assignment #1
Inside panel
10" x 15"
Pencil on Bristol

In the second assignment, we were told to pick a historical event and create two panels with depicting that event. Each panel had to have four people in them, and I chose to portray the sinking of the Steamboat Arabia, near northern Kansas City, Kansas in 1856 in the Missouri River.

A bit of the back story: the steamboat hit what was thought to be a snag, but turned out to be an entire dead log that was submerged under water. The log ripped out the bottom of the steamboat and within 10 minutes, the steamboat had sunk to the bottom of the river with only the smokestacks visible above the water. All the passengers survived except for the one mule chained to the boat. Decades later, the river had moved and changed course. One farmer decided to check his field and began to transect the area. He eventually found the sunken boat, and an excavation was begun. Although covered in mud, the entire contents of the boat had been preserved. There is a museum that shows all the artifacts that have been preserved, including clothing and fabric.

The outside panel depicted the actual sinking of the Arabia. This was a harder piece to create, because there was not actual photos for references of the sinking of the steamboat. I had to come up with a fairly original piece and guess what the sinking boat actually looked like, which was an interesting concept. Some art that I looked at for reference photos included:

My design that I came up with was more detailed than I thought it would originally be. I used my eraser to smear the marks to make it appear like water was pouring off of the wheel and the hull of the steamboat. During the class critique, it was mentioned that the smoke coming out of the smokestacks should be more adjusted to the level of shading that the rest of the illustration was. It appeared "sketchy" and not the same as the rest. 

Assignment #2
Outside panel
10" x 15"
Pencil on Bristol

The inside panel depicted the paddle wheel of the steamboat inside the museum. I thought that it would be an interesting element to tie the two illustrations together. The reference photo that I used was taken inside of the museum.

I liked the idea of adding two people as if they were looking up at the wheel as they were touring the museum. To show depth, I drew an adult figure with two smaller figures to show levels on the second floor. I felt that the shading I complete on the paddle wheel was better than I have done in previous pieces, and was a better accomplishment to show my skills.

Original pinning

 Began to work on my next jewelry piece again. I want it to be a kinetic piece that would be a ferris wheel that would actually rotate. The problem that I ran into last semester and for the first trial today was that the steel pins would become soldered or attached to the brass rod of the rail and the brass would not be soldered to the piece of copper tubing.

Soldered pins to brass piece

 However, I realized that I had been pinning the brass pieces wrong. I had pinned them at the bottom, and learned that if I pinned them at the top, I wouldn't have the trouble with the pins being soldered to the brass, and the solder itself would be easier to maneuver, and the torches flame would be easier to reach the joint.

Second pinning

Piece with newly soldered brass rods

As can be seen, the brass piece soldered so much easier to the copper tubing.

To reintroduce myself, my name is Gretchen Burns and I am currently a student at Pittsburg State University. I'm a double major in biology with an emphasis in field biology and environment and art with an emphasis in jewelry design. Even though I am emphasizing in jewelry design, my goal in life is to attend an American Medical Association accredited school and obtain a Master's degree in Medical and Biological Illustration and continue on in a career of emphasis.

Currently, my work ranges all over the board, as I take new classes and experiment with new techniques and methods to drawing, inking, painting, and jewelry design. Hopefully, my work in the future will be illustrations that are featured in medical and biological journals, magazines, textbooks, etc. I'm hoping to learn how to make my art and illustrations more available toward other venues, but at the moment, I have not yet learned those.

As common as this sounds, I look to Leonardo da Vinci's illustrations from his journals for inspiration on illustration. He was extremely curious about how things worked, moved and changed and studied them. He kept notebooks and sketched everything out, in turn, teaching himself to become a better artist.

A goal of mine is to familiarize myself with more illustrators so I can learn different styles and techniques to perfect my own and find what I am comfortable with.

Shooting

Worked on shooting work professionally. The first attempt at 3-D work turned out pretty good with the light diffusers. The second time wasn't as great. There was a dull yellow light. I'll have to reshoot those and make sure is a nice white light.