In my last entry, I mentioned how busy 2011 has been so far. Well, the "busyness" continued into the rest of the Spring and through the Summer...
In July, I returned to Hartford, CT for two weeks to attend classes for my MFA in Illustration program. It was good to be back in Hartford to catch up with my fellow classmates and meet the first year students. But I especially enjoyed attending two classes that were taught by group of well-respected and established illustrators. The first one was Digital Illustration, which was led by Nancy Stahl and Zina Saunders. The assignment was to design and illustrate the introductory and interface screen for an IPad game. I chose to create a target practice game with William Tell, my thesis subject, as the theme (gain points by shooting the apple off the son's head!). The final pieces came out really well and I received very good reviews from students and the teachers. After seeing my finals, both Zina and Murray Tinkelman, the program director, said my work comes across as very genuine and personal and not contrived. Shown below are the two final pieces for the game assignment. In the second week we had a class taught by Gary Kelly and Chris Payne. In the beginning, both illustrators demonstrated their technique to the class, then afterward the students could work in one of those techniques and create their own pieces. I chose to produce a series of monoprints, a form of printmaking that Gary Kelly demonstrated. A few examples are shown below. While in that class, I was also able to show my portfolio website to both Gary and Chris. They commented on a number of my illustrations and gave me much valuable feedback on how to improve. One thing they emphasized on was the importance of finding other successful illustrators, past or present, whose works resemble mine and learn from them.
Lastly, I had the opportunity to teach some illustration and fine art classes at two long-established local art centers, Edina Art Center and Bloomington Art Center, this Summer. It was a gratifying experience to share my knowledge to the students and see their interest and enthusiasm while they worked on their assignments during class.
-SMF
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| Introduction screen for Digital Illustration class |
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| Interface screen for Digital Illustration class | | | | | | |
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| Monoprint from Illustration II class |
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| Monoprint from Illustration II class |
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