wee square cards

first of all, sorry about the posting hiatus. i was planning on posting more often but, well, life happened.

anyway -- check out my new business cards! what do you think?

i thought they turned out pretty decently for the little time i had to design them (when i was on "vacation") -- of course, there's already half a dozen things i'd change about them. i wanted to get them done by tomorrow because i'm doing another TOMS event (like the one i did last time)! i'm excited. you should be excited, too.

ps, notice it says 'illustration and design'...do you know that i also do graphic design and photography as well as illustration? those have actually been taking up a good amount of time recently so you might see some of that on this blog soon. just a heads up...but i'm not making promises. :) art really is a way of life, you know?

drawing is my favorite.

{except for writing this sentence, i'm skipping obligatory "sorry for not posting for so long" preface....}

this past semester, i took a head painting class. as part of our out-of-class sketchbook assignments, we had to draw portraits with different lighting situations. i decided to draw them bigger and with nu pastel and conte crayon because i miss figure drawing. so, here they are! it's been a while since i've drawn, so it makes sense that the consecutive order of the drawings were also, in my opinion, good --> better --> best.

the two pinkish ones are self-portraits in nu pastel and it was fun to draw from the mirror. the others are drawn from photos in conte.

yeah. the paintings will be posted soon, but drawing's still my favorite.

estefaaaaann

well, pre-production for estefan is wrapping up! it's been a really fun journey to be a concept artist for the film and i've learned a lot. here's just some REALLY EARLY preliminary work from the film.

clockwise, from top left: style studies, refined prop study, quick salon shape studies, environment light & color study. we...study...lots

part of the 100 quick sketches we were asked to do at the beginning, just to explore ideas and directions

more quick sketches for estefan

these might look familiar...more refined sketches and my final estefan concept

studies for clara

part of rough style guide

yeah. not the most aesthetically pleasing portfolio ever, but i pulled it together in like...an hour? and a half, maybe? but, IT'S DONE. they just wanna see that i've been working. ...i have.

btw, this film is gonna be RAD. our director, design lead, producer and story lead are just rock solid (i work with them most) and such great people. some of my favorites. we also have such a fun crew working on the film. at times it's been stressful for sure, but when everyone works together, there's some crazy synergy that goes on. 

style your sole!

if you aren't familiar with TOMS shoes, you should think about fixing that. {read here to see why you really should buy a pair.}

this past saturday they had a promotional event, style your soul, where customers could purchase shoes and then artists would paint them at nordstrom's.

together with fellow local artists and friends hannah, sean, colt, jordan and hilary and others, i painted, markered, and drew on shoes for six hours. it. was. a BLAST.

within half an hour of the event's opening, we were already at full capacity for the waiting list of who's shoes would be painted. we would have loved to stay forever to paint shoes, but we weren't in charge of how that went down.

[this beautiful piece work work is hannah's]

unfortunately, i didn't get shots of all the shoes i did. but here are cool details

soooo....
if you have a pair of unworn shoes that you would like custom painted, we will paint some for you!

...they don't have to be TOMS shoes (but way cooler if they are, or course)
...and YOU can choose your design (or just give us a vague idea and we'll paint some Awesome).

let's talk: kgull.art@gmail.com

i brought my camera and went snap-happy. these photos were taken by me, sean and hannah. for more pictures, check out hannah's post about the event.

jack became my best friend

...over the past week.

forgive my blog hiatus. this is why:

this is work for my concept art class, taught by jake parker. if...you couldn't tell, it's jack and the beanstalk.

i most definitely did the majority of the work for this in...well...a few days? i sketched and inked them by hand, then took them digital. the film kind of took over my life this semester and the jack stuff was a huge push at the end. but i'm not done. i am calling it good for now; check back soon and you'll hopefully see better inked figures and such.

feedback is encouraged and welcome!

didn't davinci say something like, "art is never finished, only abandoned at an interesting point"? well....yup. guess that's how we roll.

a cottage for jack

so this semester in jake parker's concept design class, we designed characters, props and environments for jack and the beanstalk. we were encouraged to design it more traditionally, without changing the story or and making it more disney-esque. it was a good challenge.

i only wish i had more time to actually take advantage of having jake there -- he's an amazing artist and great resource for ANYTHING art. but, alas....

anyway, here's a preview of what direction mine is going.

more to come. likely when i'm not sitting in the final presentation for jake's class.

life drawing :: my process

i had the privilege of teaching the friday illustration labs for the freshman seminar class last semester (fall '10). i only had two hours with each group of pre-art major students, and constructed my labs so that ideally, we'd cover three main areas within that time: we defined illustration and the illustration program, established basics of life drawing, and let the students practice after my demo. it was crazy full, but there were some good times to be had. and the students were troopers.

...

i made the following slides* as part of my presentation. don't take this as doctrine, but hopefully it makes a little sense of what probably went on in my head as i drew.

let me know if this is at all helpful, or any other thoughts or questions you might have. i'd love feedback!

the final product: 

i'm highly influenced by my professor, bob barrett. if any of the above process makes sense to you and want to learn more, i would suggest studying his life drawing book which goes into great depth. 

*apologies for the quality of pictures; when i drew it, i wasn't intending on using the process pictures for anything other than checking my progress. obviously my cell phone camera isn't the most hi-tech thing in the world....