HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATIE !!!

Katie's birthday was on Wednesday (3/19) and I’m a little behind on announcing this, but better late then never.
Kenfield Trivia Question: What fictional character does Katie share her birthday with?
Answer: Number 6, the main character from the 1960’s miniseries The Prisoner, created by and starring Patrick McGooen.Katie pointed this fact out to me when I showed her the first episode of The Prisoner, where in Number 6 states his birth date quite clearly. I’m just terrible at remembering birthdays and Katie (knowing this) showed me that if her birth date ever slips my mind, all I have to do is pop in the pilot episode of The Prisoner (I own the complete series on DVD) and Patrick McGooen will tell me.A quick side note: In just about every episode there is always this funny little Butler who appears to work for the head honcho of The Village, called Number 2. Number 2 is played by a different person in every episode, in fact the cast is always changing except for Number 6 and the little Butler.
On her birthday I drew this card for Katie:It opens from the middle.

My Class Project - Josh

I’ve been taking a Commercial Illustration course in the evenings since the beginning of February. It’s been really helpful to have something like a class to push me and make me work on my drawing skills. The focus of the class is more on the process of illustration then on the final pieces, so we take a lot of time focusing on the development process. In commercial illustration, the client and/or art director want the artist they hire to keep them well informed on the development of the piece. They don’t like surprises, so the artist will send thumbnails, value comprehensives, color roughs and other areas of refinement so the client can give feedback along with their approval or disapproval every step of the way. I’ll show you some examples of these steps from my first class project.
The assignment was a black and white Anthropomorphic Animal illustration done in the style of a children’s book drawing. Anthropomorphic Animal basically means an animal imitating humans appearance and/or behavior (example: Disney’s Robin Hood). Each student drew three words out of three hats. These words were of an animal, what the animal is and an adjective. From these words we had to create our illustrations. I pulled the words Tattooed, Baboon and Queen.
We started by drawing thumbnails of ideas, and these are what I came up with:
From the feedback and criticism of the class and teacher, I choose a combination of the last two as my final.
From there we had to come up with different value comprehensives (AKA lighting and shadow).

After more feedback I choose the last value drawing for my final piece. The final was drawn using black colored pencil on coquille board. This is the first time I’ve drawn on a coquille board, and I rather liked the texture. The piece did not turn out as good as I hoped, but I was really rushed to finish it after being sick for over two weeks. I basically had two days to draw it in time for the due date.

Aside from taking this course for practice reasons, I’m also using it as material for a mentorship with an animator from Disney. I don’t want to share his name without permission, but I can let you know that he directed most of the episodes of one my favorite cartoon series, Animaniacs! I’ve been running all of my work by him for more valuable feedback and criticism.All in all this has been a good experience and I really hope I can grow from it

Baby Talk