new year, new me

New year, new me. Well, kind of.

I'm 33. When I turned 18 way back in 1997 I left home and went off to college where I met something that would become part of my life forever: the internet. My generation made the message boards, the forums, the chat rooms... and really, to do those things, you need an avatar.

So, one night while I was on break at work I sketched out a caricature of me and colored it in with prismacolors. And that's been my avatar for 2 or 3 years now. People who know me in person who find me online always seem to be amused that my little rendering of myself looks like me; well, me-ish. I decided it could look a little more like me. So, I sat down at my desk yesterday and went about updating my avatar...

The progression - from current to new...

I took the old avatar, enlarged it, got rid of the color, and added a new face. I printed that out as a blue page, inked it, scanned that back in - colorized it and then printed that out to color over:

 So, now I suppose I should get to work on the rest of the projects I have lined up. Hopefully your new year has gotten off to a productive start!

Picture Story: the rainy fox

Hey, have I mentioned the calendar? Yeah, I know. It's kind of my fixation for the until 25 December. So, one illustration was completed last week and now I've finished another.

The rainy fox started out as a sketch that I drew while waiting to get an oil change for my car... I scanned the sketch, printed it as a blue page, inked the blue page, and scanned that back in and made it into a file.

There's a decision that I made about this illustration: no outlines. In my pre-digital illustrating days — objects in pictures never had outlines and everything was rendered by hand with colored pencil... somehow when pen & ink enters into the picture - there end up being outlines, and I decided that this picture would be outline free — so I "blocked" my picture so that it had no outlines. Blocking is a fairly arbitrary process - you just fill the parts of the picture with color. And I guess color schemes are just kind of inherent, at least they are to me. Even if I'm not precisely sure what I think a picture should look like when done - I have a vague idea of the colors, tone, mood, and presentation... 

You know, the sky isn't aqua blue with white clouds, and the ground isn't peacock green.

Since it's the picture for November — the original sketch has some raindrops penciled in, and "the rainy fox" is scrawled across the bottom of the page. So, when it came time to fill in my blocked file — I picked photos of leaves on the ground and a scan of a watercolor that fit that mood and then superimposed them over my layer of color blocking.

The tree is always the truly labor intensive part of the picture. I select some of my digital photos of tree bark and manipulate them in photoshop to turn a couple photos into a full tree.

So, once I have the colors the way I want them, and the layer overlays of photos or paintings for texture or effect — then it's time to print that image in order to draw over it with prismacolors.

I started by coloring in the details on the fox.

And then I gave the tree the illusion of dimensionality...

 And then it was time to color in the clouds and add the rain...

So, in the end, what started as a sketch becomes a full color illustration:

the rainy fox — Sarah Knight

Picture Story: summer flight

Have I mentioned the calendar? Yeah, that thing. Well, because I'd rather be frantically cleaning the house the week before Christmas (not), I'm trying to stave off the possibility that I will also be trying to frantically finish the calendar graphics (which inevitably end up in sarahkdesigns or sunshinesight).

Anyway: 1 illustration complete as of this weekend! (just imagine that confetti and balloons fell from the ceiling)

I get out of the habit of drawing, I mean sort of. The sketchbook is ever present in my bag, as are the pencils and the pencil sharpener. But sometimes the sketches are for one of those projects that I'll get around to finishing someday... and then, of course, there are all the ideas for future projects and thumbnail sketches and half conceived ideas. 

So, since I'm one of those people who gifts art and makes my own greeting cards, certain holidays compel me to make things. I did these for Father's day (click here). Now, those 2 bluebirds were something I had actually drawn for some illustration that never quite materialized, but they ended up here in this picture. Anyway, I decided I could enlarge them and color in some details to make them 5X7 pictures — that I could give to my father for father's day... and when I was working on them — it occurred to me that it would be cool to use my bird drawings — enlarge them and reprint and recolor or over-render them and convert them into 5X7 bird prints... and then I got busy with cleaning and ninety degree weather (and probably watching tv and sleeping and going to work) — and well, someday I'll get around to that project, right?

But, working on these did rekindle my ongoing love of working with colored pencils. Don't get me wrong, I still love my digital photos and the magic of photoshop, but I can draw, very well, thank you.

So, one day while I was on break at work I sketched out a group of poppies and decided they needed snails — because I like snails... and then when I decided to use that sketch for the calendar — I decided it also needed some birds: bluebirds. Now, I had drawn these bluebirds way back in 2008:

 ...and I was never thrilled with how I illustrated them at the very last minute. So, "bluebirds & tulips" became one of those forgotten / not-so-good illustrations that exists on a file as a PSD, but otherwise is lost somewhere in the catalog of my work. It's a perfunctory illustration, but it isn't stellar... but I thought of it when I wanted to add birds to my poppies & snails picture.

 As usual, I scanned my sketch of the poppies, printed it as a blue page, inked the blue page, and scanned that into photoshop where after some editing it became this:

I printed the image (sans blue background) to color over with prismacolors.

 Now, while I was working on coloring that print-out, I was also working on fixing those bluebirds in flight that I illustrated back in 2008. In the mean time, it occurred to me that my Father's birthday was coming up — and I needed a gift. So, re-doing the bluebirds served 2 purposes: my new illustration & a gift. Because for the purposes of my calendar graphics — all I need is a scan of the picture I have made, someone else can have the original framed and hanging on a wall.

So, I copied the layer with the bluebirds from the original file, enlarged them, blurred over and edited out some details, and printed out an image that I could color over:

 And in the mean time I colored the poppies as well. I scanned both of those pictures into the computer, and after some editing — put them together in a file with some layers derived from my photos of the sky and portions of scans of my abstract acrylic paintings. So, it's finished:

"summer flight" by Sarah Knight

And now it's time to get to work on the next picture ; )

busy busy busy...

So, it's September now.  And it's a mere 3 months before Christmas.  So, that means that it's time to start working on the calendar. Yes, I am that relative that makes a calendar as a catchall gift for all my relatives every year... I've been doing it since at least 2005.

 Every calendar is as different as it is the same.  After making them for 3 or 4 years I finally figured out how to transfer some of the parts from one year to the next — like the grids and changing the dates — since I do the whole thing in photoshop instead of just coming up with the graphics and sending them off to a printer and paying an arm and a leg to have them made — something which kind of entirely defeats the point of giving out a homemade gift.  At the core, I am a thrifty gifter. Enjoy your socks, eventually you'll need them...

 Anyway, at some point in time I need to know that my 12 illustrations are chugging along the trail of progress.  Since I use the same technique for all 12 — I've found it useful to make myself a schedule — to know that I have 12 illustrations sketched out, that the sketches are scanned and printed as blue pages which will then be inked, the inked drawings will be scanned back in and a PSD file will be created where I fill in the file; I may need to print that out and color over the fills and scan it back in, and eventually, the thing becomes a completed illustration...

But really, everything starts out as a sketch, or as multiple sketches that will be combined via the magic of photoshop:

I drew this one while getting an oil change...

 Sometimes sketches that were done for other purposes get sucked into the calendar graphics project, and they get converted into

 Sometimes I forget that I used a sketch last year and just use it again...

 And sometimes something that was drawn for last year's calendar didn't get completed in time, so there it sits waiting for the next year...

And then blue pages get inked:

 

So, if I'm not sleeping or at work, then I'm probably sitting somewhere coloring a drawing or at the computer moving pixels around on the screen. But this year, I will not be finishing everything at the last minute. It doesn't mean I'll be enjoying my December, just that I won't be hastily completing pictures.
; )

Have you started your holiday preparations yet?

the dream about the house...

Often times I awake from sleep via my beeping alarm clock. Yes, I am a Luddite, and I actually do have an alarm clock.

 (And yes, I buy lotto tickets...)

I hear that nowadays the kids use their cell phones for everything. I don't have one, so, yeah, I have an actual alarm clock. And yes, that blue piece of plastic often dictates the end of happy fun sleepy time.

Anyway, often times I awake from my slumber and have utterly no recollection of what I dreamt.  Today was not one of those days. Today I had the dream about the house.

The "dream about the house" is fairly mundane. It always takes place in what was formerly my mother's bedroom in her childhood home (a.k.a. Grandma Duda's house).  From what I recall, my Grandfather built / refurbished the upstairs of the house (in the nineteen sixties). So, it had these acrylic tiles on the floor that sort of looked like wood and plastic at the same time, and square acoustical tiles on the ceiling.  And because it was a converted upstairs - some of the walls were slanted (like this) to match the shape of the roof. Plus, the extraneous area around the sides was the attic, so there were these door panels in the walls that led to these little storage areas.

Frankly, as a child, those attic doors scared me shitless. I was glad that the bed in my mother's old room was pushed up against the door there. Because I had been in the little attic area next to it, and irrationally as a child - there was a garden gnome statue somewhere in that house and I was convinced that it was evil or possessed or something and was going to come and get me in my sleep via that attic door. Obviously, I would hear the sound of the bed sliding across the floor tiles and at least be able to wake and scream like a banshee before the gnome got me!

*giggles*

You know, I slept through thunderstorms, but that gnome I would hear. Logic and children's fears have very little to do with each other. ; )

Anyway: the dream about the house.  It involves that back bedroom, except instead of it being the back bedroom it always turns into this giant open space via that attic door - like the ball room from "The Shining." Except it isn't a ballroom it's usually a giant restaurant (like an Olive Garden) but it's always decorated in this eighties style with very square yellow table tops and red and turquoise colored accents... and it's always filled with people, including my dead grandparents, specifically Grandma and Grandpa Duda (except they're very much alive). I have no idea why they're always there, I mean, I suppose technically, it is their house...

So, yes, I had the dream about the house. Except this time it was different. It was Grandma Duda's house, but someone had redecorated it, and I couldn't find the staircase leading upstairs. The staircase in their actual home was accessible via a doorway in the dining room. Well, I thought I finally found the doorway, but when I opened the door there was just another door that opened from the opposite side, and when I opened that door there was simply another door, and each door was smaller than the previous door, and I continued to open them even though I was thinking "this is completely pointless because by the time one of these actually opens to something besides another door - the hole is going to be so small that only a Barbie Doll would fit through here..."

Yes, I said all that stuff to get to that point, which isn't so much a point and yet it is. There are people who very much believe that dreams are symbolic or metaphoric or the human mind solving problems in an inexplicable way... When I have the dream about the house - I always remember being in the fantasy restaurant room, but I never have any recollection of what went on there with all those people. I just remember 'being there.'

So, I woke up from a recurring dream that failed to follow the script of all its previous incarnations, and I was struck by that difference. Metaphorically, I have no idea what the restaurant room really means, but tonight, I couldn't even go upstairs... I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Anyway, in real life - I've been working on a project for a while. I realized some time ago that I had stopped drawing people. I drew birds and trees and flowers and clotheslines and the occasional insect and more birds and trees and flowers... but not people. And that isn't to say that I stopped drawing people entirely. In fact, I have a couple sketchbooks just of drawings of figures or girls. It wasn't that I didn't draw people - I just never turned those drawings into illustrations.

I think that's because there's something 'safe' about animals and trees and flowers (and even clotheslines). No one really looks at an illustration of a bird and asks "who is that?" It might be some specific kind of bird, but it's not like I had to personally know the bird to justify drawing a picture of it, or then explain the bird's "story."

People are different. People are somehow more specific and have names and favorite things and likes and dislikes and stories... People - particularly when they're not someone you know in real life - are characters.

And I've been working on my sketchbooks with the drawings of people... although I don't really think that's why I had the dream about the house with the alternate ending. Yes, sometimes logical and metaphorical connections are tenuous and inexact.

Just in case anyone wondered what I was blathering on about - that's one of my sketches.  The yet undecided part of the project is how I'm going to convert the sketch to an illustration. Do I want to go through the process of scans and blue pages and inking and filling? Or do I want to do something different? And what's the rest of the picture? Sketches are a staring point, but the actual finished illustration is a journey and a destination...

As for that dream? Grandpa Duda did appear and he was remodeling the house (in spite of the fact that he died in 2004). And I finally found the door to the staircase that goes upstairs, but the dream ended before I got around to wandering up there... and it wasn't via my alarm clock. I simply woke up, as today was my day off so there was no reason to set an alarm.

Oh, and those are some more sketches... every time the work weeks ends and my days off occur I think to myself about all the sketching and drawing and illustrating I could be doing. And then usually very little of it gets done. Sketching always seems to happen when it is least planned...

Anyway, sweet dreams, and have a pleasant weekend, and hopefully if the architect in your dreams moves your metaphorical staircase - you figure out the solution to whatever the problem was.

; )

the lost post...

The weekend seems to have whizzed by without a blog post... whoops.

Which is funny, because I spent a lot of time sitting in front of the computer. But I was typing, and well, screen captures of text just aren't that dynamic when it comes to blog posts...

I did, however, go shopping. I mean, I went shopping to buy conditioner and garbage bags and napkins... and somehow ended up in Hobby Lobby. Yeah, I have no idea, right? ; )

Anyway, I snagged the remainder of these 2 bolts of awesome fabric.  Ecograda Rose on the left & Ecograda Lattice on the right.  If I've never mentioned this, I love gaudy retro floral patterns and color schemes from the seventies.  I have an entire stash of what I think of as "future curtains." You know, for that window-licious house I'm going to buy when I win the lotto one of these days.  These colors & this pattern were just too much to pass up.

I have plans for new things in my "sarahknight" shop on etsy coming up in April.  This is one of my projects...

And I've been working on sketches of people... actually, I've been working on this project on and off for a couple of years now. I already have an entire sketchbook of "the girls." I just need to find the time to actually get past the sketching phase of the project and move on to the next phase...

In the mean time I immensely enjoyed Archer this last week. Katya as a cyborg was priceless.

However, I think Grimm left a bigger impression on me. I may have already copped to having a school girl crush on David Giuntoli. And really, who wouldn't? Just look at those sparkly baby blues.  Which reminds me of one of my favorite Jackson Browne songs... yes, that was a non sequitur.

Anyway, last Friday's episode was The Plumed Serpent. I think maybe it should have been called, "wow, that is a lot of shirtless Nick Burkhardt," but, you know, that's me. And, yeah, there was a lot of shirtlessness there.

: )

Not that I'm complaining.

Oh, and OMG, there's a tumblr called MONROELICIOUS, ha! The things you find when you google "shirtless Nick Burkhardt."

Anyway, hope everyone is having a good week :D

Picture Story: Christmas ride

The picture that became "Christmas ride" is another of the sketches that I had started in August 2011 while sitting at the art walk.

The original idea of the sketch was to have the deer — with ridiculously long legs — going off the picture plane. It was supposed to be abstract in that way.

 

Well, by the time I had printed it out as a blue page to be inked - the deer was no longer tromping off the page.

In fact, by the time I colored the deer — it had a new stranger kind of perspective.  The funny thing is — this was one of the first graphics I actually started working on a colorized scan of as it pertains to the calendar graphics, but I kept waffling on finishing it.

 Anyway, I got the colorized / colored-over drawing of the deer all scanned into photoshop and cut the scan and got my composition file ready — and then I needed a background.

Now, since the deer is leaping through the air and I intended for this to be a wintery / Christmas-y graphic (because it was the graphic for December) — I needed a sky. And because I was in a rush, whatever plans I may have had to create something specific to this picture were dumped in favor of using something I already had.

My starry sky was originally created for "violet night." It's also the starry sky that I used in "deer in the winter woods." But I wanted a more subdued version, so I used a layer of color over it.

I also wanted my sky to look more like a sky and less like a flat patternesque plane — so I selected a sky photo to superimpose over my stars.

And then, because it's a winter picture — I added a layer of my snowflakes.

The girl wasn't originally a planned part of the composition.  But looking at the deer over the sky in my file — it was just missing something. Now, eschewing the normal process, I actually just printed out a super-lightened copy of my deer and literally — with a pencil sketched the girl onto the composition. I inked that with a very thin-lined pen, and then colored it with prismacolors. I scanned that drawing into photoshop, cut the scan and added it to the file.

And, voilà: "Christmas ride"