Happy Holidays

Here's a painting I made as a gift for my dad. Hope everyone enjoyed last week, and had a good year.

bird catching

Well! Right now I'm working on some personal paintings, as well as doing work for a collaborative show with Marika Mccoola. Another little thing I'm doing on the side, for fun, is a series of character designs for The Magic Flute. Or rather, The Magic Flute if it was ever turned into an RPG. It's something I started for an assignment back in school and it was pretty fun, so I thought I'd revisit it. Here's the first finished character design, my favorite character, Papageno!

Three of the other characters have already been started, but since I have so many other projects going, I can't say when they'll be ready for posting.

Art for your feet!

So, the story behind these is: I got a free pair of shoes, but they were hideously white, so I painted them. My mom liked them, so I painted her a pair. Then, since other people liked that pair, I decided to start doing them for money. These are the first three pair of shoes. I love making patterns.

Second done

Second in the series, this one for The Queen of Attolia. I'm getting more of a feeling for this new digital color process I've been trying. However, the third will probably take more time in coming than this one.

The powdered graphite drawing:

The digital sketch (less or a departure from sketch to final for this one than with the first):

Still going

Well! So many things have been going on lately that I haven't even thought about updating. No longer! Here's a new bit of art!

So this is from a series of images I'm working on inspired by Megan Whalen Turner's YA books. This is for book one, The Thief.

I decided (for reasons I'm not too sure of) to do digital finishes for the series. The plus side is, because I wasn't going to be painting, I got to use powdered graphite for the drawing, which I haven't used in ages. So, here's the drawing :

And here's the digital sketch:

New things have happened

I am always absurdly pleased with myself anytime I manage to do anything in HTML, so imagine my delight now that I have set up the store section of my website all by myself.

Success, you are so delicious.

It's still a work in progress, so I only have things up in the prints section, and nothing is actually buyable yet. And those are just stand in prices....but still!

irresistable

I am so in love with this blog it captivates me. Especially when it puts up images like: 

this

this
this
and this

wrapping it up

Well, commencement show is going up this week, and I am ready to get out of here. It's been great (mostly) MICA.

The Mighty Allansaurous

Huzzah!

Great news! My website is up and running! Thanks so much to the wonderful Sarah! 

storyboard (part two)

These are the posters that the little boy finds in my thesis children's book, FULL MOON. They pull out of the book.

story board (part one)

I decided to put my digital sketches for my thesis children's book up here. The pages/spreads with a pink dot in the corner are ones that are/will shortly be put up in their final state on my webiste.

how did this happen?

I don't know. It's a cover image, the text is coming, but it's not done yet.

what I'm working on right now...

in progress full page color illustration of "A Study in Emerald" for Sean Murray's Fantasy Art class. 

gouache and pastel

update?

This blog is so neglected, but I have been busy. So, upadates:

currently working on illustrating Neil Gaiman's story "A Study in Emerald", above is one of the spots.

I've also been steadily finishing up my illustrations for a series of fantasy and horror short stories.

Both projects are going well, I'm really enjoying combining gouache and pastel. The pastel eases me through my usual dislike of gouache.

ALSO: the wonderful Sarah is setting up my website for me, now that I've actually done the design and gotten (most) of the files ready. So, expect www.racheleschneider.com to be ready soon!