Art of Erika Baird

Merry Christmas all!

2011-12-25T08:51:00.001-08:00

Wise Men on reindeer is probably a mix of totally improbable but interesting X tacky kitsch, but I wanted to anyway. Enjoy the holiday everyone, and remember why we really celebrate it!

Senior Show now on display

2011-12-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

My senior show is now on display in Rexburg, ID, showing on the third floor of the Spori building of the BYU-Idaho campus. If you're in the area, come take a look, and say hi. If you're not, it's online now, too, at erikastudio.com Be sure and check it out, as there's a great deal that's never been displayed before.

Additionally, you can now read chapter one online! (I'll warn you though, the text on some of the character sheets is somewhat spoiler heavy) The novel itself is in its last round of editing before being subjected to the publishing gauntlet; which is an whole different beast entirely.

3D Lego Minifig

2011-10-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

My first shot at 3D modeling! A Lego minifig. I used to love playing with legos at my grandma's house when I was a kid; she had a whole bucketful. The orthographs were provided to the class, based on real Lego orthographic drawings. We got to make up our own character to texture them as (which was my favorite part)

Next up: a mini tinker's wagon!

CTN Animation Expo

2011-10-21T22:48:00.001-07:00

I'll be in Burbank, CA in November for the CTN Animation Expo!

I'm excited, it looks like a lot of artists I've admired for a long time will be there. I'm signed up for the presentations by Terryl Whitlatch, Bobby Chiu, Carlos Grangel, and of course, Marcelo Vignali.

The expo is also incentive to finish my senior project before then so I can have it in my portfolio, and maybe bring a couple books of it with me to give out (we'll see if that comes to pass)

The image is the latest installment of my senior project: Emperor Tane ticks off a guardian dragon, and manages to get himself saddled with a quest. More or less.

Reader draft of War-sky Rising is DONE!

2011-09-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

For the two of you out there that follow this blog: After a nice, round, ten years in the making, I just finished the umpteenth draft of War-sky Rising (who's title may still change)

It topped out at 163 pages, single spaced; 79,945 words.

Because it's way beyond 'second draft' or any other sort of counting, I've just titled it the 'reader draft' meaning: other (select) people may read it and offer insight for final edits before I start trying to market this suckah.

Woo!

Dumarian Instruments

2011-03-30T09:23:00.001-07:00

The finished Dumaria instruments! from top right, clockwise, are a 'howl dish,' a harp, a guiro/huiro, and some hanging chimes. This is what happens when you read too much Diontopia. Oh wait, there's no such thing as too much Dinotopia.

Woodcarving

2011-03-23T06:58:00.000-07:00

Another ancient folk art: wood carving. It's pretty much what it sounds like, but there's a myriad of ways to carve wood, from chainsaw to chisel. Anything from large, rough hewn cuts to smooth polish can be achieved. A fun thing to work with on this image was trying to simulate how a wood gouge cuts with the grain, as well as some traditional patterns that have arisen from it, like the little notches along the tail and the mane. I also enjoyed simulating that high gloss finish, that sinks down into any ridges and catches the light. On real wood the finish can really sparkle and make the wood glow.

Chris Pye
An example of a carved box
Windsor Wood Carving Museum
Bas Relief wood carvings

Embroidery

2011-03-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

Embroidery is one of the older decorative arts, and has been practiced for centuries from Europe to China. It involves creating a design using colored thread on cloth, often with other pieces of colored cloth sewn on. Lots of different designs are possibly using different stitches, or combination of them. Embroidery can be done by hand, or on a machine, or a combination of both.

This image mimics both machine and hand sewing techniques, but it's all digital.

The Bayeux Tapestry (Which is 20 inches tall and 231 feet long. Yes, feet.)
Chinese Embroidery
Azerbaijan embroidery
The Unicorn Tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Impasto Painting

2011-02-23T07:07:00.000-08:00

Impasto painting uses thick, wet strokes of paint, generally applied loosely. It's frequently used in oil painting, with paint strokes so thick they may even cast their own shadows. Highlights in particular get really thick, and increase the illusion of sparkle because, not only is the paint a highlight, but the physical paint gets an actual highlight on it because of its thickness. Impressionists used Impasto heavily, such as Van Gogh and Monet. Here is a detail of Rembrandt's A Jewish Bride, showing the impasto technique clearly.

Other artists who use impasto:
Joshua Clare
Ovanes Berberian

Scumbling and Dry Brush

2011-02-07T07:51:00.000-08:00

Dry brush techniques can really cover a wide gamut of techniques and mediums, from oil paint and acrylic to watercolor. It involves putting undiluted paint on a dry brush that is dragged across the surface, leaving pigment on raised areas. Scumbling is when lighter colors are dragged over darker colors, and can give a rough, textured effect, or a light gauzy look, depending on what kind of surface it is applied to. It generally gives a solid but broken line, with hard edges, but can appear soft if done over a fine texture. Diego Velasquez was a master of this, you can see that he was dry brushing some of his finer, final brush strokes in this image of Sibyl with Tabla Rasa and this portrait of Juan de Pareja. The ends of strokes are often more broken than the beginning, which gives much of the look to Chinese brush painting, which often uses a combination of dry brush over light, wet, washes. This image, by Yet Por Cheng, shows the effect nicely. The oldest known art even uses something akin to dry brhing, you can see how the texture of the rock affected how pigment was rubbed over it in cave paintings like Lascaux.

Lithography

2011-02-07T06:49:00.001-08:00

This is a 'digital lithograph' (d0n't kill me, printmakers) each color was done on a separate paper, by hand, then scanned and registered digitally. Color was added to each layer to simulate different color runs. This is a mock cover for a short story written by Laura Jennings about Psychic Dolphins who fight Aliens in Space. Yes. You heard me. Besides it being an interesting short story in and of itself, it was just way too good to pass up the opportunity to draw.

Lithography was invented in 1796, and is still in use today in mass printing (known as offset lithography) It relies on the play of fine wax resist (sometimes applied by hand with a crayon) to a smooth, limestone surface for each color run. Oil based ink can be passed over the stone, and print is made based on the natural resistance of the ink. It was the first printing technology that allowed normal work flow for the artist: prints are made as they are drawn (only in reverse) and do not have to be carved out. This allowed new art styles to flourish, such as Art Noveau, Alphonse Mucha's work was largely produced by lithography. Lithography also advertised the west, with artists such as C.M. Russell, and even Thomas Moran used lithographs. It leaves a subtle stone texture, which looks often looks like fine stippling or rough paper. The crayon used to make the stone plates can also affect the image: it can be quite fine, or can appear very much like a crayon drawing (as in, Crayola crayon drawing)

Today, offset lithography uses a polymer on an aluminum plate, which can be bent to a cylinder and allows for faster printing with multiple colors.

Screen Printing

2011-01-31T06:33:00.000-08:00

Also known as silk screening, uses a layer of silk or muslin stretched taut across a frame of wood, using water adhesive stretching tape to pull it taut. This frame is laid flat on top of the surface that is to be printed on, which can be anything from metal, wood, or glass, to, of course, paper. Stencils are used to control where ink goes through onto the surface, and are laid over the silk, then have thick, gel like ink squeegeed over them, leaving the first layer of ink on the surface, in the shape of the stencil. Other colors may be added on top, but only when the first layer is completely dry.

Museum dedicated to Andy Warhol, one of the most famous screen printers.
Squeegeeville: with instruction, ordering information, and links to contemporary silk screeners.
Contemporary screen printers:
Nelly Duff
'Judge' website with prints for sale.

Woodblock Printing

2011-01-24T06:32:00.000-08:00

Woodblock printing is one of the oldest mediums used by 'illustrators' in that it could be mass produced. Almost as soon as the printing press was invented, woodblock illustrations found their way into the text as well, especially in religious manuscripts like this illustration by Albrecht Durer. Outside the Europe though, woodblocks had been in use for far longer, with recorded examples in China from at least 220 b.c. and even a few examples from ancient Egypt.

The most famous examples of woodblock printing are the Japanese Ukiyo-e prints such as those by Utagawa Hiroshige.

Some contemporary artists that use woodblock printing are Tom Killion, Ralph Kiggell and the Brazilian folk artist José Borges.

Some interesting qualities of traditional woodblock prints are the texture the paint leaves on the paper surface, which can be effected by how much ink is used, paper thickness and tooth, how much pressure is applied, and other factors. Edges are usually bold, and their edges are different depending on what material they are carved into, whether it be linoleum block or actual wood. Even the grain direction of the wood has a bearing on edge quality: finer cuts can be made on an end-grain section of wood (sometimes called wood engraving) than can be on a normal plank. Different gouge widths and shapes can also be used for different line quality.

So here's my go at 'digital woodblock.' I had fun experimenting with the limitations of a three color run (on off white paper) rust, turquoise, and the black trap line. The turquoise over the rust gives the brown, simulating real, transparent printing ink.

Transparency

2011-01-19T06:11:00.000-08:00

There's a nice little trick in Photoshop using the channels tab that allows any drawing to be turned 'transparent,' like an animation cel. Cel shading has been around for quite some time, and used to be hand inked and painted, frame by frame. Cels were inked first, then painted on the back, to eliminate brush strokes from the finished cel. Each one became one frame of the animation. Through the years cel creation became more and more efficient, especially once Xerography was invented, which allowed drawings to be transferred directly onto the clear plastic, rather than having to trace every single one from the original drawing. This process was tested on Sleeping Beauty, and the entire film of 101 Dalmatians was made using this method (which gives it its charming, sketchy look. There's more potential to this though than just cel animation.

Classical, a user on DeviantArt, used this transparency technique on That Sinking Feeling. You can see the black and white line art here.

It's also a great way to color that amazing drawing you did(Thank you TracyJB), add some tone to it, and stop relying on the 'multiply' setting.

I've used this technique before, but thought I'd experiment a little more than usual with it, and tried this little picture, which turned out looking pseudo silk-screened, but which I actually think would probably be a silk screening nightmare.

Technical Drawing

2011-01-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

Technical illustration is rather a broad label, covering everything from architectural blueprints, to product design, to concept design for things like robots and armor. Traditionally technical artists relied on rulers and 'rapidograph' pens to get smooth, exact lines with even weight and concise proportions, often showing the lines through the 'skin' of the object so inner workings can be seen. This drawing is how Sorrek's hut (from the last post) is built.

Examples of some tecnical illustrations include everything from the Thomas Jefferson's Architectural designs to the batmobile, and these designs for Tron, to product detailing such as this one.

Illustrator is a funny beast, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

Sorrek's Hut

2010-12-27T16:22:00.000-08:00

This was actually done before the last environment I posted, but needed a lot of revisions before I could call it done. Both are inhabited by griffins: two posts ago was the villainous one, this one is the 'good' griffin.

This was the first of 7 'environments' that later turned into 7 'huge illustrations' ... meaning, eventually this will have Sorrek himself in it as well, rather than just being empty.

This one was a good testing ground for how far I can take revisions without redoing something. The class critique on the original version of this was quite lengthy, but it (of course) improved it a great deal. I may fiddle with it a bit after critique round two, but for now, the revisions list is all crossed off!

The project as a whole is still underway. I'll post periodic updates on it until April (when the whole thing will go up on my website.

Odopod Animated Sketch

2010-12-04T18:42:00.000-08:00

Well, since I have a website for serious things, now I feel a little more at liberty to post some silly things here. A friend linked me to this little site, which is a fun little limited palette program that plays your drawing back for you. So I thought I'd have a little fun, and there we are!

Inshee's Lair

2010-12-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

A sneak peek at what I've been working on recently; one of the digital paintings from my BFA senior project. The project is a fairly large one, and will include full illustrations (such as this one, though as yet incomplete), character sheets, and spot illustrations. When all's said and done, there will be over thirty pieces. (One per week, basically)

This one is the lair of a secondary villian: a cult-leader griffin named Inshee. The project is based on a book I wrote and am currently in the process of self-editing. The world, Dumaria, is populated largely by sentient, mythology-based animals and what happens when humans from another world enter the mix.

New website launched!

2010-10-24T13:33:00.001-07:00

It's official, I now have a personal website! There's some stuff on there that's never appeared online before too. Let me know what you think.

Check it out...

The only problem I'm aware of so far is that the 'about' link doesn't seem to work in Safari (on my computer at least) If anyone else finds any glitches drop me a line and I'll try and smooth them out.

Of Napoleon and Dragons

2010-09-01T22:32:00.001-07:00

That about sums up the fantasy Temeraire Series by author Naomi Novik. It's a fantastic little alternate universe series involving intelligent dragons (of various breeds and sizes) employed basically as warships during the Napoleonic Wars. The series benefits from being well researched, and delves into many of the questions most fantasy books (especially dragony ones) glaze over. Like the fact that harboring a several ton predator entails feeding it Lots Of Livestock. Among other things. A very satisfying series. Peter Jackson has bought screen rights to it (google confirmed rumor), if that gives it any added clout.

Anyway. As soon as I finished the first book I knew I'd have to draw -something- from it, so here is Captain James, and his companion Volatilus, or Volley, for short. His breed is bred for speed, at the sacrifice of intelligence, which makes him rather stupid for a dragon, but I find it endearing.

Third happening that led to the existence of this image is the unearthing of the author's anything-goes fanart contest, which, by some miracle, I actually entered on time even though it fell on the weekend of my brother's wedding. I would have liked to do it in watercolor, but I had only micron with me, so pen it is.

In Memory of Arnold Friberg

2010-07-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago, on July 1st, Arnold Friberg, one of my art-heroes and oldest inspirations passed away. I grew up admiring and poring over the illustrations he did for the Book of Mormon, and later discovered his other work. He is most famous for 'Prayer at Valley Forge,' artwork for 'The Ten Commandments,' and his works for the Canadian Mounties.

Here are two works that I have prints of for my walls.

For more on him, I recommend Greg Newbold's blog. James Gurney is where I found out the news, and should be visited as well.

Chalk Art Festival 2010

2010-06-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

Back at the Utah Foster Care annual chalk art festival! This was a pretty good year. I went with a simpler, homemade design this year and went with something that cropped up in my sketchbook a few months ago (one of those 2 a.m. things) Heh, no crazy Mucha reproductions this year; I knew I'd have only one day instead of the customary two because of school and travel time (a 4 hour drive) and I was working alone this year instead of teaming up.

My mom did her own square this year as well, as well as two of my other sisters in the student category. Sign in was funny this year.

"Name please?"

"Baird."

"...which one?"

I was nearly under one of the mall's footbridges this year, which meant I had at least partial shade most of the day. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get a full sun picture, but the sun obliged just enough to push the shadow just off the edge of my square before we had to leave. That's my sketchbook in the corner, wrapped in saran wrap to keep chalk dust off. You can also draw a simple grid on top of it with permanent marker, which is handy.

Till next year!

Sketchpage

2010-06-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

The ibex is at a wildlife (taxidermy) museum at a university near my house. The lynx lives at the zoo, and likes to do what all cat's do best: pretend like they're doing something they're not. Most people walked up, saw him and said 'aw, he's so boring, he's just sleeping.' then they'd walk away and he'd open his eyes and give a devilish little smirk.

The second sketch looks like he actually went to sleep, but the occasional curious eye-peep told me otherwise. I'm a little partial to the second sketch, as I'd loosened up a bit. Last time I went to the zoo this same lynx killed a stray bird that ventured into its cage...right in front of the children's viewing window. It was fantastic.

Sorry for the ugly watermark. Paper texture added in PS.

Don't Feed the Animals

2010-06-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Help yourselves y'all!

There's two more images between this one and the wolf-man image, but they're more on the 'color storyboard' level, so, just the two of Red will suffice.

I don't think very many of those rolls are going to make it to grandma's house.

Traditional linework (micron and dipping pen) with digital color.

Some of them Bite

2010-05-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

For those who've not been here for a while, I've been in Uruguay for the last year and a half, and am just now getting back into updating things again.

So, here we are. First on the dockett is a concept for Little Red Riding Hood that's been rattling around in my head for ...a while. A long one, actually. Sorry for the watermark.

Inked with micron on the fiddlybits, and with a traditional dipping pen for much of the rest. Color in photoshop.

Utah Foster Care Annual Chalk Art Festival

2008-06-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

My high school used to host chalk art competitions every year, which I never did very well in until senior year, when me and my partner Lin Zhang won first. It was the first time I'd ever won anything for drawing, and it kind of took me off guard (In a pleasant way of course) After that festival I heard of the Foster Care one, then in either is first or second year. My mom and I have made a tradition of participating in it since '05 and it's steadily grown in popularity. This year there were twice as many artists than our first! We've done both reproductions and original art, and this year we decided to do 'Reverie' by Alhphonse Mucha.

The competition allows twenty four hours to finish, then judging takes place. We got there at about five or six on friday night right after I got off work and put in about three hours, then came back saturday morning and went until four. Since the image was so complex, we started in the middle and worked out.

Working in the middle of the road gives you 'Zoo Syndrome.' I think we partially go just to laugh at what people will say right next to you and think you're not listening. The usual comments are along the lines of 'Don't step on that honey!' 'hey look, they're drawing a lady.' or, 'don't they know that cars ae going to drive all over that?'

My favorite comment this year though was this guy, who, my mom was smart enough to sneak a picture of. He walked up, squatted down (which was rare) and sarted talking to us. He had a thick accent from somewhere back east (I'd say New York, but what do I know) mixed with spanish or portuguese 'Hey man, nice drawing! Except, look, her lips are all like, you know' he makes a kissy face like someone spoiled and then says, 'it makes her look like a Utahn.' I didn't laugh right then, but as soon as he was a block or so down the street my mom and I couldn't help it and just started lauging. I hope all Utahn's lips don't look like that, or I'm in trouble.

Progress on Saurday morning. The weather was in the high 90's, but we've had worse. Hot is okay. Wind is dismal. Thankfully no wind this year, just sunburns. We use rubber gloves to grind the chalk into the pavement, it takes three or four layers rubbed into get an even coat, then you can start blending colors together. Each artist is given a box of Koss pastels to work with, as much water as they can drink, a t-shirt, and lunch. There's also a fountain, which our square was right next to this year, so when we got hot we could go run through it. (We were both hideously dirty anyway, and after a while you stop caring what you look like.)

This shot shows the color we had best, unfortunately when we took pictures of the finished one with our camera it was so bright they all turned out blown out, so we waited for shade.

Finished!

Robin Study

2008-05-15T17:45:00.001-07:00

Anyway, yeah, it's sad to find robins who get hit by cars. But the artist in me also can't resist. Animal rights people: it was already dead. And burying things in dirt actually isn't that flattering once you get past the cultural expectancy of it.

Micron and limited pallette watercolor, with some white gouache (cue purist flaming). About two hours, overall. 8.5 x 11And, as gross as it is, I'm trying to dry it so I can do more wing studies. My sisters think I'm gross. You probably do too.

River Gold

2008-04-23T16:11:00.001-07:00

This one was just based on three randomly chosen words from the back of my sketchbook (My roomates and I compiled a list of over 200 unrelated words one night that I chose from occasionally) River, Steam, and Gold.

About 8" x 10" Oil on sealed illustration board. Scanned in a lot darker (and bluer) than it is in person.

Bridle Horse

2008-04-14T22:09:00.001-07:00

The subject matter of this one was inspired by a halter in a Gerome painting of Arab Horsemen seen on James Gurney's blog (which I highly recommend). The entry it is from can be found here. Not completely captured, but it's such a beautiful halter I knew I had to draw it, at least in a practice piece. The rest of it was inspired by a broken ballroom company earring I found at work (which happens to be the dance department's costume shop) It was quite large (in the nature of most ballroom dance jewelry) and also quite glittery (also in the nature of ballroom jewelry) It was a Swarovsky crystal which was mostly cool blues and greens, with a good deal of gray if you could manage to not look at the sparkly parts, and every once in a while threw out an awesome orangey-red flare.

As close to what I'd call a 'breakthrough piece' as I think I can bring myself to say. Gouache and I are really starting to hit it off. Especially combined with ink. This is another from Media Experimentation, with the 'experimentation' part being to take an inked drawing, paint thick gouache over it, then wash the paint off. It makes for a very cool stained paper (er, Illustration board, I should say) effect. Some re-inking and opaque paint was added afterward, but it came out surprisingly well after the initial round of paint, so I didn't have to work on it too much. I don't think horses can have that color of eyes, but I thought it was cool. Artistic license. 'Nuff said.

Leopard on Wood

2008-04-14T21:59:00.000-07:00

I tend to habitually mistype the word 'leopard' as 'laopard.' Bad habit. Anyway, this was for a class called Media Experimentation, which, oddly enough, is exactly what it sounds like. This particular assignment was to use acrylic on wood. Acrylic and I generally don't get along very well, but I like it on wood well enough: if you make a mistake you can just sand the whole thing off! Hey, that's what the assignment was! Paint it on, and sand it off. It results in some pretty neat textures...and really easy mistake patch ups. I cheated toward the end and got my micron pens in on the deal. I just can't resist line.

Self Portrait

2008-03-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

I should get this over with. One of these shows up about once per sketchbook...fifty pages or so. This one was originally done with a red mechanical pencil. I do like red lead because it rarely smudges, and can be easily removed later in Photoshop, a feature that makes it particularly useful in under-sketches or quick lay in when I want to work in pen. Its downfalls though are that its a lot less forgiving than normal pencil, which makes it more like working in semi-erasable pen, and it tends to be brittle. This sketch has been changed with the color channels in Photoshop to make it look like normal pencil.

Lord Azural's Lair

2008-03-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

My illustration professor has a particular knack for giving out assignments that instantly spark interest, quickly followed by the realization of their difficulty. It's a good combination. This specific ink and charcoal drawing was assigned as 'a villain's lair, in two point perspective.' It was a good excuse to blend Assyrian style with a little medieval , plus Azural's wolf motif. I turned it into somewhat of a study in props, also known as a messy room. This particular villain is also a personal novel character. Now I wonder from whom he inherited the tendency to have such a clutted desk?

Seylan in his Natural Element

2008-03-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

Seylan, who is a frequently occurring personal character of mine from a novel-in-progress. He stands in as a guinea pig for me when I want to experiment, or just have fun. This one is a bit older, from a little over a year ago. It was somewhat inspired by a picture I saw as a kid many, many, years ago and has never left my head. Done in gouache and ink, on illustration board. 7"x10"

Hello!

2008-01-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

I finally cracked and created a blog. I'll be using this as a sort of Art Diary, if you will, mostly to document school work, as well as any personal or proffesional projects. I'll try and restrain myself from blathering on endlessly about unimportant stuff, but if you like that kind of thing, you can check out my DeviantART page at http://starhorse.deviantart.com where I post the silly stuff.