New Year and Final Semester 2010!!!!!!!!

Excited and anxious at the same time, this year is pretty important. Its my last semester at Parsons. and now the question is... What's going to happen when its over??!! Yeah, I know, job(S), bills, DEBT! I'm ready!...no...i was just kidding!

Besides all that mess, I HAVE SOME NEWS/ UPDATES!!!

Lets start with December 2009... Before our winter break, students were chosen to be in the senior thesis show and I GOT IN!!! It was a surprise but I know that I put a lot into the project and I'm very proud of it. The show will be in May. THEN during my break, I went to Peru for the first time and finally met the other side of the family which we've (my sister and I) never met and had only seen through the computer (online chat). The experience was amazing. Finally meeting family and experiencing the culture that I couldn't really understand being here in the U.S was great. Although I was raised with the traditions and the culture... its not the same. THEN about two weeks ago, I got an email from an instructor saying I got into the Society of Illustrators!!!!!!!!!! see the illustration here. I'm so excited, the reception is in May and I can't wait! And lastly, I am a TA (teacher assistant) at school again for a senior in high school illustration class. We're painting a mural at the Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn, NY and its going to be a great experience for all of us!

I want to try to post as often as possible and include pictures of everything I mentioned above. And I'll post up some images of my assignments, jobs...etc. OH, I'm working on a website...look out for it!

Senior Thesis!!!!

Senior Thesis:
So this is my last year at Parsons and our thesis project isn't as stressful as I thought it would be. Then again its only the second week of school and I'm still working on my sketches and composition. The concept for this years thesis project is OBSESSION. The obsession I chose is nail art! I'm completely fascinated with it and I wish I had my nails decorated all the time but school, handling bags, materials.... even writing is stressful when having long nails. The topic is interesting and has so many possibilities in terms of imagery. Making the illustrations will be fun and its my goal this week to have everything down on paper. I need to have the composition down then start with practicing with painting materials. So far I'm at a good pace with all my school work and I'm going to do my best throughout this semester to keep it that way.

I'll be posting some reference images and other sketches down soon!
-Nicole

Illustrator flower

Flower done by using illustrator. VERY time consuming but it feels nice to use the program almost as if I was painting using acrylic or oil.

This was one of my experimental pages where I used a glaze over the page first, waited for it to dry then used watercolor over the new textured page. When I placed the color down, it would spread over certain places.

Sunflower

First page of my second sketchbook done over the summer. Still working on this page, not sure if I should outline the sunflower using ink or illustrator.
Watercolor, oil pastels, pencil.

Sketching in Washington Sq. Park

Pen sketch at Washington Sq Park (while "my kids" were painting/talking, talking, talking) LOL.

Pen sketch at Washington Sq Park. Sketching at the park felt great! I have another sketch of the landscape from where I was sitting... I'll post it up soon... hope I don't mess it up with my scanner. : )

Paint tubes in class

Charcoal sketch of acrylic paint which belonged to one of my students I worked with this summer.
I was a TA (Teacher's Assistant) from the 3rd to the 14th of this month for Reade Bryan at Parsons, who taught the Junior Painting and Drawing class for high school students and who is also a Fine Artist. It was a great experience especially since it was my first time as a full time teacher's assistant and because I'd love to be an art teacher when I get out of college. It felt so good to go from table to table, easel to easel, giving tips/advice to a big group of thirteen and fourteen year olds. Over all, I'm going to continue to pursue my dream of being a teacher BUT I definitely know that the age group I spent those two weeks with is NOT the age group for me! LOL
-Nicole :)

More pigeons!

Sharpie. Pigeons at the park...

Sketches in traffic

Pencil, ink. Sketches going to Jersey.

NYC pigeons

Watercolor, oil pastels,

NYC pigeon within a pigeon

Watercolor, ink,

Watercolor doodle

doodling... with watercolor, ink

Street lamp

14 street, street lamp.
Acrylic, Watercolor, Oil pastels.

Panda sketches with watercolor

Panda sketches. It's funny to feel an urge to want to make the pandas look as real as I can, but the simple lines and colors might be enough. Why do I complicate my life! lol

Tree branches outline

Tree branches. I'll put some color later and post it up.

Hawk

Face

Just a sketch I did...I was bored. :)
watercolor, pen

Illus. Friday: Modify

Hey!
This is for this week's word, MODIFY. I read the definition of the word and was a bit taken back in terms of finding a drawing or illustration that matched the word. But then, while searching through my sketchbook, I found this painting/drawing... and it went through some serious modifying. Started with one color then it changed to another color and different drawings of things around me. So I just chose to draw my eyes and left my glasses out of it. Sort of scary and creepy.

-Nicole

Blue Eyes...

Ink, watercolor. I'm going to do some more of these...

-NP

Hand Studies

My hands and a strawberry I was eating :)

-Nicole