Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sorry, No Art

I've been somewhat allergied to death and was unable to finish this week's Illustration Friday submission, and will be out of town for the next week and purposefully left my computer behind. I will be doing a lot of doodling though (though I don't expect to venture far out of the fish and flowers realm...eventually I want to manage a hula girl) and hope to make up for my brief hiatus with an excess of art when I return.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Nashville and the Country Music Hall of Fame

Last weekend we ventured out into downtown Nashville (not that it's a very far venture, but it's at least several blocks) to visit the Country Music Hall of Fame with one of G's CS friends. It was my first time walking around downtown, which may be a little bit sad considering how long I've been here and how close it is, but I'm generally disinclined to pay for parking.
Anyhow, they had a special Marty Robbins exibit, and while I wasn't familiar with his music, he definately seemed like a fun kind of guy and had a pretty fantastic collection of way over the top costumes and boots. This was my first introduction to the Nudie Suit, which was a recurring theme throughout the museum. Unfortunately I hadn't yet remembered that I had brought a camera with me so I didn't get any pictures, but that's the official website above. This guy was the official outfitter of the rhinestone cowboy.
I did, however, manage to document some of the other relics of eccentric Hall of Famers, such as this car:
This is Web Pierce's Silver Dollar Convertible. Unfortunately for Web Pierce, I don't know anything about his music, so this is all I know about him. It may be hard to make out, but, yes, that is a pistol hood ornament that is awkwardly propped up there, and a rearing stallion over to the left. It was hard to get a picture of the whole thing, but there's another view below. That would be a rifle propped up there on the back and another on it's flank. What you can't see is the horse's head as the handle for the gas cap and the pistols for the door handles. Apparently the seats are made of saddle leather and the gas and break pedals are horse shoes. All designed by non other than the aforementioned Nudie.
Among other fascinating extravagences is Elvis' golden piano. Unfortunately, Elvis' car, while pretty, couldn't hold a candle to the Silver Dollar Convertible. There's a rather enormous exhibit on the William's family. Included among the Nudie Suits was this small but charming band of squirrels belonging to Hank Williams Sr. (made of course from authentic squirrels and shot by Hank himself). I'm especially a fan of the leopard print on the stage.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Wiiiiiide...

"Where the Ocean Meets the Sky..."
This weeks theme for Illustration Friday is "wide"... I feel as though I was somewhat lacking in vision with this one, (maybe a little 'wide' of the mark?..ahem, sorry) but at least it gave me a chance to play with textures and layers and effects and such. The waves were kind of fun to play with but the girl and the ship are somewhat lame. Oh well, we can't be fabulous all the time.
In other news, last weekend we went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and it became my first time walking around in downtown Nashville. So perhaps in the near future, there could be a non-art post!

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

eElectric

"Ernie" Digital
Ernie's Eatery, open 24 hours a day, your meals zapped unconcious for your dining pleasure!
To be quite honest, eels kind of freak me out. It's mostly just the slither-swim motion and the fact that they're just plain ugly, but they also hang out in little caves with just their head peaking out and their jaws wide open showing the seemingly randomly spaced crooked teeth. Ok, I take it back, it's the way they hang out with their mouths open. I'm pretty sure they would eat me if they could fit me in. However, when I was doing a bit of research on electric eels for Illustration Friday's theme of "electricity" I saw a picture someone had taken at an aquarium where the eel looked a little bit like he was grinning goofily, in fact he was almost cute! So that was my inspiration for Ernie here, the almost-cute eel.
I'm working on learning Microsoft Expression as I am in the market for new software, but I found I had to wander back to Photoshop once again to get the texture to work right and to soften things up and give them more depth. Sigh.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Beatrice

"Beatrice" Digital
I made this Rhino illustration for last week's Illustration Friday theme of "wrinkles," but didn't manage to get it up on time. I based her off of a picture I had taken from our trip to the San Diego Zoo a couple years ago. The Rhinoscerous in question was pacing by the door and barking for her lunch. When I looked at the picture again, I could just see her in a little hat and glasses.
I am particularly proud of her for being my first full integration of both Illustrator and Photoshop, and would like to thank my big bro and my new laptop for making it possible ;)

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Seed

"Dandelion" Watercolor
Maren starts a blog! I am starting to participate in a weekly illustration blog called Illustration Friday and will be putting the images for each week on this blog, as well as general Nashville goings on for those of you who were nudging me in the blog direction.

This week's theme was "seed"...and I picked a pretty obvious solution, but, hey, I like dandelion seeds; they're pretty, they blow around in the wind, and you can wish on them. And I thought to mix it up a little bit, I'd experiment in watercolor since I'm mostly afraid of it.