One of the projects for the Typography and Design course I took in Spring 2023 was a logo redesign for the Guggenheim Museum. I went through several different concepts before landing on a simple typographic logo that incorporates the New York Museum’s iconic spiral. The die cut in the business card allows designers to feature many different pieces from the museum, which can carry over to print and digital ad campaigns.
All paintings were completed in Procreate using the MaxPack gouache brushes.
1. Winchester, VA. Buildings overlooking route 81. January 2021.
2. Coca Cola bottling plant in Winchester, VA. February 2021.
3. Expedition Everest at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Orlando, FL. April 2022. (painting completed on my phone)
4. Nassau, Bahamas. November 2022.
5. Nassau, Bahamas. November 2022.
In 2020 I decided I’d become a person who did plein air painting. I made a lot of bad paintings, but at the end of the year I’d started to build a habit of weekly-ish painting sessions. These are the paintings from 2020 that I feel comfortable letting see the light of day. These were all painted in Procreate. All of these, except for the daffodil painting, used the MaxPack gouache brush set.
In June 2020 I participated in round 4 of Qurantine Collab. This round’s theme was Quarantine Mysteries, which led to a fun Nancy Drew inspired illustration.
I looked at vintage Nancy Drew covers for compositon/subject inspiration. Nancy is always actively doing something, usually investigating while making a determined or shocked face. My fashion inspiration came mostly from old Nancy Drew covers as well, but I looked at vintage black movie stars for hair inspiration. There were a ton of amazing styles to choose from, but I chose this look from Sarah Vaughan because… just look at her. An absolute icon. I found this look in an Essence article on iconic hairstyles during the Harlem Renaisance, so check that out if you want more black women with fabulous vintage looks. I based the pose on the SenshiStock image above, though I definitely took some liberties.
We were provided with a palette for the collab, and I chose to go the painterly route of using the palette to mix my individual base colors. Lately I’ve enjoyed doing a rough paint over to color block my colors before I go in and do a clean paint layer. It allows me to get a better sense of how the colors play together.
The cleaned up flat colors are fairly self explanatory. I hadn’t settled on a background color yet.
Before doing any sort of global rendering of the light and shadow, I did local rendering to bring out the forms.
I then went in with global shadow (my trusty multiply layer) and a simple light blue rim light. I also remembered to give her lips, because that’s a thing humans have.
At this point I hit my deadline for the collab and submitted it. I had a lot of fun playing around with texture overlays to make this look like an old book, and also going through my fonts to find the perfect vintage mystery look.
I thought I was done, but the next day when I opened Procreate I felt like I could push the lighting more. So I went onto another rendering stage with the lights, and also completely redid the rendering on the hair and her left hand. It was absolutely worth it- the eerie blue glowing rim light helps sell the piece, and the hair and the hand are much better rendered in this version.
I composited the new render into my old compositing document, and while I liked it, it wasn’t quite 100% at the old book levels I wanted.
After getting some advice on color adjustments, I plopped on a pile of adjustment layers in Photoshop, and just as importantly two extra dust and scratches layers. Much better!
This was my first major illustration of 2020 thanks to the pandemic, but I’d spent the past few months working through some character design Schoolism lessons. It’s nice to see that the work I put into character design ended up paying off overall in this illustration, though next I might jump into some painting classes.
[kofi]
Hypermobility can cause frequent subluxations (partial dislocations) and dislocations. The more often you dislocate/subluxate a joint the more likely you will injure it in the future. Frequent dislocations can cause permanent cartilage damage.
Weak connective tissues can cause issues with almost every part of the body. Some conditions associated with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome are postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), gastroparesis, irritable bowel syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis. The vascular type of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome can cause issues with blood vessels, including organ and blood vessel rupture.
There are several types of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. The most common are hypermobile type, classical type, and vascular type. All types have an associated gene mutation except for hypermobile type.
To learn more about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome please see the Ehlers-Danlos Society’s website.
I’m a medical nerd who enjoys learning about different medical conditions, and this film came out of the research I did on EDS when my major joint issues began. I wanted to be able to laugh about my body while sharing awareness. A lot of educational materials on EDS are difficult for laymen to understand. “Zebra Munchies” offers a friendly entryway. Not knowing about EDS is the first barrier to a diagnosis. Current research indicates that hEDS in particular might be a much more common disease than was previously known. Raising awareness can also lead to more research money for new treatments.
