Feather Thief!

"Bitter Green"

It is little known in the world at large that some fairies smoke pine needles. 

Not On My Watch!

Another punk fairy in my series this summer. 

My original drawing was more complicated. When I started to paint it, I saw that the scene was too busy and it seemed like she was going after the ladybug instead of rescuing her. I chopped and cut some things out of the scene to make it more focused. 

Another one coming next week!

Thanks for looking.

J

Warrior

I've been working on a series of fairies...more to come!

"Warrior"

For the sketch, I usually spend a lot of time messing around with shapes, the silhouette of the character, the intent/concept, and details in the costume. Scale is something I'm playing with, too, in this series. I am establishing the size of these fairies compared to bees, dragonflies, and other winged insects, all of which are also relative to flowers and other botanicals. My meditating fairy might be too large for the scale I am considering. Anyway, more to come. Enjoy!

If you are following my "Little Mermaid" reboot, I am still working on that story. It is currently deep in the writing phase, so I have no artwork to show.  Hoping to have the story wrapped up by August so I can move on to thumbnailing pages! 

"Meditating", fairy series

For a few years I've been sketching fairies in my sketchbook. Here is the latest, painted.

"The Little Mermaid" update/Viking Prince

UPDATE: I am in the throws of writing the script for this story this summer. Hoping to have my story locked down by mid fall, October, so that I can finally start penciling! 

For some time now I have been developing several stories of my own, but have decided to focus solely on my version of "The Little Mermaid" told in the Viking era. Originally I set the world in the Samurai era, which I still think would be pretty cool, but since I have roots in my Scandinavian heritage, I decided the project would be a cool way to learn more about the era of my ancestors. 

I am planning thorough research on my little mermaid character, but I really wanted to design the main viking character first, since he would firmly set the era in place for my story. I'm really glad I spent so much time working on him since designing the character brought to mind some interesting story twists and ideas that I hadn't thought of previously.

I imagined he is a prince of the village (if vikings really had "princes") and expected to help navigate and organize raids. He is reluctant, however, since he has a strong interest in music. He would be much happier roving around with local musicians but his father does not approve.

Here is some exploration for the character:

And finally a story painting. I spent a lot of hours on this painting, but in the end, I am still not sure about this style and color palette. I may go back and repaint this more graphically after I finish my Little Mermaid designs.

Holiday Party

I've been experimenting with pastel brushes in Photoshop. I am striving to make my digital paintings look like my plein air pastels, a look that I really like in terms of texture, soft edges and layering of broken color. I have a ways to go yet in developing this look, but happy with this experiment. More to come!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to all my friends and readers! 

Fall Picnic

Sometimes I just have to draw things that make me happy and are fun to think about. This was one of those pieces. I was originally going to render this entirely in ink for inktober, but I just never had the time during the entire month of October. I finally got a few free moments this past week, so I picked away here and there until it was finished. 

Happy Fall! 

Bee Rider

"Bee Rider", photoshop

A few years ago I had this idea that tiny humans with wings were discovered in various regions of the planet. It's not a new idea at all, but I wanted to mess around with making these fairies a sort of tribal, pagan warrior race that looked more human than the wide-eyed alien version. I am deeply inspired by the art of Mary Cicely Barker (of Flower Fairy fame) and Margaret Tarrant, Edwardian era artists that depicted tiny human-like fairies usually of a friendly beautiful sort. 

Margaret Tarrant watercolor

Cicely Mary Barker watercolor

I wanted to take their ideas about fairies and focus on aspects of character personality and group culture. It's a pretty big project that I am picking away at here and there in between many other projects. 

I did this quick little sketch about five years ago. I like the idea but it's a little too vertical for the kinetics of the scene, and the costume doesn't work for me. I wanted to explore warriors that are more gutsy and brutal instead of sweet. I scanned my sketch and then did a TON of loose drawings on top to work out the idea more to my liking. 

I also did a few studies of bees. Here are a few sketches. I thought about stylizing the shapes and the character far more than this, but in the end decided I'd rather focus on the story of the character, and of course (since I love to paint) the light.

I have a several more warrior fairies in the works in various states of finish. Hopefully I'll post a few more this year in between other posts. :) 

Thanks for reading!

A Goblin Shark for Adelle

A few years ago my good friend Adelle Caunce, artist of Biguglyfishies.com, sculpted a paper mache goblin shark and photographed it for her website. Soon after it was picked up all over the internet by sites like reddit, i09, I F******ng Love Science, with articles assuming that this was a real photo of a real goblin shark and not a caricatured sculpture. At first it was funny because although it is a sculpture, no one seemed to be able to tell. However, after a while, Adelle and friends had a horrible realization, Adelle's photo of her sculpture was widely distributed all over the internet, memes were made, pins were pinned on pinterest, and yet there were no link backs or photo/artist credits made. Even today, when you google "goblin shark" you will find her photo along with real photographs of real goblin sharks with no link backs or credits. 

The internet is a wild, crazy place, and for artists out there, we need to be careful about making sure our work is not distributed uncredited. There have been many horror stories all over the world of artists' work being made into all kinds of retail items from jewelry to pillows and ornaments by big name retailers who should know better. In this image hungry culture we live in, artists are easily taken advantage of, apparently. By the same token, as media users we should be very wary of news stories and images. Adelle's goblin shark was sited by scientists (!!!) in articles about the wonders of the deep.

I've added some credits hoping that google picks up the credited photo in searches for Goblin Shark.

In honor of Adelle's birthday, I painted an illustration and drink recipe of her goblin shark for a recipe book that her lovely husband Steve put together. 

Painted in Photoshop using Adelle's Goblin Shark design.

Be sure to visit her site! She has a huge array of beautiful paper mache sculptures and has even been featured on tv! Biguglyfishies.com and biguglyfishies.blogspot.com

Cheers! 

CTN Expo in Burbank and new website updates!

Hey Friends! I will be attending the CTN Animation expo in Burbank, California this upcoming weekend in order to show my portfolio, get some much needed feedback, meet up with friends, go to lectures and geek out over all the awesome art! 

Here are some highlights from my portfolio:

I also updated my WEBSITE for the first time in ages. 

Julialundman.com

Hopefully this is a good "jumping off" point for the coming months as I develop my work.  I also am working on a small self published book of about 30 pages. Hopefully that will be finished next year.

Jamie and I went the first two CTN shows, the last of which Jamie had a table. We had such a blast, but in the past few years we have been pretty derailed by life events and haven't attended any shows anywhere. In fact, this year I will be attending alone. Hopefully Jamie will join me next year. 

If you are at the show and see me, please chat me up and hang out! 

Hope to see you there!

Julia

"The Toad"

I've been taking part two of Armand Baltazar's visual development course at the Animation Collaborative in Emeryville, across the street from Pixar. 

It's been an excellent course for stretching basic visual development skills; it is restricted to sketching in black and white with many exercises designed to challenge design skills. I feel so fortunate to be taking this class with Armand. His teaching and feedback demos are nothing short of fantastic. Watching his draw overs of both my homework and other student's work has been a profound learning experience I will carry with me for a long time on the road to becoming a better designer and storyteller. 

Here are a couple of finished pieces from an assignment. I wanted to explore the "Toad" character to show who he is publicly and semi-privately. I wanted to bring the main image, "The Act" into full color in order to show the glory of his celebrity in the fairy forest world. :)

"The Act"

"Flirty Toad"

 "Fan Mail"

"Promo Shot", Toad's celebrity promo shot in the fairy forest world.

 I have a couple more sketches that expand the portrait of who the Toad is and will update this post when I complete those. I'm tempted to paint all of these in full color - and I may do that after CTN when I have a little more time. A short story is brewing in my head about this guy and his band of fairy-circus performers.

At the end of the course I'll post a bunch of the sketches from class too. So much fun stuff to inspire me working on illustrations for awhile! :))

Thanks for reading!

THE TIME MACHINE: Visual Development with Armand Baltazar/Animation Collaborative

I recently took a visual development course at the Animation Collaborative, taught by senior visual development artist Armand Baltazar, who has worked for many years in animated film, with credits on Dreamworks, "Shark Tale", "Spirit", and "A Bee Movie", as well as Disney's "Princess and the Frog", and more recently Pixar's "Cars 2", among many others. Of all the classes I've taken in recent years, I found this course to be perhaps the most exciting. I've always been deeply interested in visual storytelling, although I've not always had ideal opportunities to practice that very fine art to the fullest I've wanted. So when Armand's course came up on the roster and time in my schedule allowed, I jumped.

Aside from my own interests,  I feel a good visual development class is an excellent experience for any artist at any level to go through. So many of us have grand ideas around stories, world building and stylization, but how many of us have really gone deep into our visual storytelling skills? If you've not had the opportunity to take such a class, I encourage you to find one or else pick up a few good "art of" books for film, games, and television.

 Regarding this specific class at the Animation Collaborative, I felt it was absolutely worth it. Armand was a fantastic teacher and really put in a lot of extra work and effort in teaching the class, even staying late to give back really valuable individual feedback, paint overs and advice tailored to each student. Each class was chock full of fantastic information about visual development, portfolio development, and tips and techniques for working quickly, as is required on any project in development.

For the class we each picked a classic book to visualize as an animated film. I picked HG Wells', "The Time Machine", a book that I illustrated years ago, but unfortunately didn't do a very good job of it due to the extremely rushed deadline. For years now I've wanted to revisit the story, and have imagined a reboot tailored toward an animated young adult film. I thought I'd share my character design concepts here, and later will share more development. Over the course of the next year I'll be working up ideas around this story and will share more as I solidify ideas.

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My Time Traveler in my reboot of "The Time Machine" is a young woman in present day. When I draw character sketches, I like to keep a very, very simple line with almost no detail. I like to save any modeling or texturing for painting. I really enjoy the challenge of trying to capture a gesture in as few lines as possible.

I envision the Time Machine device to be wearable tech made up of everyday things like hacked ipads, iphones and a laser tag vest. Like in the original book, the time machine does not move the individual through space, but only through time.

Imagine what happens to those digits after thousands and thousands of years of swiping/touch technology… I enjoyed working on my take on the ELOI quite a lot. I envisioned them growing tall and thin with elaborate hairstyles and lots of adornments. 

 The Morlocks live in underground caves where they have evolved eyes that allow them to see in the complete darkness. They live amongst the ruins, pollution and grim of thousands of years of human corruption.

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Below are some quick color comps and sketches of what I have been developing around story moment ideas. Most of these are pretty quick, like 2 hours each or even less in the case of sketches. All of these are meant to be exploratory in nature, and will eventually become more finished paintings. I can't wait to work on these!

 I've long been a fan of Douglas Trumbull, well known in the film industry for his innovative special effects on movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I wanted to emulate his effects in some way, and have envisioned the bottom row of images to be my take on time travel effects.

 This is my quickie version of a future city, although I have plans to iterate on this a bit more. Given that our class was only 12 weeks and I only had the weekends to work on it, I felt that I didn't have enough time to really dig through this juicy subject. Looking forward to exploring some more concepts!

Hey, who doesn't need a hot Eloi boyfriend in the future? Actually, this is one aspect of the story that I am quite excited about: the friendship between The Time Traveler and Weena, in my version female (time traveler) and male (eloi). I think this can be resonate with the story themes in some unusual ways - I'm so excited to work some more on these ideas.

I actually have a number of additional sketches and comps, but they are still a little too compy to share. Hopefully soon! 

As I continue to develop my ideas I will post. I hope to put a little book together by sometime next summer, if all goes well. 

Thanks for reading!!!