Sketchbook Challenge!

In June I attended Light Grey Art Lab's artist residency in Norway. It was such a great experience to go somewhere remote and spend it with artists from around the world, sharing our experiences and having fun. I will never forget it! Part of what we had to do as a requirement of the residency was give a presentation about our inner art life and practice and also challenge the other artists in the residency in some way. This is my challenge, which I thought I would share publicly. 

Enjoy!

I am posting my monthly e-sketchbook on Patreon, as well as bonus video and process on paintings while I figure out tiers. Donating $3 is a great value, IMHO. ;)

Happy Holidays, Winter Solstice, and Merry Christmas!

Winter solstice is here but maybe, somehow, a real life Rudolph is out there lighting the way. 

Merry Christmas to everyone! Thank you for reading my blog and commenting! 

Let's all make 2018 a year to remember. 

Cheers,

Julia

Reliquaries/ Initial Concepts for dimensional pieces

I've been working on a large series of what will be dimensional pieces using a variety of materials, oil paint, gold and silver leaf, clay and ribbon. They will, hopefully, have some depth by lifting cut pieces off the base. I am a little nervous about cutting the pieces, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

Here are are a few concepts which I adapted from a few of my inktober pieces, the concepts pertaining to traditional memento mori.

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THIS series, "Seasons" is going to be much more complicated. Here are a few concepts I'm playing with. The scalloped edges may change when I finally paint and assemble the pieces. Good to have a plan, though.

Please stay tuned for more! 

Updated Website and Portfolio

I spent the last week updating my portfolio and website. It was a tough job because previously I had a slide show and I wanted something more simple, like a scrolling page. I use squarespace templates for my website, but I found that trying out a new template was no easy task! The site used to make it easy to test out new templates by filling in your existing samples into the new template, but with the updates now that is impossible. You basically need to redesign your site in order to see what a new template would look like. Oi! I finally decided to reconfigure my existing site to reflect the ideas I had about my portfolio presentation. 

Regarding portfolio content, after working for a long time, portfolio editing can be really difficult. I've accumulated so many pieces of art, have so many projects going, and I like to sketch and paint all the time, work that is not connected to professional endeavors. In addition to that, I have been freelancing for about a year now, which means I have been working on several short term projects for various companies. So how to update my portfolio? 

I think a good solution is to create a general overview leading a website front page. I think of the rest of the headings as "deep cuts", more in depth. There are a lot of ways to represent various interests, like galleries of character work, environments, and storyboards, but in the end I decided to try out categories based on projects. I'll try it out for a while. Hopefully it is easy to navigate.

www.julialundman.com

Thanks for looking! 

Feather Thief!

"Bitter Green"

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

"Dandelion"

"Dandelion"

One of the best art discoveries I made was in art school when I stumbled on a volume of Cicely Mary Barker's "Flower Fairies". It led to research into her and her life and other artists I also admire, mainly Jesse Wilcox Smith and Margaret Tarrant. I love the playful, beautiful ethereal versions of fairies out there, but I am interested in juxtaposing the prettiness of nature and it's endless color schemes with an anarchy and punkiness in character, which is closer to how I understand Nature, anyway. I have so many more ideas; hopefully I will be able to realize them throughout this late summer and fall. Thinking I might even try "inktober" this year. 

Thanks for taking a peek!

Cheers!

"NightShade"

Thinking about variations on fairy lore.

Sailor Moon Woodland Fairy Mashup

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!

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! 

The Little Mermaid, A different take

I recently saw some online images of the Finnish ballet of Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Little Mermaid" and was totally floored. Everything from the costume design to the lighting and dance have a slightly dark and mysterious tone that feel just right for the classic tale, departing completely from the Disney version. It made me wonder what other cultures and takes on the tale might be interesting to see. I was inspired by the architecture of Okinawa and thought perhaps the Little Mermaid might fall in love with a Samurai. I'm not sure I really got it but it was seriously a blast to dream about.

Some initial thumbnails, dreaming about what kind of island The Little Mermaid first encounters the Samurai.

This is an establishing shot of the island I chose from the thumbnails, just before The Little Mermaid meets the Samurai she falls in love with.

I was thinking of some foreshadowing in the architectural motifs. These are a few ideas. The possibilities are endless, really.

Below are a few variations on The Little Mermaid. I still feel like I want to do a few more pages of these and then move on to the Samurai, Triton and the Sea Witch.

Many more updates coming in a few weeks! Thanks for visiting.