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

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.

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! 

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.

The Unfortunate Toad

This summer I have been working on a short story that I plan to bring to print. It is about a Toad, and is tentatively called, "The Unfortunate Toad". 

There is a cast of characters that you'd expect in a fairy tale, but in this story their roles are a little different, due to some unforeseen circumstances.

I thought I would share some of the work I've created so far. There is a lot more in the works, including many more characters, but I will be keeping those to myself for awhile. In addition to "The Unfortunate Toad" story,  in the next few months I will be posting a few more updates to "The Time Machine" and other art that I have been working on behind the scenes. It's really exciting stuff that I can't wait to share!

***********************************************************************

Please stay tuned for more in the next two months! Thanks for visiting.

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!