JenikaArt
Finished Art

A personal illustration. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a finished piece just for the fun of it. I wanted to keep it fairly simple, and I believe I succeeded. Marker and colored pencil, 4.5×6.5″ on smooth bristol.

Continue reading “Green Tea Panda” »

One of two illustrations for a short story called “The Girl with the Iron Foot” (by Jessica Jernigan), to be published in the January/February 2008 issue of “New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams”. The issue is called “Through the Looking-Glass (Coming of Age)” and the story is about a girl whose blacksmith father tries unsuccessfully to help her fit in with other children. In the end, she goes on a journey by herself to discover that she is unique and wonderful in her own way.

This illustration appears at the beginning of the story. I wanted to both illustrate the opening scene and include some imagery from a bit later in the story. The snow hares may seem a bit out of place in a green field, but they allude to the girl’s first efforts at changing herself in order to be accepted by the other children.

Both this and the ‘Bear’ illustration were colored using markers and colored pencil on Bristol Board.

Continue reading “Story Illustration- “Girl with the Iron Foot” (Running)” »

One of two illustrations for a short story called “The Girl with the Iron Foot” (by Jessica Jernigan), to be published in the January/February 2008 issue of “New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams”. The issue is called “Through the Looking-Glass (Coming of Age)” and the story is about a girl whose blacksmith father tries unsuccessfully to help her fit in with other children. In the end, she goes on a journey by herself to discover that she is unique and wonderful in her own way.

The bear is a symbol for the girl as she leaves on her journey. I wanted to portray the bear as a sort of guide to her self-discovery; its presence is symbolic rather than literal. Its nose points the way as a light through the trees.

This illustration is tiny! The printed size is only two inches square, and I worked at a size not much larger. Since it’s so small, I knew that it would have to ‘read’ at a glance, but I wanted to bring the viewer in for a closer look, too.

Continue reading “Story Illustration- “Girl with the Iron Foot” (Bear)” »

This was a personal commissioned ‘badge.’ Casidhe is the wolf, and I was asked to use the moon as a theme. The trick was to figure out how to incorporate the name, the wolf, and the moon into a small (3″x4″) space, without being too cliche. This was drawn in pencil, then colored using ArtRage.

Continue reading “Casidhe” »

This illustration is special to me. Not only was the research of imagery enjoyable; but the image seemed to ‘want’ to be created. The first time I sat down to start a thumbnail, the entire composition seemed to flow from my pencil in only a matter of minutes. Once that was done, the only thing left was to enlarge it and work out the details. Of the six illustrations in my Thesis, this one probably took the least amount of ‘work’ and has gotten the most compliments. It’s interesting how such things work out.

Continue reading “Meditation” »

This was a fun Illustration for Kim Hazel of her pet Blue Crown Conure as a pirate. This piece went through a lot of process to get to this point. Despite (and perhaps because of!) all the extra work, I’m really happy with the result. I love playing around with color in a piece and the conure gave me a lot of opportunity to do so. I also enjoy messing with subtle things like shadows– elements that might not be noticeable right away, but that add to the story behind the illustration.

Continue reading “Pirate Parrot” »

This is a commissioned piece, and probably one of the more unusual illustrations I’ve done. The most challenging part of this illustration was making the foreground eagle mostly in shadow, but still looking like his head was -white- and not grey. I actually fudged it the first time, and ended up reprinting the lineart, carefully cutting out that one bird, and gluing him down over the first one. It’s not really noticeable in the scan, but in the actual piece, it has a neat slightly-dimensional effect.

Continue reading “Spontaneously Bald Eagle” »

This piece marked a big change in the look of my finished work. Up to this point, the look of my illustrations was somewhat hit-or-miss. I was learning from the ‘misses’ but I hadn’t figured out how to achieve a consistent finish. This illustration raised the bar for my personal standards.

Continue reading “Didgeridoo Kangaroos” »

“Advanced Computer Illustration” assignment. We were given one week to do a halloween-themed image based on the word ‘creepy.’ The short deadline forced us to condense the illustration to something that could be accomplished quickly.

The ‘otherworldliness’ of the cat was created by digitally overlaying two different scans of the same image. The first was an ‘in progress’ scan of the work that actually ended up saving the piece, as I had accidentally gone way too dark and saturated with the markers afterwards. Combining the two, however, resulted in the cat’s ghostly image.

Continue reading “Creepy Cat” »

This was a project for “Advanced Computer Illustration”… and possibly the only illustration I did in that class that actually used the computer as a primary medium. For this assignment we were asked to redesign the cover of any game, considering the aspect ratio of the box and the target age range or market. I had a lot of fun with this project- both the process of creating the drawing and using Painter to color it.

Continue reading “Hungry Hungry Hippos” »

This was commissioned by Coyote Tangent for a 2007 wall calendar called “Wish You Were Here”. No, it’s not a Pink Floyd reference (unfortunately!); each month features doggy postcards from around the world and accompanying ’stamps’ to go with them. My stamp was featured in July.

The Akbash dog is a Turkey native sheep-guarding dog. Akbash means “White Head,” and any Akbash dog that is not pure white (light fawn on the ears and nose is permissable) is considered Disqualified by AKC standards. Shepherds needed their dogs to be white so they could distinguish them from wolves who would attack the flock at night, and not accidentally shoot their own dog. Prize Akbash dogs were given Spiked Iron collars to protect their throats from a wolf’s bite.

Continue reading “Akbash Dog Stamp” »

This was done the very first week of my Senior year at Ringling. It really set the standard for myself that semester and is still the best self-portrait I’ve done to date. This was done with Copic markers and colored pencils, with a little digital tweaking in a few areas afterwards. You might not guess from looking at it, but this was done on pink cardstock, which gave the colors a nice warm unity.

Continue reading “Self Portrait with Snake” »

A slightly older illustration (June 06) that I did for fun. This was done on a textured cardstock made for printing cover letters, which offered a subtle but effective undertone to work with. Flat colors were done in marker, all the shading and details are colored pencil.

Continue reading “Lemur Love” »