30 Faces

Here they are!
Lindsay: acrylic. Fran: micron pen. Mike Rowe: oil rub (used him twice!). Pamela: crayon. John: digital. Cat: oil. Sally: torn paper. Mike: charcoal. Kevin: ballpoint pen. Matt S: sequins! Abby: conte crayon. Jihad: watercolor pencil. Katie: fingerpaint. Kyle: chalk. Jordan: pastel. Kirk: colored pencil. Sarah: watercolor. Nick: value scale markers. Brian: froot loop dust. Sarah: thread. Perry: stamps. Erika: gauche. Jasmine: marker. Keith: scratchboard. Me: lino cut. Andrea: wood with staining markers. Jesse: carbon copy. Mike: stencil. James: oi pastel. Matt C: graphite.

Thanks for the reference photos, and forgive me if I did not do a flattering likeness--time and materials were against me!

Hallmark Card Contest

Here is my entry for the contest.

Hallmark Card Contest

This is extremely short notice, but they just sent it to us at school.

www.hallmark.com/you

Fahrenheit 451 Cover

We had to read the book and re-do the cover. I used acrylic, oil, and string for the cage bars. Unfortunately after I finished it, and after we had the crit, I realized that the books didn't need to be birds. It was also suggested that I stack cages up the whole way, more like a city.

Mike Rowe: Dirty Jobs

I love watching the Discovery Channel, especially the show Dirty Jobs hosted by Mike Rowe. They are having a portrait contest and you can submit until Dec 5, and the winner will be announced Dec 19. It is a really great show! Here is my entry with the good ol' oil rub technique and collage garbage.

Speaking of Portraits

Good evening all,
Lately i keep focusing on the likeness of a figure that it feels like i have lost the ability to distort from my imagination. I wanted to fix that. So i am on the road to recovery thanks to the help of the Photo Booth distort features.
I am very much looking forward to the 30 Ports project of yours Heather.
till next time
Cheers
Brian

two exciting things:

Pratt's assignment is to do thirty faces, 5"x5" each in thirty different mediums. I would love to do portraits of all of you! Also, medium ideas would help a lot, I couldn't come up with more than twenty. If you want to get your portrait done (the sooner the better!) just send a high resolution, well-lit photo of yourself to me at heather.heckel@gmail.com

Other exciting thing: I made myself a website!! It is HeatherHeckel.com Please let me know what you think! And I have some new things on my blog, which is also under news on my website.

Hope all is well! Miss everyone!

it's been a while

Hello my friends,

the activity on this blog has certainly died down. I have been posting my own stuff on my little blog so I have neglected this one. I have been working on a few things that I thought I would share:

First of all, I have started an ambitious project called 99 Paintings of Beer on the Wall. I have been wanting to learn oil painting for a long, long time, so I thought I should just pick a subject matter and go with it. I chose beer! I love beer and I always find them interesting - bottle shapes, beer color, labels, bottle caps, the light shining through the beer.... Plus, I'm not gonna lie, people wouldn't mind owning a painting of a beer they like so they are marketable. Unfortunately, this also means that I am making the paintings themselves rather large, so they are taking a long time to do! Here's one I did for my brother. I haven't figured out how to photograph them so all I have is shitty scans, I swear this one looks pretty darned good in real life:


I also completed a cool piece for a company called Terressentials. This was supposed to go on their shampoo bottles, but they put a halt on the label redesign project so I'm not sure if it's going to be used. It was still a fun project and I like the way it turned out:


And finally, another illustration for Louisville Magazine. This was for an article that dealt with how boys and girls learn differently and how some public schools might switch to same sex classrooms.



I am also working on an illustration for Realms of Fantasy magazine, but it will be a while before I can post it. I am enjoying the illustration work, but I'm also enjoying learning new things and experimenting. I still think that learning to keep a sketchbook is the most valuable thing I learned at the Illustration Academy.

So what has everyone else been getting into? The Society of Illustrators show is in Febrary - see Erika's post below - but I don't think i am going to be able to get to New York this year. My cousin's getting married in Louisville 2 weeks after the Gala in New York and I just can't swing both trips. Such a bummer.