The Art of Yuki-Onna - Meet the Artists

Happy Tuesday and welcome back!

Today I'm sharing some quick photos of The Art of Yuki Onna, which I started to write about last week. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then click ------> here, and read last week's blog post. :)

Well, here's the book! It's  7 x 9 inches in size, with a soft cover and about 50 pages of content. Let's have a peek inside and find out about the artists involved!
Ladies first:

Karla Monterrosa

Karla Monterrosa was born and raised in tropical San Salvador, El Salvador and spent some years in sunny southern Spain. Despite loving sunlight and sandals, She currently lives in damp, dreary Vancouver, BC. When she's not drawing or watching cartoons, she enjoys biking, traveling, comic book conventions, drawing at coffee shops with friends, and daydreaming about movie directors.
She graduated with a BFA in animation from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and is currently working in TV animation.

ka.montz@gmail.com
www.karlamonterrosa.com

Laura Nisbet

Laura Nisbet is a visual development artist and animator from Ottawa, Ontario. She has a great passion for character and creature creation, from conceptualization, to life through movement. When not actively putting pencil to page or feverishly collecting reference material, she can typically be spotted outside traipsing through nature and poking at things. At the end of the day, Laura loves as good story and wants to help build them for a living.

lnisbet.art@gmail.com
http://lauranisbetart.com

 Mariya Olshevska (yours truly)

Mariya Olshevska is a freelance illustrator from Vancouver, Canada. She has flair and passion for creating intricate, whimsical works that are rich in detail and colour. Always curious to explore new topics and techniques, she aspires to leave her audience delighted and enchanted.

www.mariyaolshevska.com
mariya@mariyaolshevska.com  

And now the gents: 

Seth Rutledge (the mastermind behind all of this)

Seth Rutledge is a visual development artist, illustrator, photographer and coffee snob living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before he discoveredart, he received a CSCI/Math degree from UNC-Charlotte, and has lived and worked all over the United States and Canada. He has run marathons, taught English in Japan, been CTO for a pharma marketing company and done fashion photography in NYC. Seth has two albums he wrote and played keyboards on, and he plays the theramin whenever he gets the chance. Seth spends so much time in coffee shops drawing that he is mentioned in online reviews. He would love a career painting elves and goblins and their homes.

http://sethrutledge.com
seth@sethrutledge.com

Sinan Demirer

Sinan Demirer is a visual development artist and illustrator from Istanbul, Turkey. He always had a passion for creating characters, building worlds and telling stories. So much that he came all the way to Canada to do some more of those in college. He can usually be found sketching in coffee shops or obsessing over movies, games and TV shows that he likes. Sinan would love to help design movies, games and TV shows for other people to obsess over for a living.

www.sinandemirer.com
msinandemirer@gmail.com

Travaldo Farrington

 Travaldo Farrington is a 3D Generalist from sunny Nassau, Bahamas. Prior to arriving in Vancouver, he had spent time in the Bahamas studying classical painting and sculpture. Following that time he has been an assistant at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas and at the Popop Art Gallery, the only international artist residence in the Bahamas. Shortly after, he was awarded the chance to study animation in Canada by the Bahamian Government. Travaldo has an immense passion for classical sculpture and that passion pushes him to bring excitement and an eye for detail in his character models. When he's not absorbed on his next model, you can typically find him teaching others how to play videogames or making jokes with friends over dinner. Travaldo would love a lifelong career creating worlds and people to inhabit them.

travaldo@gmail.com
http://travaldo.4ormat.com/

And, special thanks goes out to Amy Wang for designing our book!

Hope you enjoyed this week's sneak peek!

The First Look at The Art of Yuki-Onna

Happy Tuesday everyone! Hope you are all enjoying springtime. I am very happy to see blooming trees and singing birds decorate the neighborhood. I've got the hummingbird feeder up on the balcony and the hummingbirds are visiting frequently. =)

However, if you're missing winter - it just so happens that I've got some winter-themed illustrations to share with you. (Finally!) If you've been following along this blog, you might remember my sneak peek posts about a secretive, collaborative I've been working on. Well now the time has finally come to reveal more about it and to post a full image from my contribution. I present to you the first look at The Art of Yuki Onna.

"Family Stroll" - "And 0-Yuki bore Minokichi ten children, boys and girls, handsome children all of them, and very fair of skin." --- From the Japanese folktale of Yuki Onna.

(The original piece is approximately 8 x 17 inches, completed with micron pens, waterproof coloured inks and gouache on bristol-smooth paper.)

The Art of Yuki Onna is a collaborative, yet independent, artistic exploration of a Japanese folktale about a mysterious snow spirit - Yuki Onna. Various interpretations of the story from each participating artist have been curated into a humble book which will be available for purchase in the months to come.

The image above is one of my contributions to the project, which also ended up being the cover image for the book. It was a really fun illustration to complete because I was able to draw inspiration from a culture that's very different from mine, but which has an artistic aesthetic that is very appealing to me.


Also I got to put patterns on almost all the characters, so it was an instant win because of that, if nothing else.

Here are a few close ups:

 

And a work-in-progress image. Unfortunately I don't have many process images, as the painting was too big to scan at home, and I had to "outsource" a scanner which wasn't at all close by.

Was still working out the dreaded feet of some of the characters.

Here are some character "warm ups" however - an important part of the "behind the scenes" work, before I started working on the painting. This step helped me to contemplate the personalities of the characters which would then guide narrative of the illustration.

Alright, that's it for today. Secrets are best revealed little by little, after all.
So, come back next week to see photos of The Art of Yuki Onna book and read about each of the artists involved!

*All images in this post are ©Mariya Olshevska.

Chapter-Head Compositions

Today I present here my latest Decorative Illustration assignment. The goal was to create 4 black and white illustrations that would be the little chapter-head images. I addition, end page illustrations were to be made. If the illustrations were for a well known story/novel, then the illustrations should have exhibited some sort of a twist.
Still being in a floral mind set from my previous project, I put a floral twist on the classic novel I've chosen to illustrate for. I'll keep the title and author a mystery though, just because=)

Available for purchase on RedBubble

Media/Materials:

`Strathmore Bristol Smooth Paper (6 x 6")
`Pigma Micron pens (0.05)
`Pelikan waterproof black ink

And the end pages:

version 1 - freestyle magnolia spread

version 2 - magnolia cluster - all over repeat pattern

version 3 - magnolia - all over repeat pattern, muliticoloured

version 3 close up

 

version 4 - magnolia - all over repeat pattern, multicoloured/half-drop. I chose this as my preferred design

 For these end pages I went through the following steps:


- I hand drew various individual magnolia branches.
- I scanned them into my computer.
- In Photoshop I arranged them into a cluster I liked and then I made a pattern out if it.
- Finally I imported this into Illustrator and I there I did a live trace and live paint.


Happy Monday! =)

99% Self Made

Here are some quick photos I took of my Book Media class final project. The project was to make a book, any kind of book really. I've made a mini - 5 x 7 inches book. It was an illustrated poem about a snowflake=) And the book is almost entirely self made. I wrote, illustrated, printed, cut, stitched, sewed, and bound the pages and the cover myself. (sorry the images are small, but I've got to protect my hard work I suppose)
You can read the text better on this post though --> http://mariaolshevskaexpressions.blogspot.com/2010/11/today-ive-decided-to-share-some-more.html

book cover - embroidered/cross stitched design

close up

back cover

back cover detail