MATS Week 2 Assignment - Tabletop!

This week in my back-to-school adventure brought us to the world of home decor, with the week's big assignment focusing on table top and plates. We were instructed to use the sketches from earlier in the week of seed pods, leaves and unusual flowers, and create 2-4 plates. So far I've done 2, and since I'm going out of town for the weekend, I guess I'll be stopping at that amount.

As I write this, I am exhausted! I've spent a marathon day today, cranking out this artwork (though I started it several days ago, and have been working a little each evening, today was the main stuff.) My head hurts, I'm thirsty, but I'm excited about the results. I PAINTED!!! WHOOO HOOOOOO. This was one of my goals for this course - to break away from completely vector art and get back to traditional mediums. I played to gouache, and incorporated pen and ink, scanned them all in, and layered them together in Photoshop. Hooray for texture, hooray for dirty paintbrushes, hooray for breaking out of my comfort zone!

Actually, it wasn't quite as painful as I had anticipated - in fact, I really really enjoyed it, and I'm excited to keep playing in the upcoming weeks. Whats next? Who knows! Maybe I'll bring back cut paper from my college days, maybe I'll dig out the acrylics again - the sky's the limit.

This one is the one I submitted for class.