Tuesday night portrait

Digital portrait. The first week out of a two week session.

Time flies by.

My goodness! A whole month passed already?!

It's incredible how quickly time passes when you keep yourself extra busy! I'm working on a lot of different projects right now,and cannot wait until I'm allowed to share the work with all of you! Also I'll be working on a couple entries for Spectrum. Let's see if I can get in this year! What an excitingly busy end of the year.

Until all the new stuff is completed and can be shown, let's update with some works from school! One is a digital quick study of our school in the middle of a gesture session, and two oil portraits.

Sunday post

I'm excited this morning because in a couple hours I will see one of my favorite bands live. Beirut.

Here is my latest addiction from their amazing repertoire of songs.




Also, we have been drawing a lot in the Atelier. Here is my morning pose, and one tuesday night portrait session. I usually used to use B lead but now I have rediscovered the beauty of HB lead. Such a beautiful variety of tones achieved with one tiny little lead. love it!

Sneak peak 2.

Here's a detail progress shot of my Illustration. I'm approaching things differently this time around, bu just working out the values before the addition of any color. It's definitely made me more aware of the wide range of values that can be used in any section.

Illustration Class!

At the atelier we have a new class taught by the incredible artist Mike Bierek. I'm very excited to see what the group accomplishes, and what my own work will look like. It's been a long time since I attempted an illustration,so I'm ecstatic to apply all the things I have learned in the atelier for the past year.

Here's a little sneak peak!




And also here's another finished character concept.




Also, my roommate and I have created a wondrous blog, in which we depict our epic lives through finely crafted sketches. hilarity ensues! check it out!

Team Chow!

In concept art.org they hold monthly ch.o.w ( character of the week) activities. Unlike the weekly versions this is a larger project with another team member. Mr. Ryan Lee and myself have joined forces, to participate in this contest. There are other wonderfully talented teams to look out for ( another atelier team too! :p ) so check it out!!!

Chow teams

Atelier Team

The theme is good and evil. A good an evil version of the same character in a fantasy setting. Our team was very heavily influenced by the wonderful art of the orientalists, specifically Jean Leon-Gerome.

Character designs



Process shots

Another digital

Did this in today's gesture class. It's been nice to do digital paintings of live models, since I get to go directly into the painting aspect of it and deal with colors and values. I think next week I'll try oils.

Character: Charlie

So in our school we get mock concept projects and here is one of the characters I've done for it. We begin the character development by submitting a variety of line drawings of the character. From the batch of line drawings our teachers choose the one they would rather see finalized. They give us corrections along the way, until we're done and end up with a very detailed character painting.




and a pose from our gesture class :)

See ya later Kei.

Today was James Kei's last day in the atelier. All the following works where created in his class. We learned a lot from him and he's a lucky ass for leaving to where he's going. we love ya kei! <3

after a long week of non stop work i finally have the time to post a couple of these scans up.

they are all studies of shape... and trying to look at something or someone as an abstract with the use of its light and shadow shapes.

it's an interesting way of approaching a subject. try it sometime :p

Master copy and art dumpage.

Been extra busy lately.

The item of today are master copies. I can't stress them enough! I have learned so much from them, and it's fascinating to see how the masters portrayed what they saw. Emulating their brush strokes and aesthetic choices really opened my eyes to different ways of approaching a subject, what to emphasize on, and what to skimp on.

The following is a very tiny oils on a Van Dyck painting.


The original


The copy
Don't be fooled, the original's colors are way more vibrant than that!


Sweet fun! Anyway here's some extra stuff, unfinished illustrations,sketches, life drawings,portrait paintings and concepts.

Creative Night Owls

It's interesting to see how in the late hours of the night that creative "Eureka" hits many of us.

On 2006 the discovery channel news released an article about creativity and it's biological hours.

Discovery Channel News on Nightowls and creativity

I'd love to hear from anyone about this subject and if anyone has any current information on this fascinating research. Maybe shed a bit more understanding on why people feel so creative at night.


Anyway here's a bit of a random art update.

Digital Life Drawing

Every friday afternoon, we have digital life drawing with the incredibly talented, James Kei.

Most of these are done in twenty minutes, although lately we've been doing longer poses from 40 minutes to 3 hours.







These are always fun to do, you learn a lot by prioritizing shapes and form to help render the figure the fastest way possible.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

Hello,

Welcome to my online portfolio/blog. My name is Karla Ortiz, and I am an artist, currently residing in San Francisco, CA. It's a new year and what better way to start than to join the artistic blog community. :)

Here is a quick sample of my illustration work (click on the image to see the larger version) :




What to expect from this blog? Illustrations, concept art, sketches, oil paintings, digital paintings and anything art related!

So hope to see you soon!