No naked ladies this week, I confess. I’ve been wickedly busy with some awesome freelance projects. But, I do have a sexy space cadet, just for you!
You know.

Happy Friday!

Yay! I’ve been getting a lot of fun projects at work for our summer events, and this one is for a fundraising event for our summer camp! Playing around with more gradients, photo textures and “natural media” brushes, and contrasting with some lineless vector work. Kind of a hodge-podge of techniques, but it’s fun! I’m still in the process of finding my “voice” when it comes to digital media, because I’m so used to a textural, free-for-all approach when it comes to traditional paint and pencil illustration. It’s definitely an interesting experiment to try and translate that vitality into my digital work.

Eeeh! The raccoon with a marshmallow! So cute!

Here’s an illustration I did at work for our newsletter, today! We’re looking for runners to join our team to raise money in the ING New York City Marathon. Yeah, Team Girls Club!

Illustration is done in india ink (scanned) and colored in Photoshop. I experimented different textured brushes and selective erasing to get different textures and to suggest the bridge in the background, without detracting from the detail of the runners. Fun!

Experimenting Photoshop & Pencils again, with a restrained, Spring-y palette. I was surprised at how many people responded positively to my hand-drawn stuff in the past few posts. I’m more of a digital girl, these days, as I am a designer by day, but it’s nice to get back to the texture and sensitivity that physical materials offer. Been painting a bit in gouache and will hopefully have something promising to show, soon!

Here’s an illustration I did for an event flyer at work yesterday!
We did some changes in terms of the mood (less “grown-up” and more playful and young) but I figured I’d share this one, because I’m really digging how the light color scheme came out.

(Also, can you tell I’m longing for a fluffy dog? If only I had the space!)

This week I made my very first foray into 3D illustration and so far, so good! This model was done in Zbrush with no reference, so forgive me if the anatomy is grossly misproportioned.

Of course, me being the way that I am, I just cracked open the program sans-tutorials and started tinkering away to see what I could figure out on my own (which is basically the way I learn everything) and it wasn’t too awful. It’s really exciting to learn a new program again, especially since by this point, the Adobe Suite is pretty much putty in my hands. The tools themselves are incredibly intuitive, it was the view modes that gave me the most trouble (2.5D vs 3D), but, of course, I’m only on Day Two of learning.

And I cannot extoll enough love for a software company that offers such extended documentation, tutorials, and active online community. Stuff is invaluable in learning a new skill, and gives me the freedom to learn what I want to know incrementally, rather than in a linear fashion.

Definitely going to start building monsters, next!

Finally! I’m doing an IF challenge! This week’s theme is “Spooky” and I was thinking about weird slime monsters, and of course, that ended up as a sexy girl monster.

A rusalka is a type of Russian siren or water nymph, but inherently more sinister, sort of a “zombie mermaid”. According to the lore they are able to climb trees, lure men to their doom, and generally cause trouble until they find peace. I just may have found an idea for my Halloween costume…!

This week I finished painting a huge panel for a new building at my work, which is under construction on Avenue D. (I do graphic design for a non-profit in the LES that does work with youth development.)

My panel is about 5′ x 10′ (I think), which is a LOT bigger than I’m used to working. It was kind of challenging to translate my style to something so big, but it was actually a really great exercise to work in a different way.

I’ve found that, when you draw a very specific subject matter (which, if you haven’t guessed, is pretty girls) it’s really easy to get stuck on drawing the same thing over and over again, because that’s the how you’ve trained your hand to move. Drawing is quite literally muscle memory, and that’s part of what defines individual style.

Working so large forced me to concentrate in a different way, where my whole body (rather than just my hand and wrist) was involved in the process of painting; felt like I was dancing once I slipped into a flow state. Here are a few images detailing how the project came to completion:

Sometimes my artmaking process is a little weird. I like using traditional and digital methods, due to the sensitivity that I can achieve by hand and the speed and editing that can be done digitally.

Starting out, I usually do my thumbnails in pen because it forces quick decision-making, rather than going back in and editing and erasing and overthinking ideas. This is the third step, having scanned my rough thumbnail into Photoshop, cleaned it up and blocked out the shapes, and then printed it out to draw on top of, to fill in details with a pencil.

Painting on the board, where I block in a lot of the painting by “sketching” it out. I gravitate more towards drawing methods, even when I am painting.

Here’s the final result! It was a super fun project, and it was really wonderful to work alongside some wickedly talented artists while I painted (including TOOFLY!)

The illustration is a revision of the illustration I did for Newmindspace‘s Tokyo party flyer.
I ordered a small first run of 100 from the Long Island City-based print shop 4over4, to test the quality.
I’m so happy with how they came out, and I think once I run out of these, I’ll reprint them bigger and do diecut!

Want one?
I’ll send some to the first 10 people to hit me up in the comments or via email: hello@lenorajayne.com!

It’s so nice to complete work for myself, for a change!

My most recent piece is a collaboration with Amy, of Vaunt Designs, who had asked if I’d be interested in doing some illustrations of her design work and sent over photos of the ever-talented Apnea in the “Nostalgia for Nothing” jacket, taken by Corwin Prescott.

I decided to trek back to a similar style as the VividBraille illustrations, working from an original photograph and drawing/painting digitally over it. Tons of layers, here, of photographs, textures, linework, and color adjustments.
I’m really happy with the sort of ghost-like holographic quality that came out. Though, admittedly, the clothing does take second stage to all the design-y bells and whistles, but it does feel like a good segue into doing more fashion illustration again, which is one of my goals.
There will definitely be more collaborations in the future!

PS. Amy specializes in beautiful, custom-made pieces ranging from deliciously translucent bodysuits, hand-painted dresses, feathered fascinators, and jewelry. Her work is sculptural and sensual, using visually tactile fabrics like latex, lace, rope, upholstery, and organdy. Go check out her site (and Etsy): www.VauntDesigns.com