2017 Update 1 - New Personal Work & The Sous Hoose

Hi all- a very long, long time no see!!

It’s been quite the year. I’m rather depressed about the state of the world, but I’ve been very fortunate to have good things happening in my personal life. 

My husband Dave and I spent the first half of 2017 hunting for, bidding on, and finally purchasing a house, and then of course moving and settling in (the latter process is still happening and probably will be for some time). 

The house is in L.A. county, albeit the very northwestern edge. We went from our Hollywood, city-centric apartment to extreme suburban living in one fell swoop - instead of hipsters and walking-distance bars and restaurants, we now reside in The Land of Big Box Stores and strollers - but on the flip side, it’s a 30-minute drive south through the mountains to Malibu & the Pacific Ocean. The house itself is wonderful - old school craftsman-style, with a beautiful backyard, wood beams in the living room, and an original stained glass window in the dining room. It took me some time to adjust to homeowner life, but I’ve been embracing the new normal lately.
 

I’ve also been fortunate to have a great art year. For those of you active on Instagram, I post fairly regularly there and have made my account art-centric (no personal photos). Here is some of my personal work that I hadn’t posted on the blog quite yet.

Self-portrait.

RIP Prince.

An inside joke between Dave and me... we got ourselves laughing one night imagining Agent Carter set in Boston (or Bahston).

Work from CGMA's Color & Light class, taken summer 2016

Work from CGMA's Color & Light class, taken summer 2016

Final painting from CGMA's Color & Light class, taken summer 2016

Model: Stacey Walker at The Drawing Club

Peter Pan interpretation

I also finally, FINALLY completed a new professional concept art portfolio for character and prop design, and I took it to CTN Animation Expo two weeks ago. More on that in the next post...

© Gina Florio 2017

Self Portrait, Helen Chen style

I Helen Chen'd myself.

I've wanted a cartoon self-portrait to put in my Blogger profile for a while now. After I read Muddy Colors' recent post on Mingjue Helen Chen, I fell in love with her style and decided to try illustrating myself in that way. Ultimately it's not a style I'll be keeping (mostly because it's not mine to begin with!), but it was a great exercise in texture and I definitely think I will be adding more texture to future paintings.

Read the Muddy Colors post, Mingjue & Me, for insight as well as a real-time video of her process (I LOVE real-time videos!), and check out her blog for some truly great art. She also put up a post with links to the brushes she uses. I know it's not the brush that makes the artist, but as someone still building and experimenting with their Photoshop brush library, these helped me a lot - they handle very nicely.

Here's my favorite recent piece of hers - I love the idea of reinterpreting comic book costumes into casual outfits! Anything that appeals to my fangirl side and my "omg, clothes" side is a win in my book.

© Gina Florio 2014