Author: rissaw

Marissa Woods is a fourth-year student at Penny W Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. Second-year writing for Arts, Ink, Marissa is focusing on documenting her fiber arts journey, through Fiber Fridays. Marissa is pursuing a minor in Geology and would like to pursue grad school to eventually become an art professor.

A Day In Our Lives #23

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,

This week I am posting a sketch I did when I took my friend to go try out Digipaint club here on campus. They have weekly meetings and normally do cute fun things that use digital painting. The week that we attended, the club hosted a workshop on how to draw birds, as well as how to create your own creatures. It was a fun experience but due to my extremely busy school schedule, I will not be able to attend weekly.

 

I decided to draw cows, which are one of my favorite animals. I think they are so cute! I am also generally better at drawing women in my cartoon style, which made drawing human-cows even easier. I picked some cute light blue and pink colors just to get them to stand out a bit. If I had more time I could have accessorized them a little more. Hope that you like it!

See you next week,

Marissa 

 

A Day In Our Lives #22

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,

This week I wanted to talk a bit about my process and how I create a lot of my more complex digital drawings. I originally studied Illustration at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. During my time there, I spent a lot of time learning anatomy and perspective. In the illustration program, almost all of my work had to be on paper, they teach traditional art for the most part in that department.

With this, I usually start out my drawings on paper, and then take a photo of them. I then upload the image to procreate on my Ipad, where I color in the image. Sometimes I will include line work, but I really just love using value in my digital artwork. I like to think of it more as a digital painting than anything. It is a lot easier to digitally paint in the colors in my opinion. Then I am able to get exactly the right tones that I want, and if I mess up there is always the undo button.

I know this isn’t a good tutorial on digital drawing, but it is just my different way of going about most of my more complex artwork.

See you next week!

Marissa

A Day In Our Lives #21

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,
This week I am posting some of my character sketches/studies. I really enjoy creating characters. One of my favorite things to draw is human anatomy. I really love boosting the color in people’s undertones in order to create my painting/coloring style. For lighter skin tones I start with a base of sage green, for darker skin tones I use an undertone of red or blue. I also created a new header image for this series. I feel like this frame from one of my comics fits the vibe better here. I like creating a variety of characters in order to push myself to stay away from “same face” syndrome, which is a really hard thing to overcome if you have a distinct art style. This just means that because of your style, you sort of accidentally draw the same face over and over.

See you guys next week!

A Day In Our Lives #20

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,
Everyone can agree that the second semester of the year is always the hardest. It always feels much more stressful and gloomy with the snow and cloudy weather. I am super looking forward to spring in Ann Arbor! Right about now is midterms, so good luck everyone! This is a time of studying and taking care of yourself. This semester has seemed like it is flying by. I just recently got Hogwarts Legacy and I am really liking the cute library study vibes. That made me want to include the big window behind the subject in my drawing.  I liked creating the books to place all around her. To do this I created a bunch of books individually, and then decided which ones I liked the most. I then stacked them on top of one another, and copied and pasted the entire unit throughout the drawing.

See you next week!

Marissa 

A Day In Our Lives #19

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys,
This week I’m uploading an illustration that I had started for a zine that was accepting submissions here on campus. With my busy schedule, it was really difficult to meet the deadline and I was unable to enter, however, I felt like it was a good opportunity to work on my digital illustration skills.  I think that it could have ended up as a pretty cool submission. It is important for an artist, especially a college student, to have good time management. I draw digitally on my iPad using procreate. I hope everyone is having a good spring break!!
See you next week,
Marissa 

A Day In Our Lives #18

rissaw Leave a comment

Hey guys!

This week I wanted to show you all some artwork I have been working on. I have been using magazines that a friend gave me to cut up and collage. I think collage is a super fun medium. I like poetry and writing as well. A lot of my artwork focuses on feminism or the female experience under the patriarchy. My prompt for this book was the sense of touch. Throughout the book, I highlight the relationship between the male gaze and how it affects female access to physical touch in romantic and other relationships. This book is part of an assignment that required me to write the book and then change the pages around and restart. On the third try, this was the end result. I love how it is coming out and I am really excited to share it with others. The final concept is extremely different than what I had started with, and it was a super fun journey to go on.

See you next week!

Marissa