Debbie Plesnarski

Kingfisher

2009-11-28T16:14:00.001-08:00

I have a book that teaches you how to paint with a Sumi brush. One of the lessons was painting with milk so I gave it a try. It can add some very interesting textures and I used it on this kingfisher bird painting. I like some of the effects and I will keep experimenting with it!

Pug a la mode

2009-11-25T20:07:00.000-08:00

Thinkativity product on pregnancy todays top 25 list

2009-10-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

I thought I would mention that the other day, one of Thinkativity's products, the company I am interning for has made pregnancytoday.com's 25 essentials list. Check it out!

http://www.pregnancytoday.com/gallery/baby-nursery-essentials-10/baby-nursery-essentials-20/

Mural Article

2009-10-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

Recently the Criterion (Metuchen paper) did an article about the mural I helped paint at WHATS THE SCOOP. Octarina sightings are becoming more frequent!

Internship

2009-09-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

I've started interning for a childrens' toy company called Thinkativity. They make toys that help kids learn about reading, numbers and all of those kinds of things. I help with design issues on the toys and do inhouse illustrations. I've always wanted to work for toys and it's exciting to learn the whole process. I didn't even think about the need to hire voice actors for toys! I really like everyone at the company and i can't wait to work on new toy concepts!

Another mural update

2009-09-17T07:03:00.001-07:00

Here is a flower I painted on the mural

8 Bit and Beyond show!

2009-08-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

Hi!

The 8 Bit and Beyond show was so much fun. I loved seeing all the interpretations of my favorite videogames, serious and hilarious. I took a few pictures so please enjoy!

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, Legend of Zelda, and I believe the other one is Burgertime.

Sonic, Super Mario Brothers, Soul Calibur, and Bioshock.

Megaman 2, Chrono Trigger, The Legend of Zelda, Panzer Dragoon, and Kirby.

Sonic the Hedgehog. I love these paintings!

One of my favs, Zombies Ate my Neighbors.

Super Mario, Yars Revenge and Shadow of the Colossus.

Megaman, Donkey Kong, Gauntlet, Princess Peach, Punchout, Megaman, Bioshock, Megaman, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario 3, Super Mario, Yoshi's Stry, and I didn't know which on the last one was. I"ll find out!

Megaman ( Air Man), Joust, Secret of Mana , Castlevania, Super Mario, Street Fighter and Castle Crushers

Contra and my piece! Super Metroid

More shots

My former teacher Jude Buffum did this one about Super Mario in a recession. Awesome!

I love this one too, Princess Peach!

There were so many more but it was so crowded it was really tough to get more pictures. You can see them all at the Autumn Society's 8 Bit and Beyond Page Here and at http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/07/daring_in_orange_dragons_lair.php

Metroid!

2009-08-03T22:48:00.001-07:00

Hey everybody! After a few allnighters and frustration with ftp servers, our painting is finished! I"m so happy with the way it turned out and excited to be in a gallery show. Enjoyz!

Metroid Value Studies

2009-07-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, so we picked out our two favorite ones, I bumped up the detail and did quick value studies. Here ya go!

Metroid

2009-07-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Collie Mills and I are going to do a Metroid piece together for the Videogame art show that will be at Brave New Worlds Comics on 2nd and Market in Philadelphia August 7th. He is going to do Samus holding the baby Metroid she recovers right after Metroid II and right before Super Metroid. I'm going to add Ridley in the back, ready to steal it.
Here's a few sketches. Enjoy!

Mural Update

2009-07-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I'm still working on the mural but I thought I would post a few new images. Here is a butterfly and a pug with an ice cream cone on his head! Hooray!

Mural

2009-06-18T10:25:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Recently I was asked by a local Ice Cream Store named "What's the Scoop?" in Metuchen, NJ to help paint a mural on the side of their building. It's a lot of fun; I hope to paint more murals in the future. Behold Octarina in progress!

Sketch!

2009-06-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

Here's a little sketch I did of medusa.

Illustration Friday

2009-06-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

I love the book SCRANIMALS. I love the silly poems and how all the animals are weird, messed up and half vegetable. I decided to do another one, the RADISHARK. I'm also posting this for the Illustration Friday theme CRAVING. Enjoy!

More Artttttt!

2009-05-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I can't believe I graduated college! Those four years really zipped by! It was a great time and I certainly learned more than I could have ever imagined. I owe it all to the great teachers I've had over the years and the awesome illustration class I graduated in. Everyone was so friendly and supportive!

Here is a new piece from the book SCRANIMALS, the hippopatomushrooms!

Pinball Machines

2009-04-20T17:24:00.000-07:00

The semester is finally coming to a close soon! Thursday I have my portfolio review; it's scary to think about but graduation's gonna be here before you know it! With the end of every school year one thing comes to mind..... PINBALL!!!!
Every summer I work in Lavallette at a variety store. Ya know, the ones with beach chairs and huge army men action figures. Well, conveniently located about 5 minutes away is the Seaside Heights boardwalk. I always go and play arcade machines there. A couple of years ago, one of the arcades got rid of their lazer tag arena and converted it into a classic arcade. BEST MOVE EVER.

Here's what it looks like

I've always been in love with old videogame and pinball marquee illustrations. Arcade graphics in the 70s and early home consoles like the Odyssey and Colecovision were not nearly powerful enough to depict any kind of complex image so it was up to the illustrator to portray what the game would look like. It's something I don't really like about current games. The graphics are so superior that you really don't need your own creativity.

The best example I can think of is the Tempest. That's my favorite arcade ga me. Just looking at the cabinet makes you excited to even go and play it. but what do the graphics look like? Well, they are li ne based, or vector. I p ersonally really like them, but the point is that they are extremely primitive. The art on the cabinet was absolutely necessary to draw in the customer. My favorite part is the artwork on the marquee:

I mean look at this thing! I can tell you that there is not story whatsoever, but where did that crazy monster even come from? It's awesome. The illustrator really had some kind of imagination to come up with this image if he only had the graphics to look at.

ANYWHO, I was talking about
pinball art. I love to go to the arcade and look at all of the marquees. they are absolutely amazing. My favorite two are PINBOT and F-14 TOMCAT. I don't have any field shots of pinbot, but they art in f-14 is so great. It navigates you around the field, illuminating targets and landing zones. The colors are bright and exciting to look at. I always wondered how hard it must be to plan all of the colors out as well as the arrows, ramps, etc. You have to plan around the lights on the marquee. For example, with F-14 Tomcat the lights are where the explosions are painted; so each time something happens on the board the explosion illuminates. The marquees have so much going on; for example with the game Whirlwind. Everything about the game is depicted in it. I imagine it must be like a book cover; you want to summarize the game but not give everything away. I really wanted to know who did these paintings and see what other kinds of stuff they've done. I walked around the arcade and looked for artists signatures on the machines. I found out the man who did pinbot also did the twilight zone, Ripley's Believe it or Not and whirlwind. His name is John Youssi, who apparently designed the Yoplait Yogurt logo as well. Illustrating can be a crazy job hahaha. After even more research I discovered there was a gallery show of sketches, color studies and finishes of various pinball paintings and designs.

Check out the show
Interview with John Youssi
List of Games He's Worked on
Interviews with other pinball Artists

I think that this is such an interesting field to be involved in. I didn't even realize that illustrators worked on pinball machines. Same process as anything else; sketches, color studies, so on and so forth. Definitely a cool area to be involved in!

Sinistar says seeya at the beach!

(sinistar image from wikistrategy, tempest cabinet and marquee from KLOV)

**update:

Here's a funny little link to check out: it's pretty pointless(which most of gamedailys posts are) but it definitely showcases some crazy imagination!

Misleading videogame art

Open House Poster!!!

2009-04-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Hey all!

I just finished a project for the University of the Arts Open House Poster. This design is meant to be sent out to as many highschools as possible in order to attract highschoolers to our fine educational establishment. I had a hard time coming up with ideas for this one. Eventually I came up with the idea of a carrier pigeon bringing news out to everyone. I also wanted the bird to look really crazy with all kinds of insane patterns.

Here is the first version I handed in:

My teacher liked it a lot but suggested that I change it's head a little bit ( it has a weird looking beak) and add another tail on the right side. BINGO:

They liked it again, but suggested that I make one with a warm gold palette. I made two versions; hopefully we have a winner here!!

ELY IS UPPPP!!!!

2009-03-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

YAYYYYYYY!!!!

The senior show is up!! I can't wait for the opening on Sunday. It was such an amazing experience to hang up my pieces with all of my friends. NO one could believe that it was finally OUR show. All these years we watched the seniors before us display beautiful work; but finally it's our chance to show off our great work. Everyone's work really looks amazing and I will post pics of the opening.

As for now I thought I would post the process of another ELY piece.

This time its......

RO-BEARDDD!!!!

As with any piece I started with a few concepts. I wanted there to be some type of villain for my story and my teachers suggested that I don't make him a human. I chose a robot, because who doesn't like robots? Even better; a Here are some of my concepts.

After coming up with different ideas, I tried making a loose composition of whatI wanted the picture to be. I originally had a whole different story in which Ro-beard captured dancing space animals and one escaped; who tried to free them all. It was becoming much too complicated so I decided to make the book a series of short poems about different dancing aliens. I have PAGES of the original idea, one day I'll post it. I mention it because some of the early Ro-beard concepts are part of that story.
Here are a few page layouts.

The left image I made him more robotic, the right was to make him a little organic looking. After my first crit it was decided that this was a funky angle. I agree, the images are confusing to look at. I also wanted to cram one of the creatures in a cage but it was just too hard to read. I redesigned Ro-beard one more time:

After all of this craziness, I wrote out a poem and made a final copy. Here is the first version I handed in.

Everyone loved the drawings!. This was intended to be spot illustrations on a white background but I decided to put a color in the background. It looked ok but everyone thought that it needed something more. After playing around with it for a while I decided that maybe a dark textured background would be better. After many many type revisions, the final product was ready.

Here it is!!!

ELY time!!!

2009-03-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

It's heeeeerrrreeee!!

I've finished all four of my ELY pieces. it's been a wild ride; ever since October we have been working really hard on out senior thesis assignments. It's amazing to see how far I've come as far as picturemaking and photoshop efficiency hahaha. I can't wait to see everyones work up next weekend; we have all worked so hard for this show and the paintings will prove it!

I'm going to post each of my ELY's from start to finish in an attempt to log some sort of process I have haha. Since I've already started with Octarina I'll finish it. Although the single page spread is a very nice piece; my teachers decided it would work much better as a double page spread. Even though it was upsetting to hear that it had to be redone I knew it would be for the best. My other pieces were double page spreads so it would make the set look more complete as well.
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.

I redesigned the entire stage and crowd because it would have been too hard to continue the perspective. After repainting the crowd I noticed that I liked some of my original characters better so I just photoshopped them back in. I also kept the original Octarina because I really liked how I painted her and it would have been a shame to scrap her.

Here is the double page spread right before the first round of corrections:

When I got it back the only correction I had was to redesign the crab lute player.

HERES THE FINAL PRODUCCTTTTT!!!!

New Awesome book I found

2009-02-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Don't worry, some new artwork will be on the way soon!

While I was in the studio the other day one of my friends showed me a book called CODEX SERAPHINIUS. As you may know I am a huge fan of Roger Dean so when I first saw this book I was amazed! The artwork is fascinating. For those who do not know of the book; which would probably be most people; it is an encyclopedia of a made up alien world that strangely parallels our own. The language is completely made up but I kept finding myself trying to figure out what each page might mean. I'd love to own a copy of the book but of course it is ridiculously rare. Fortunately UARTS has a copy and I can't wait to see it!

Here's a link for more stuff about it

Heyy therrree

2009-01-31T09:15:00.001-08:00

Hello all; sorry I haven't updated in a while, the senior thesis project has taken over my life hahaha. Thankfully I'm almost there and I'm trying to keep my blog up to date. This piece I'm posting is my second ELY. It's about an octopus that is the best ballerina in the galaxy. I love to draw ridiculous looking characters.

This character took quite some time to get right.

here are my first thumbnails I did, just to try and figure out what she should look like.

After that I had to do some character designs. They take the longest time for me, I usually try to skim through a book of animals and combine different traits together.

After that, I had to come up with a sketch. I wanted to put her in a theater full of adoring fans but then I came up with the idea that there would be humans that are a little freaked out. I traced over it again and made a few changes.

My teacher wanted me to give her legs and shoes so she didn't look like she was just floating, so I altered her one more time. Finally I did my painting and this is how it looks!

2008-10-24T21:17:00.001-07:00

here are some more things I've been up to. I painted a wood duck for a wildlife stamp and I actually pulled off the realist look. that one is done in gouache. After painting that, I just felt like painting realistically wasn't what I wanted to do. Sometimes it turns out ok but I really wanted to try another way of painting. I'm trying to make things more decorated and graphic. I illustrated a short poem about a 3 headed monster with a new style and I think I'm on to something

New Piece

2008-09-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

This is a piece I did in gouache for the book cover of Hatchet. Its the first one I did when I made the switch to gouache.

Piece from Children's Book

2008-09-21T10:38:00.001-07:00

This piece was for the Fairy Tale "The Sick Lion". I tried to use vivid colors and hide the lion inside of the cave; I think it turned out well.

new stuff!

2008-09-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

Yay for new art!!! or at least its from May hahaha. They are all done in gouache, I decided to switch mediums because its a tiny bit faster than oils. The first is a crazy space dude fighting a lizard man, the second is a crazy space dude popping out of a space ship, and the last is a concept painting of a swamp tree thing. Enjoyz!!!

toxic tree and sketches

2008-02-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

This was the last piece for fall semester junior year.(Which was this past December). We had to take a quote and illustrate it. The quote I chose was "It was the best of times it was the worst of times." The city has been demolished by a nuclear war, but life is still continuing on. It was done in oils.

I also wanted to add a few sketches I did throughout last semester.

Our teacher told us to base this sketch off the word history, so I decided to make up my own history where stonehenge was used for summoning demons.

This next one was to create a landscape while practicing aerial perspective. I loved this assignment because I enjoy making scenes like this.

My favorite thing to do during the summer is play pinball, so when I found out one of our projects was to focus on lighting in an environment I knew I had to do this.

Black Metal Impala

2008-01-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

This assignment, which was due last week, was to create a half human/half animal portrait. While I was coming up with a sketch idea, I was looking at impalas and I thought the colors on their face reminded me of corpse paint.

I decided to make a very silly portrait of a black metal impala. The final painting was done in oils.

Rush album cover

2008-01-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

This is an oil painting I did for the Rush album Permanent Waves. I never cared about lyrics in music all that much but when I started listening to Rush something just clicked. The song "Natural Science" was what I based the image off of; a molecule of carbon being the basic building block of life. I constructed a small shadowbox and painted from it.

Typography Pieces

2008-01-26T09:59:00.001-08:00

Last year I took a typography class, here are some of the projects I did.

This first piece was to create a 2 page apread for the Shel Silverstien poem, imprtnt. It was the first time I tired something like this, but I enjoyed doing it and I learned a lot.

Another project was to create a shopping bag for a store with text as the main focus. I designed this for a surfing store near where I worked in the summer.

More art pieces

2008-01-26T08:08:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite things to draw are landscapes. I was always influenced by the art of Roger Dean; how he could make scenes he complelety made up look so believable. Both are done in micron pens in which I created my own scenery and make it look as believable as I could.

I made this tree out of cutting out pieces of fadeless paper. It's my interpretation of the tree of life, where it connects the boundary between heaven and hell. In some eastern beliefs, the tree of life grew 10 jewels from its branches so I decided to incorporate that into my piece.

My health teacher from high school recently asked me to paint her newborn babys room with Charlie Brown characters. This was something completely new to me and I was very excited to try it.

2008-01-25T13:31:00.000-08:00

These 2 pictures were for a Halloween card project. I designed it so the top picture would be the front, and the 2 trees swing open and form the bottom image. I have always enjoyed looking at dogs with silly outfits on so I thought it would be cute if I had them at a Halloween party. This was done in gouache.

This is an illustration I did for The Town And Country Mouse. I used micron pens and colored pencils. I always liked childrens books and I really wanted to do something fun and colorful. This was the first time I tried to illustrate a fairy tale and I am very happy at the result.

I did this painting last year as a sophomore project. It is a book cover for the story Beowulf. Originally it was a watercolor painting but I decided to use the watercolor as an under painting and do the rest in oil. I am very happy with how it turned out, I left some of the watercolor visible and it worked really well with the oils.

This was a really fun project I did a few months ago. It is about the number 4 made entirely out of collage. I started with the 4 stages of the moon, and then i decided to add the 4 earth elements as well. While I was working on it, I was looking a lot at Japanese wood block prints so I tried to incorporate that kind of style into the design of the elements. Finally I made a window pane that framed the picture in the shape of a diamond, although if you look very closely, the brown panes form the number 4 four times. I used construction paper, acrylic paint and magazine cut outs. This is one of my favorite projects that I have done.

I did this painting in a Children's book illustration class for King Arthur. It was the first time I had to draw a horse anatomically correct, so I spent hours trying to get the sketch down. I did this painting in gouache. I usually work in oils but I wanted to try a different medium and I definitely like the way my projects come out in gouache.

This is a guitar that I hand painted using a marbling technique. First I sanded the Les Paul body down and sprayed it with a white shellac. Then I used a combination of borax and quick dry enamel paint to make the swirl. It is a very fun technique to do, the swirls always come out different but you can control which way they flow. I love the way this turned out.

Portfolio

2008-01-25T13:23:00.000-08:00

I'm using blogger to post my artwork as a portfolio. Right now I'm an illustration student at the University of the Arts in my junior year. The artwork that I am going to post has been done within the past year.

This one is a series of stamps I did in collage. They are all representations of famous classic WWF wrestlers. Starting from the far left is Bret the Hitman Hart, then the Legion of Doom, then The Genius. I always wanted to try and do collage work and I was very happy at how these turned out.