New Website!

check it out.

(includes development work for thesis)

Weird Weather

Baltimore's been having some floppy weather lately; the temperature's been every which way but winter. Today, it's airing on the side of see-your-breath Fall.

Season's Tidings

inspired by those lovely illustrations of damsels around liquor bottles. Happy holidays folks!

Semester Up!

Guys, guys. I confess: it's been a while since posting on here. Senior year has been real busy, and filled with a lot of kooky stuff. Also, discovering twitter and tumblr has made it difficult for me to stay faithful to just one blogging/social networking site at a time. While I work on rebuilding this place from the ground up, follow me elsewhere, if you dare:

my tumblr; where I post more art and all things like it.

my twitter; where I blurt out sometimes relevant things!


As always, to those who have not yet abandoned this ship, thank you for following me. Know that there will be more art coming your way soon!

Keep Calm, Carry On

SO finals are upon us here at MICA, and I've got quite a few tall hurdles to jump before I can continue goofing off on the internet again. Updates will be sparse here for the next two weeks, but hold tight! I'll see if I can't throw a few images up here between now and the end of the year. As always, thank you for sticking with me and my doodles; I love hearing any thoughts/crits you may have to offer on my work :-)
-Shanti

Bear Guards

Given the line "assessing risk" as a jumping off point for a fantasy illustration, I chose to expand on my series of Ivan and the Firebird pieces: this being the part of the story where Ivan comes across a castle he has to enter, which is heavily guarded by some lethargic, but lethal beasts.
you can find more developing IVAN artwork by me here.

New Delhi Travel Poster

Our latest assignment in Concepts class: make an image for a travel ad to a place of your choice. The hustle and bustle of market places are always fascinating to me; how could I not choose India?
Now, onto mini thesis!

Flikr Sketch Dump!

Hey watchers and casual perusers,
ever wonder what my sketches look like? What? No? Well, too bad! listen to this anyway:

through a wonderful idea conceived by my fellow artist Rachael Hunt, I have now assembled a jumble of sketches, scribbles and unpolished ideas together into a flikr slideshow. Feel free to browse it anytime, as it'll grow whenever I add new images to the stream. Much better, I think, than clogging this blog with undeveloped work.
Thanks for sitting tight guys! That's it for now.

-Shanti

P.S.- like how many times I subliminally linked to it? What? No? Get outta here!

veggables

found some miraculous free time yesterday (to bw fair, half of it was lounging around in an academic class) and drew tuber-headed characters for no particular reason.


(my favorite's the dapper radish!)

FREEDOM (book cover assignment)

a work in progress to an assignment involving the reinterpretation of a fictional book cover. The title of mine was "Freedom: a novel" by Jonathan Franzen. Never read the book before, but had an art director/classmate who did; hope this does the story justice!



another version, with text

Totem Island!

For the sake of keeping to my promise on frequent updates, I present work from my most recent Fantasy Art assignment.


(animated version will go here once I figure out how to upload vids to the web)


(initial totem designs)

Elderly Barbarians

First assignment of the Spring semester's Fantasy class with Jaime Zollars, and I'm drawing old people in breast plates and leather.
(sketches below)

Domovoi

Toward the end of last semester I started drawing these little imps at work. With traffic at the bar being generally slow, I filled quite a few sketch pages with little old man trolls, and even developed a loose story relating them to witches and housework. I won't say more because that' about as far as I got, but who knows where they'll pop up again?





(Sorry for the cruddy scans, btw. The scanner I used belonged to the school, and was very worn and torn from a semester's worth of use.)

Animation PreProduction, Fall 2010

development sketches/environments/characters


storyboards

Star Wars Critters

One of the first things I did in the new year was watch the original Star Wars trilogy, unedited. What better way to express my love for the creatures in SW universe than draw my two favorites?

2011

Oh my! Is it a new year already? How fast the time has gone, and how largely my neglect has grown on this place. I suppose with the turning of the calendar, resolutions are in order.
To myself, I resolve to develop a more steady work pace for all future art projects, and to make it a habit to be inspired every day by something new, so as not o get hung up by a lack of passion to create. And to all those who've watched this little blog filled with little pictures grow, I resolve to give you more finished pieces to look at than last year, as well as progress shots and roughs to ensure that everything in the aforementioned goals is in check. Thank you, once more for watching me, and look forward to a bunch of updates very soon!
-Shanti

Chalk Boards!

Did I ever mention I do chalkboard illustrations where I work? Here's my latest commission:

+detail:

'Micro-emotions' Spot

Here's a mini piece done for a mini assignment involving spot illustrations for articles. Mine was all about the dissection of micro-emotions, and stories about certain people who can spot them.

Character Design - Djinn

Sorry guys, I haven't posted much content here regarding school assignments. I have no excuse! This must be fixed.
Below is a recent assignment given in a character design course I'm taking this semester: Redesign a main character from 1,001 Arabian Nights. I was paired with the Djinn from Aladdin's lamp, and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy taking a few major liberties in pushing this figure past conventional identity. Apologies, for my sense of rendering is a little rusty.


bonus! sketches:

Mapping the Quest

A map simplifying young Prince Ivan's travels, in search of the fabled firebird. I took some liberties in detailing the kingdoms; according to the original tale there's no specification of where the kingdoms are located.