NICOLE GALINATO

Excerpts from a Jazz jam session.

So I've known how to do calligraphy since 6th grade, and I come back to it every once in a while for occasions like greeting cards and invitations. Recently I had two birthdays to give (super cool fancy pop up) cards for and I thought I'd customize the envelopes nicely to make the effort feel more sincere. Since I don't practice calligraphy all the time, it takes some time for me to plan out things to make them look consistent, balanced and evenly spaced. In this case, I also came up with doing an ornate drop cap for each name while testing out the look with gold ink via trusty gel pen.  I then wrote out each name in the appropriate size in dark ink to trace out on the front of each envelope so I could go over each letter in gold with pen since I don't have gold calligraphy ink.   Starting with the space around the first letter, I lightly drew in the embellishment in pencil. Then I went over the outside border in silver gel pen as an accent to match the sil...

It's been a while since I've sketched in general, but more so with nature and plant life. A trip to my local bayside park brought me some kite flying and tree sketching. I've always been intimidated by drawing landscapes and flora because I get caught up in all the details trying to match the textures on a minuscule level, but I took my sweet sweet time breaking this one down because the shape of this tree was so dynamic.

It's nearing Thanksgiving in the USA and that means lots of food and lots of people. I thought it might be nice to provide a festive centerpiece for the occasion while getting some carving practice in. I've managed at this point to try and solidify what to carve before knife hits pumpkin, and had a dilemma in choosing how to use the negative and positive space in a balanced way. I did a second draft in body paint because the plain black and white was throwing me off, and this helped immensely when trying to determine my negative space, where to actually cut and how to cast light and shadows on the surface. I was very pleased with how well the surface photographed due to well thought out cuts to capture light instead of unintentionally encourage shadow and a different focal point. Thankfully I didn't have to use the entire design to fit the pumpkin, and no longer use a marked on guide to keep things spaced evenly. This lasted through two big Thanksgiving fam...

Branch Out: Pumpkin Carving Another halloween time project. This time I tried a twist on traditional pumpkin carving by incorporating design elements of Thai carving such as flowers and repetitive shapes and patterns. Again I found it very interesting to have to think of the design in regards to subtractive technique rather than additive. The medium as an organic canvas was also an enjoyable challenge to handle. The use of repetitive design allowed me to practice recreating certain shapes to increase speed as well as refine technique. Something funny I found was that in the way I was shown, the techniques on holding the kinfe was very particular, but my hands were just too small to hold the knife safely! So I learned to adapt differently and can now carve efficiently, without having a sharp thing slip through my fingers. That's a nice mental image.  Happy Halloween!

Note to self, get better at recording progress. By this point I ran into another challenge with having to carve into the flesh deeper to get the pink of the watermelon to show, and also angle my cuts to show on the white part. Stopped a bit short after nearly slicing off finished areas...

Branch Out: Fruit Carving First solid attempt at fruit carving with Thai carving knives using basic techniques. An interesting exercise in subtractive 2.5D sculpture, one I hope to revisit frequently.

Branch Out: Sugar A small exercise in food composition and playing with an edible medium.

Mask: Acrylic, cardboard, feathers, plastic gems, elastic, brass brads Branch Out: Mask Fabrication A side project made from things in my art drawer. As halloween approaches, I wanted to create a mask to pair with an ordinary party dress for a masquerade. Acrylic paint, feathers, plastic gems, elastic, and brass brads helped turn this cardboard mask template into an interesting headpiece.

  Here's some work in progress on a digital painting I've been working on here and there. I've decided to use this piece to expand on my skills and tackle realistic lighting on skin, cloth textures, and incorporating contrasting colors to expand my color palette. I started with a line drawing in Photoshop, a character standing in a low lit alley on a cobblestone street. I considering clothing design choices involving different textures that I could explore in low lighting, emphasizing shadows and wrinkles, as well as any sharp highlights. I then made my general color choices for the character, keeping them in and around the orange range so that my shadows can complement them well with a base of purple. I also decided at this point, I'd try to recreate the feel of candle light.      Considering I'd never done a digital paint this detailed, I started with the head of the character, so I could establish more clearly for myself exactly where and how ...

So I recently obtained a tablet and therefore am going to try updating works and processes more often as they come up, starting with this year's Christmas with my family. Usually we get the tree, decorate and the whole shebang, but this year, due to having the first holiday break with no deadlines over my head and nothing that needed to be done, (and therefore a very unnerving lull in work) I decided I'd make the tree and décor. How does one make a tree you ask? With things around the house of course. I started with the initial idea of using aluminum wire and some of the several boxes of Bendaroos (colored wax covered string sticks) we needed to use up. Then, after seeing I didn't quite have enough wire to build what would look like a real tree with branches and all, I had to change my strategy and make the bendaroos cover more ground while considering my other limited supplies, and keeping design in mind. I then realized the best use of wire was the spiral cone, ...

Polaris from nicole galinato on Vimeo .

OMEGA from nicole galinato on Vimeo .

"Glass" - Photoshop + Wacom tablet This is a Photoshop painting exercise I did for fun to create a photorealistic image of a drinking glass. It was interesting working from reference with the negative space and working with the lighter colors on the dark background. It was surprising while I was working on it to see how depending on where and how sharp or dull certain highlights were, it could either successfully look like plastic or glass. I was going for the latter.

A little while back I decided I wanted to do a series of small projects based on the idea of a hoverboard racing game out in space, starting with some test animations, renders, and potentially models for a race track, because we all need a little modeling practice here and there. test render for lighting and environment. skydome environment test for background and lighting blocking animation for part 1 of starting line animation blocking for throwing the board finished start animation I'll be working on other elements of this idea further down the line.

Two hand drawn animations from the depths of 2010-11 on paper, about paper. Oh, the irony.

"Mornings" Pen and paper, colored in Photoshop A self portrait perhaps? This was an illustration I did in the style of one of my favorite artists, Rob Guillory. It's been a while since I traditionally inked something like this, so it was rather refreshing after all the straight computer work I've been doing lately.

From June 2011 A motion graphics animated story based off of the "Home Movies" episode of the animated series Rugrats. This was a lot of fun to work on, creating the assets by hand, and also being in a directing position with three actors of vastly different ages.