The Car Project

Here is the beginning to end of our first assignment in Illustration II. I have Thiel this semester, I find myself enjoying him as a professor. I think you'll see why.
He gave us the introduction to a story for a magazine that talked about high-end, fast cars. I had a lot of trouble doing thumbnails because as near as I could tell the only real option was to make a nice drawing of a car. So I read and re-read the intro, I drew thumbnails, banged my fists, cried and on and on until I came up with a solution. Random balloon girl:
I showed the thumbnails to Thiel, explained my dilemma and he said that they were all stupid. He looked closer at the girl-on-a-car thumbnail on the left page ^ and asked about it, I explained that she'd be a hot Brit with bad teeth and he said "I guess you could do that one" I told him I wanted to do the balloon girl, but in the tall format of the second to last thumbnail I drew for it.
Thiel agreed initially, then I drew it bigger, he came back over, said it was stupid, we argued. I said that the car is in the picture, he said the picture was stupid, he doesn't like the balloon, I erased the balloon, put grapes in the background, he grudginly agreed to let me do it. He came back over said it was stupid again and I sighed and looked for something else to do. I ended up looking at bicycles. came across a penny-farthing bicycle, which I'm sure you all know was the logo for the Village in "The Prisoner". I hoped that Britian was the birthplace of the bicycle, but it turned out to be Germany or something. Pfft. Anyway, I did little sketch, ^ got approval from Thiel, found reference and did a color sketch.
And a final:
There are some serious problems with the final. Mostly, it's all pretty light. I'm thinking of throwing some gouache on it now, since I have a scan of the final watercolor that I can print if I fuck up the repairs. Wish me luck!

Love and Coffee,
~Anne