Graduation Show on April 12th

Graduation is over now and I'm now officially a graduate of Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. On April 12th I had the opening ceremony of my graduation show. I wanted to share some photos from the opening. These pieces have been my primary focus all semester and something I've been working towards for the past 4 years. They are now on my website here: http://daneafidler.com . I have a book from the show, which I might sell copies of sometime in the future. I also have a ton of stickers left from the show. After Spectrum Fantastic Live 2 in May, I will put a price on the stickers or I might have some giveaways for them. Anyway, here are the photos from the show. Thank you for everyone's support from all these years.

Denver Zoo Group

Hey, just want to announce that the Denver Zoo Sketch Group is now active and being updated weekly! You can access the main group site page here: Denver Zoo Sketch Group and the facebook is here: Zoo Sketch Group Facebook

Our first meeting of the summer will be Saturday, April 20th at 9 am in front of the Denver Zoo. We will meet once or twice a week on Fridays or Saturdays. Hope to see people there! It's going to be a lot fun.

Also Grad Show photos coming soon! Thank you so much to everyone who made it. The show was amazing!

Almost there - Invitation to Grad Show!

It's almost here. My Graduation Show opens up this Friday, April 12th at 5 pm at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in the Phillip J. Steele Gallery. Please come to see what my fellow graduates and I have been working on all semester and have been working towards for 3 or 4 years now. This semester's graduation show will be big and great. Around 60 graduates in total, 17 of them illustration. There will be art, food, and a TON of promo items from all of us. After Friday will be graduation on the 19th. The show will be up till then. Hope to see you all there!



~Danea Fidler

More Previews

After some really long hours in the basement painting on the cintiq I'm happy to finally be able to post some more sneek previews of the images for my Grad Show. Here I have a small sneek peek of one of my illustrations and then my primary creature design. Enjoy and any feedback is appreciated. More to come in the next few weeks. Counting down to the Grad Show and Graduation now. After that is Spectrum Fantastic Art Live 2 :).

Grad Portfolio

Just a quick update with a quick collage of preliminary images for my projects for Grad Portfolio for my Grad Show. Shown here are some wolverine studies, head studies, primate hand studies, and a process of the form of my creature.
Also, due to Grad Portfolio, I'm going to have to go down to updating once every other week instead of every week.
I will be posting more of these WIP images as I go throughout the semester :).

More Zoo and Museum Studies

Some zoo and museum sketches from last summer :).

Explorer WIP

This is a my first oil painting that I did for life painting 2 during fall semester. We got to choose our own costumes and subject matter and with the costumes we had I choose to paint an explorer of worlds who is currently exploring a jungle on some unknown alien world.
Due to time constraints on this painting it ended up being very painterly. I plan on finishing it up digitally. This way I can fix some anatomy issues and put a lot more detail into it without having to deal with oil paints (which I'm allergic to). Let me know what you think.

Curious Eddy

This is another project that I did over the summer last year. We had to create a city that was being invaded by a large animal or creature. I decided I would do an illustration with my creature, Eddy. He is primarily based off an Edmontosaurus with some prehistoric elephant and other things in him. He is a very gentle creature who usually lives in swamps and wetlands. Here he is roaming through the canals of a city looking for food. This city is something that I have been designing for about a year now for The Pollywawg Project, which is a long term collaborative project between a couple of friends and I.

I do have to admit that this was a totally new challenge for me because it was a hybrid technique that I had never used before. I first did an umber underpainting in acrylic on canvas, scanned it in and colored it completely in Photoshop. For some reason I had a hard time with the texture of the canvas. I now know that I should of used that texture to my advantage instead of fighting with it so much.

Here is the final product along with it's long process. Let me know what you think.

Just a few of my thumbnails.

Sketches of the city for the final product.

Value Studies

The entire coloring process.

A study of an Edmontosaurus from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

P.S. Going to be changing up the layout of this blog soon. Starting to market myself more and as soon as I can get things up and going the layout of this blog will change along with all my other social media.

~Danea Fidler

Alive and Creature

Starting this week, I plan on posting a new piece of art here at least once a week till finals start and then after graduation.

The piece for today is a self portrait I did for Computer Illustration 1 over the summer. We had to create a surreal self portrait of ourselves. It didn't have to look like us as long as someone could recognize it as us. I created an arctic wolf okapi that I dressed up in clothing that I normally were every day. This was one of my first real digital paintings I've really done successfully and I learned a ton while doing it. The main things were that even in digital painting, underpaintings or quick speed painting studies help a lot. Also shortcuts are your friend.

Hope you all enjoy. Here is also my process of the painting.

~Danea