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

Bears, Paintings, Progress

Here are some projects from spring semester of this year, as well as some studies and sketches of the projects.

This project of the dancing bears was for a short story project in my illustrating literature class. This is an illustration of as scene from Brilliant Sillence by Spencer Holst:

"Two Alaskan Kodiak bears joined a small circus where the pair appeared in a nightly parade pulling a covered wagon. The two were taught to somersault, to spin, to stand on their heads, and to dance on their hind legs, paw in paw, stepping in unison. Under a spotlight the dancing bears, a male and a female, soon became favorites of the crowd. The circus went south on a west coast tour through Canada to California and on down into Mexico, through Panama into South America, down the Andes the length of Chile to the southernmost isles of Tierra del Fuego.
There a jaguar jumped the juggler, and afterwards, mortally mauled the animal trainer, and the shocked showpeople disbanded in dismay and horror. In the confusion the bears went on their own way. Without a master, they wandered off by themselves into the wilderness on those densely wooded, wildly windy subantarctic islands. Utterly away from people, on an out-of-the way uninhabited island, and in a climate they found ideal, the bears mated, thrived, multiplied, and after a number of generations populated the entire island. Indeed, after some years, descendants of the two moved out onto half a dozen adjacent islands, and seventy years later, when scientists finally found and enthusiastically studied the bears, it was discovered that all of them, to a bear, were performing splendid circus tricks.
On nights when the sky is bright and the moon is fully, they gather to dance. They gather the cubs and juveniles in a circle around them. They gather together out of the wind at the center of a sparkling, circular crater left by a meteorite, which had fallen in a bed of chalk. Its glassy walls are chalk white, its flat floor is covered with white gravel, and it is well-drained, and dry. No vegetation grows within. When the moon rises above it, the light reflecting off the walls fills the crater with a pool of moonlight, so that it is twice as bright on the crater floor as anywhere else in that vicinity. Scientists speculate that originally the full moon had reminded the two bears of the circus spotlight, and for that reason, they danced. Yet, it might be asked, what music do the descendants dance to?
Paw in paw, stepping in unison, what music can they possibly hear inside their heads as they dance under the full moon and the Aurora Australis, as they dance in brilliant silence?"
~Spencer Holst - Brilliant Silence






Acrylic black and white painting of David.


Master Copy of a Rembrandt painting.


Next three paintings are some more paintings from Life Painting 1.






~Danea

The most giant of updates

Hello all, It's been awhile since I've updated here on the blog, and I do apologize for that. For the next week or two I plan on posting every to every other day in order to get this blog up to date and up to speed without posting everything all in one giant post. That would be way to long to go through.
For this post, here is the pieces I promised to update with so long ago from fall semester. The prelims have been sitting here for so long and now here are the finished pieces. Enjoy.

Best piece of the fall semester that came out of Conceptual Illustration. This is suppose to illustrate an article on genetic dating.


Final in Landscape Painting.


Final in Conceptual Illustration. It's suppose to illustrate a headline that said "Enjoy baking cookies with your children".


Landscape of a Lake in Lakewood, Colorado.


Watercolor painting in Life Drawing 4.


A sculpture for conceptual illustration that illustrates overpopulation, specificly to the Walia Ibex.


Landscape of the Golden River.


Conceptual Illustration for an article on the over population of the American wild boar.


Skull studies in life drawing 4.


Hope you enjoy. The next post will be from the Spring semester. Either prelims, finals, or both :).

Prelims to Fall Semester

Ok... well.. I've been so busy lately I wasn't able to post prelims here like I wanted to, so I thought I would at least show some preliminary stuff now before I post some final products. Also to bring an end to the year too :). Here is what I've been up to for the past 3 or 4 months :). Enjoy. I'll post the final products of these later on.

More zoo studies, final products, zbrush modeling stuff, life drawing pieces, and digital pieces to come!