Melissa Mantzke

Because I gotta Design....

2012-02-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

This summer I found myself being incredibly productive with random works of semi finished art. I was constantly switching between projects and decided to take a break to work on self-promotional pieces. I previously posted a more successful one (in my mind at least) a while back and found this one just hanging out on my desktop. Since I haven't posted anything in a fortnight I decided to post it.

Birds.....again....

2011-12-30T08:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not entirely sure why I have this infatuation with birds all of a sudden, but I'm going with it. I've been working a lot with water colors and really wanted to add a sort of graphic feel to a painting and this was the step after my previous attempt. I really enjoy the look of a simple plain painting and that seems to be my chosen aesthetic. I hope in the future to use this look and feel for something I can use in a more type driven piece.

My new mug rack...

2011-11-13T07:12:00.000-08:00

It's a little known fact within my family that I am an avid mug collector....but always lack the cupboard space. I've been looking for ways to display them somehow and finally came up with a solution. With some slabs of wood and a few drawer handles I came up with this....it fits perfectly above the ol' sink and really adds some color and variety to a room that I usually never decorate while at the same time giving me a little more cupboard space for a new round of mugs!!

A little bit of Narcissism..

2011-11-06T13:54:00.000-08:00

I figure since I'm trying to become a Graphic Designer I should start working on some self-promo pieces as well as other series of work that I'm not so familiar with. I've always used the same ol' style of sketched work with either digital or watercolor painting. I'm hoping to break free of the norm and see what else I could do. I had done a series of paintings dealing with just how little of the face you would need to get a likeness as well as what would register with people as a human face, I thought I could use that same idea with this.

Dirty Bird Semi-Final...

2011-10-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

Still needs a little work on the bar and the scale of the animals.....but here's where I'm at so far. My next step is of course the font choice putting them each on individual bottles.

Final Babes

2011-09-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

Dirty Bird Babes...

2011-09-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

I wanted an element of interaction between bottles with this project so I thought add a few babes with those bar going dirty birds to oogle at. I really wanted to portray the stereotypical "perfect woman" thusly she's built like a barbie and really doesn't even have a face. I thought it would be fun to have this cross between a pin up girl with a sort of retro look to be that interaction element.

Bird Finals

2011-09-27T18:37:00.001-07:00

Dirty Bird

2011-09-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

Here are what I'm hoping to be my final bird illustrations. I'll probably end up adding more ink to the top bird to darken it up. My next step after this would be to paint them in photoshop and finish the other two characters.

Newest Project

2011-09-11T06:39:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on a new project in hopes to 'beef' up the ol' portfolio, this summer I've been working and trying to get skilled at different media. Those watercolor studies were all in preparation for this project. This guy is part of a wine bottle design which will be a series of four bottles....his buddies will be soon to follow. This was done with a dip pen and ink, which sadly spilt all over my art box so I'm on hold until I can pick up a new bottle.

ValleyFair so far.....

2011-07-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

It's pretty much the midway point for my summer at ValleyFair, the job is becoming more enjoyable the more I learn. I decided the other day to finally take a quick picture of a drawing, the picture was with my phone so the quality is pretty bad. These two fellows decided to sit down for a drawing which was good for me since they were pretty easy to draw and I knew they weren't the type to take offense to what was in store for them. My airbrushing is getting a little better.....but all around my drawings could be better.

A bird's eye view....

2011-06-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on a series of wine bottle labels to beef up the ol' portfolio, I'm trying to give them a real hands on feel. These are a few quick ideas for the feel I want to portray, not quite committed to a title yet but that will come in time. I'm really starting to get into watercolors since they are really easy to layer and get pretty cool effects with. These are done with several colors and then adding salt when still wet. The birds are just drawn with a ball point pen.

mine norske mater

2011-06-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

While finally working on my website I can across these pains in my butt and thought I'd post these up. They were for a packaging design project way back in my college days (roughly two years ago) being that I am a proud Norwegian I felt it necessary to dedicate an entire project to Norwegian culture. I can no longer remember what this project was entirely about but I can tell you that this was the only part of the project I was remotely happy with. This was my lame attempt at rosemauling, they're not the best but alas I'm still young and have the rest of my life to practice on plates and giant spoons.

2011-02-24T20:08:00.000-08:00

Logo work

2011-01-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

After having cleaning out my computer I found this guy hiding and thought I would put it up here. My sister had been staying with me over the summer and found an up and coming personal trainer. She had contacted her in hopes of finding an internship but instead found a logo job for myself.

Caricature Studies

2011-01-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

Here are a few sketches I've done from the top, William Macey, Jack Black and Hugh Laurie. I've always found this type of art work interesting but never thought I'd be able to get any sort of likeness with any of these drawings. These are the first ones I've done, the likeness is I hope there a little, but as they say practice makes perfect and I plan to keep sketching and hope to get better.

Stab at a Skateboard....

2010-12-12T12:59:00.001-08:00

While on the hunt for the perfect job, I try to find jobs for myself to keep myself busy and a artsy sort of mindset. This was done for a fellow Lammer's employee who was looking to give her son a skateboard for christmas. She gave me this assignment with very specific ideas on what she was looking for, i.e. skulls, lime green and tribal tattoos. Being that I hope to get a job in a field where people will be giving me a very specific view on what they want I tried to make sure she got just what she had in mind. I was very apprehensive to start this being that this was in fact my very first skateboard design, but I was also working on a very low budget and had to hand paint instead of do it all on the computer and print it on velum. In the end it turned out to be quite enjoyable and a real challenge but we will see the reaction in a few weeks.

Espresso Yourself

2010-10-04T19:47:00.000-07:00

I've decided on my spare time, and by spare time I mean when I could be working on building my website but not, to work on some of the rejected logos from senior show. I originally wanted to create a tree top coffee house using a sort of comical theme, thus these two crazy creatures. I ended up going a different direction and thought it a waste to just store these guys in a three ring binder never to see the light of day, so here they are for your enjoyment, and always remember....'be a coffee drinking individual and espresso yourself'.

Post-Grad Drawing

2010-09-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

Since having graduated I have found myself in an artistic slump. This slump not only hindering my design abilities and getting myself out there but artistically as well. I have always known about open life drawing class while in school but am now utilizing the fact that I still live in my college town. It was difficult to get into the swing of life drawing being that it has been almost a year since I've drawn a live model. These two are the not so terrible 20 minute drawings from my collection of attempts. I hope to continue going to these classes and really improve with human body and form.

More Photography

2010-09-19T19:51:00.001-07:00

These are a few of my projects as of late. I've been enjoying playing around with photoshop and really getting everything out of it that I can. These are my cousin's senior pictures that I've been doing for him. This first image is a simple two layer with the back layer with a blur filter. The second one was a little more complex if you will, since this vintage look is the newest craze I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Printmaking

2010-02-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

The following images are the results of my absolute first attempts at printmaking. I was very excited about this class since this would in turn open up a whole new medium in which I could use in my design work. I found that when in this class I really opened up with what I could do in the other classes I was in at the time. This was a very tedious process but also very enjoyable.

The print above is of my boyfriend Marc, he was a very cooperative model for me. I feel I was a little timid with this print and played it really safe, the print itself uses a lot of negative space, but I took the picture closer. This was more of a test run to play with the inks and what I was able to do with them.

These prints were a real challenge for me, I went out of my comfort zone with the colors I usually go with. I made multiple versions of this one but never really liked them as much as my first. The whole idea behind this was to find a piece of clipart and pull them away from their usual usage.

This next print was a two part series, these prints had to work together while having enough there for them to stand by themselves. I really had an infatuation with trees this year and was excited to use them for this project. I went back to an old painting I had done a few years back for inspiration.

This print was my final and my favorite out of the bunch. I really pushed the techniques we had learned throughout the semester. I layered the tree to give it depth and kept the birds flat. The frame is made using a clear gel like ink and brushing silver dust over it while wet. This process was very messy but in the end gave me a really cool affect.

Product & Packaging Design

2009-12-15T08:31:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest project that I had to tackle. The project was to create a wine bottle to design using only font. I wanted a wine with a fun title with some playful imagery to go along with it. These pictures are in no way properly done since it involved me talking them on my dresser using a great camera but poor lighting, I'm in hopes of getting into the studio to get some better ones.

These are a few images from my lasted batch of work. This is a series of coffee syrups I wanted to create. Being that you have to commit to a giant bottle for a considerable amount of money I wanted to create a sample pack or a "trial" pack. I wanted to give this a hand made feel so everything on here minus the font on the bottom is hand done, including the illustration. I've gotten really into doing hand drawn elements and scanning them in to really connect me to the project I'm working on at the time.

Life Drawing Two

2009-09-21T20:06:00.000-07:00

Being that this is my final year here at Stout I really wanted to take classes I felt to be beneficial and enjoyable. Classes that could possibly push me further as a designer and make me a little more well rounded. Out of all the classes I have taken thus far, I found Life Drawing to be the most enjoyable. We are starting out the semester with skull studies and although these are a little rough around the edges I anticipate only improving.
This is my second attempt at a self portrait, compared to my first from Life Drawing 1 I feel I've gotten somewhat better at likeness. I've been working a lot at my style being that I tend to have a really heavy hand when it comes to charcoal. I've switched to using vine charcoal which allows me to really map out the face without committing to such a dark line.

This is my second attempt at the 3/4 back view of the skull. I really hope to improve on my line making being that I draw way to dark. I plan on drawing with different types of pencils and different charcoal hardness.

This was the first skull drawn of the class, as you can see my perspective is a little off. Like with the other one I really hope to slow down and spend more time planning out the image and really getting everything set correctly. I feel again that switching medium would really help with this.

Graphic Design Work

2008-12-16T19:18:00.001-08:00

This body of work was our final in my Graphic Design 2 class. We had to find three different forms of upcoming technology in one particular category. For my series of posters I chose wearable technology. The posters had to be interactive and we needed to try to get the viewer to want to interact with them. Since I chose wearable I decided to make my posters look like a giant t-shirt tag. The back of the poster held all of the information and you had to flip the poster up in order to read it. All three posters were required to look similar if not the same in order to tie them all together.

This was our first project in Graphic Design 2. The objective of this assignment was to find an already existing product or logo and revise it and try to make it better. I decided on Spotted Cow Beer, and in turn made a whole character for them to work with. I started with the idea of making just the cow character so it could possibly be used in other forms of advertising and wasn't constantly required to be with any particular background or text. We had to create a card, letterhead, booklet, envelope and a folder to present everything in.

This project was done in my Graphic Design 1 class and was just simply a project about form and type. We were required to make several images using different typefaces and shapes to get an emotional reaction from the viewer. This was all presented in a flip book tied together with the band. This was proved to be great practice with different forms of type and what you could do with them.

Art Metals

2008-12-13T13:40:00.001-08:00

This was my final, we had to take any of the other pieces already made and refine it. I chose to refine my casted ring. This time around I cut the wax ring in half and twisted it and re-tacked it to give it movement in the piece.

This was our first assignment with casting. The process requires you to build a replica of the ring out of wax. After the wax ring is made you take it and put it in a mold and use that mold to inject the hot metal into. I finished it by buffing the whole ring, taping off some lines and then putting into the sand blaster to give it a duller look.

This piece was the first project for Art Metals. I had drawn my inspiration from the feather and let the design reflect the look of it. This piece is meant to be worn in the hair and the metal pieces are there to help hook it.

This was my wrist band done for the forging part of this class. The main objective was to push the metal and get the metal to go from thick to thin. This was done in copper and fired to change the color of the metal.

Life Drawing

2008-11-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

This was done for the final in Life Drawing, we were told to simply draw ourselves while looking in a mirror using the techniques we had learned in class. We only got a day or so to work with the face and this isn't one of my better drawings since the likeness isn't quite there, but it was enjoyable to do.

These are specific studies we did while in class. We, as mentioned previously, were not able to work on the face as long as we all had hoped. I will hopefully get a chance to work further with the head in Life Drawing 2.

These are my latest model drawings, the far left is just on the legs, the middle the whole body and the right trying to see the muscles. I haven't quite got the muscles down since I still like to make the muscles into a shape that I would like them to be. I found this class to be a great experience and it really makes you think deeper as to what is below the surface, a more well-rounded view on not just human anatomy but any other object.

These were taken from my life drawing 1 class. These were each 1 hour drawings, drawn from two different models. This class has been really informative on the proper way to draw the human form . In this class we learn muscle and skeletal structures, we really work with an understanding on not only the human form, but how it functions. The far left one I put up to show how my perspective since then had improved, I found it difficult to get it right, but never noticed until the drawing was completed.

Painting

2008-11-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

I painted this this last summer (2009). After having taken painting I found the medium to be beneficial for me to really figure out. I use acrylics like a watercolor by putting quite a bit of gloss medium along with water. This process allows me to have a lot of control when building up some subtle colors.

This painting was to take an artist and give your own twist to an already existing piece. For this I made comma stencils and moved them around to make shapes and really see what kind of image I was able to get. This was my first attempt at layering and giving the painting some depth. I plan in the future to work with more stencils and really work on my layering.

This painting was just done in my free time for my sister. It was an interesting piece to work on since it really has no meaning behind it, just simply representational of what I was actually looking at. I find myself painting this way to start just to get my technique down before I can move to any other step in painting.

This was my painting final from my Painting 1 class. I wanted this to be a simple painting with extra attention on just the forms in the painting. This was a memory piece without being literal. I used clear gesso to keep the raw feel of the canvas. I had used acrylic the entire semester but for this painting I found that by watering the paint down I was able build up the paint and work it like a water color.

Hired Work

2008-11-11T18:54:00.000-08:00

This was a poster my sister needed done for a project. Although the poster is about STD's, this was still enjoyable to do. It was hard for me to think of a poster that is generic and commonly seen. I've been really trying to work with type and really seeing what combinations work and don't. This combination may not work all that much, but I feel it is playful and adds something to a poster with not so glamorous of a topic.

This was a sign made for the family owned store. They sell organic foods, tye-dyed clothing and other small grocery store items. This was a redone sign, I went into this knowing they wanted a totally different sign than the one they had previously. It was very difficult to start since the sign was so big and I had to use whatever I found at home. The only new thing used was the general sign(the white area). I wanted something that would catch the attention of the viewer, the location is on the bike trail which leads to the store. I needed to get their attention with something not seen everyday long enough for them to want to stop and stay long enough to read what this sign had to say. The flower was cut out of the old sign and is bolted down to the main sign. This was a challenge not only because of the size of this sign but also to work with limited supplies and make it all work as a whole.

Photography

2008-11-11T18:41:00.001-08:00

These three images I took at a barn in Wild Rose, Wisconsin I really enjoyed the rustic feel it had as well as the color of the barn itself. I was able to get a lot of good angles and work with line. I was somewhat happy about how these turned out and gave them to my sister for Christmas this year.

Last semester my roommate and I went exploring around Menomonie to see what this town has to offer. We found this great old house just outside of town, a bit creepy but full of great photographic opportunity. I've been trying to work with symmetry lately since I tend to shy away from it, this was just another attempt at it.

This was just an extra picture I took of my mother and her dog. It was a challenge to take this picture since I was working with a black background and the dog is black. I had to use the lighting in a certain way to highlight where the edge of the dog met with anything else.

This was my take on the speak no evil, hear no evil, see no evil. The object of this final photography project was to take three pictures and have them relate to each other. I wanted to incorporate my sister and my mom eventually in my work and this was too perfect. It was a very fun experience, the images were made to look very theatrical and humorous. The three pictures are playing off each other and almost react to the one previous.