Monday, December 13, 2010

24: Weekend-stealers


Pfff. THIS THING. It stole away my weekend and didn't give it back until three in the morning on Monday.



I dearly wish I'd had more time to spend with this in order to make it more anatomically and biologically correct. Guess I'll have to revisit it someday to rid all of these animals of their noodly legs. This was for my advertising/graphic design class, in which we were to redesign an existing exucational or instructional poster. Text was omitted to focus on the illustration. Here's a few detail shots of the nicer looking bits:


Dimetrodon, Ivantosaurus, and Cynognathus

Coelphysis and Diplodocus


Baryonyx and Pteranodon

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

23: Christmas Corgs


IT'S ALMOST CHRISTMAS, so have some celebratory corgis. I'm throwing these together into little cards which will be sent to family and friends.

But not these friends. Their present is living with me. My presence. (These are my roommates, plus me on the far right)

And here's a few more things from the illustration methods sketchbook:



"Be excellent to each other."

Thursday, December 2, 2010

22: Black and what

I've felt pretty stressed recently; school's finally getting to me, I guess. Hopefully my next post will have a little color...and perhaps an abundance of obnoxiously cute cartoon dogs. Evidently, I hate myself, because I want to doodle custom watercolor Christmas cards for most of my family. :[ In the meantime, here's a few assignments from my Illustration Methods sketchbook...

A ballpoint pen cloth study and Rita's face in charcoal.

Some hands of mine. I'm proud of the one on the left!

"Weird Raider 1", an assignment for my Design for Illustration class. The objective was to move value through the composition. This composition is made up of things I found around my room, which accounts for the nonsensical...nonsense. Gaaad I cannot talk I am GOING BACK TO BED. But first, a detail shot to show off my hatching! Media: Acrylic and colored pencil, 11x17 inches, watercolor board


Tuesday, November 23, 2010

21: Scribbledump

Had to toss something up here before disappearing for turkey break! Here's scribbles and blather from the past few weeks. They're in no particular order, but the derpier the hands are, the more recent the scribble probably is. School's sapping my brains, you see.

Dynamic dinoguys! The most fun thing to draw.

From those long bus rides to friends' apartments...

Gonna turn this into a watercolor painting for an online buddy. c:



These two pages are compilations from my planner. I really need to get into drawing my Insuti guys more often; I miss them.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

20: GIRAFFES AND ALSO TORTOISES


Just finished this up for my illustration methods class! I took a bunch of in-progress scans, so I'll post them in order. 8]

Refined and transferred sketch on hot press illustration board.

First-ish layer of watercolors.

Finished up with the watercolors here.

And here's the finished piece! Layered and burnished away in the background, detailed a bit more, and added some acrylic highlights. The background could have been better, but I have to move on to other projects now! Such is life...

19: Get on ze Point

A bout of gaming has limited my personal art time even further! -snigger- However, I am working on a short story of sorts, which I may attempt to turn into a graphic novel script at some point. To make it look like I'm not dead, here's some of the stuff floating around my computer.

A trade with a friend. There were a lot of firsts for me in this picture. Like buildings. And actual perspective. Corel Painter 10.

This has been sitting around since summer. I may just make the thing into a traditional piece, as I can never make time for digital anymore.

A grody little digital scribble. I STILL DRAW WOLVES SOMETIMES.

An example of how digital art is a constant whirl of 'I don't know what the hell I'm doing'. :[

Friday, October 22, 2010

18: That Case of Sameface

Story time! A friend showed me a wonderful little font, Kingsthings Gothique, and when we had a label design project, I HAD to use it. A barn owl came to mind when I was thinking of design elements, so, in a brilliant stab in the dark, I searched for a barn owl beer. Lo and behold! I am such a lucky person sometimes. This is my first completed project in Illustrator.


We have to CRAM for our advertising and graphic design classes, so it's truly surprising when things don't turn out half bad. I drew and inked these by hand and scanned them into photoshop for a quick coloring job. Type was added later, but I left it out for presentation purposes [read: it looked better without]. My roomies and I have affectionately named the pelican piece "Our Oceans are Filled with Tank Tops", as I cannot properly render a plastic bag. B)



And now regarding the title of this post...If you pay attention to my sketches at all, you'll probably notice that I draw the same face [or same-face-BASE] over and over and over again. Peoplefaces have never been my forte, but as an illustrator, I NEED to overcome this crutch. Here's my first real exercise; I copied and attempted to slightly caricaturize some faces in a photography book. They're mildly horrifying right now.


This is just dumb stuff from my anthropology notes. Check out that self portrait on the top right, oooh.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

17: Figure Drawing Post

Black and white charcoal on toned paper, maybe two hours. This model was a ROCK. I don't think she moved for an hour at a time. Also, her hair: smiles for ever

Charcoal on watercolor paper, hour and a half or so. This is such a good medium for observational studies!

The following are various gestures, usually under ten, if not fifteen minutes. Pirasteh teaches us many different approaches to drawing, which I'm enjoying quite a lot. I feel like I'm improving...I just need to quit halfassing the feet, hah.




Saturday, October 9, 2010

16: Escapism Nonsense [Not doing enough homework]

This post is filled with escapism and markers.

I think I was in Disney-mode. Definitely hacked some of my roomie's markers to finish this. Marker, ballpoint pen, and colored pencil.
Here's some scribbles of Llok, the mother goddess of my Insuti people. I quite liked them, so I finalized a few in the uppermost image. She was an alien-looking humanoid before, but I'm kind of liking this...bird/fin thing. Could always go the ~*shapeshifter*~ route...


This is a completely nonsensical, feel-good picture. The guy's name is Poldi, and for some reason he's in contemporary Earth instead of my alternate universe 20's-ish world. Ha...More marker/colored pencil stuff.

OWLS. That is all.

An in-class assignment for advertising and graphic design; we had to design a Target gift card. This would've looked better if I wouldn't have had to repaint it three times due to RIF file corruptions. -frothing at the mouth- This was done in Corel Painter.

Friday, October 8, 2010

15: Birds and Sketches Everywhere

Holy mother of god OWLS. Their faces are full of fantastic design elements; I have a fun personal project coming up involving various species and shapes. Above is a page from my sketchbook completed yesterday. These owlmen are a bit creepy looking...trying to work that out. The strangely stylized central one is definitely not a homage to Erika Signini...

These are some very quickly drawn preliminaries for my lammergeier painting a few weeks back. I really do like the kori bustard guy; might have to do something more with him someday.

HEY LOOK, I committed one of my biggest pet peeves; drawing the figure at a 3/4 angle and the wings in profile. Silly me. The point of this angel was to develop a wing design which has been flopping around in my brain for a while.

This, dear viewer, is the horrific land of my anthropology class notes, all 'shooped together in one foul mess. You'll quickly note that I draw the same thing over and over again: "EVERYONE LOOK TO THE SIDE AND MAKE A WEIRD FACE."

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

14: Schoolin' Once More

My second finished project for Illustration methods class, "Lammerguyer", 9x12 in acrylics on illustration board. The assignment was to create a human-animal hybrid (hehe) and use good lighting reference to make it look realistic. I based mine on a lammergeier, or bearded vulture. There are things I did decently and things I did flat out incorrectly in this piece, but I consider it my first successful acrylic painting! Here's the graphite value study I did beforehand.

The school gave us these cute little planners with toned paper covers. More of my dragonbeastie!

My figure drawing instructor had us use charcoal on watercolor paper for an hour-long exercise. Definitely going to try this more often...In real life, you can see the awful smudgy grays created when badly using white and black charcoal together, and I plan to be more attentive next time.