40: Scenery at Last!

You read that right- I finally hunkered down and attempted some proper backgrounds! So many firsts in this post; first time painting water, first true attempts at a little town, first real attempt at a night scene...whew. All but the last image is work for my Illustrative Drawing class with Professor Tardino, in which we're required to write/compose a story and develop the visuals and characters. I got off to a rocky start, hence the lack of posts since I arrived in Columbus, but everything's starting to fall into place.

So far my story is geared toward something like 7 year old children- a fairly typical adventure tale about getting lost in the woods and finding unlikely friends...I'm purposefully keeping the story rather simple since plotweaving isn't my strong point. We'll see how it develops! The main characters are a young moose, as yet unnamed, and a young tortoise, Mabel, who live in separate allied villages on an alpine mountainside.

Our class has been going to the Columbus Zoo every Monday for the past few weeks, and last week I decided to try some field acrylics. It worked. Something worked. In any case, I'd love for something like this to happen again please. :'D I rarely post my paintings here, as they're incredibly subpar compared to my normal work, but this one has promise.

I ended up mammal-izing practically every limb on the tortoises' bodies- It was unbelievably difficult to make reptillian forearms look 'normal' without reversing the elbows. These are based on the patterns of the Indian Star Tortoise, and Mabel's design is going to be a combination of the two.

The three compositions above are quick color-blocks of landscape sketches. It was unbelievably refreshing to color these! Photoshop

And as a closer, some unrelated scribbles of my angel beings!

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."

13: Initiate Sophomore Panic

THIS year is going to be a crazy one. Quick, have some art while you still can! Of course, now that I'm fully busy again, the idea to start a webcomic has bitten me in the ass. Why couldn't this have happened, y'know, during the summer? Experimental, fun junk as such is what summers are FOR. Various diptych ideas are twirling around in there as well. So hard to stay focused!

On an unrelated note, I made a post over on my Livejournal highlighting a bunch of nice art I've found over the past few months, with links to the artists' galleries and whatnot: Good Arts 1

The proposed webcomic would be about this little guy. He's one of my fictional race, the Insuti. I suppose I'll tell the rest of the story later! Nibs and india ink.

We have a sketchbook to fill for illustration methods class! I drew my lamp to fill the 'ellipses' quota. Brush pen, gel pen, ballpoint pen. Pen pen pen.

Junk like this takes up probably 85% of my sketchbook.

My latest illustration methods class assignment is to create a portrait of a human/animal combination. Couldn't focus in one of my ad graph classes today, so these are my first concepts: Three kookaburras, a markhor, a babirusa, and three lammergeier men. I had far too much fun with the birds, so they're likely to make it to the final cut.

A thumbnail on packing paper [classy!] for a trade with one of my good e-buddies, Persnickitii. Doesn't this character design rock? Her art is very inspiring on that front, and we have a mutual love for animals with people-faces. I think I'll attempt this piece in acrylics or maybe even slap down various media on clayboard to see what happens.
Quick digital thing which I ended up liking quite a bit. This is an old character of mine, Sherowkey. He first popped up in my seventh grade science notes. You can tell he's mine because of the big doofy nose, huge fuzzy ears, and horn [no seriously, all of my personal characters have these things in one form or another]. In a more serious situation, he's a guardian 'spirit' of winter, though he's completely flesh and blood. Still haven't figured out how that works...Corel painter