33: Erf...

Had a rough week- one of my flash drives died on me and I lost quite a bit of work. Nothing I can't recover from, but it was a huge blow to morale nonetheless! Have some extremely quick gestures from my commercial figure drawing class...we're basically wandering around the city for three hours creeping on people. Not a terrible assignment. ;]




First three were drawn from the second level of a city market, and the last image is from a city park where people happened to be having break dancing sessions.

32: Super Rag-tag Post

Two WIPs/color mocks for my final project in McKissick's Electronic Illustration class. In short, I'm illustrating a few images of Leshy, a mischievous Slavic woodland spirit...the finals and preliminaries will get their own blog post in due time. :]


A few experiments with ink application from figure drawing.


A commission and media experiment- who could pass up the chance to draw a flamingo in a fedora? India ink, colored pencil, and watercolor.

Iconography for my Design for Illustration class with Walter King, created in Illustrator.


Some bus-scribbles related to re-reading Pullman's 'His Dark Materials'. These are Mulefa, creatures with a diamond-shaped limb structure. The wheels/seedpods they use for transportation are pictured incorrectly here- they're supposed to be more like this. Ah well, at least I got the body structure mostly figured out.

In closing, a cute little 'yote for you!

31: "In the Birchwoods"

Stone lithography, drawn with grease pencil and scratched with a razor, etched, and printed in an edition of 12 on Reeves white heavyweight paper.

30: Vulturoo

It all started with this guy. In Mr. Kovach's illustration methods class, we were to design a narrative sculpture, creating a character or scene and a schematic to accompany it. Admittedly, I was rather frazzled at the time it was assigned, so I chose two guide words for myself and went with it: Kangaroo vulture.


Since it had to be narrative, I decided to give the newly dubbed Vulturoo some prey, which was initially a rabbit, and evolved into a sort of springhare-sparrow to fit the mammal-bird theme.With the final schematic on display, I set about making a wire and foil armature, sculpting directly onto it with Super Sculpey and gluing it to a wooden board for support. I didn't get any photos of the sculpting process, unfortunately, but here's a few of the final sculpt and the primed sculpt:
good movies

And here we are all finished up! It was painted with acrylic paints accompanied by loads of matte fixative, a dash of pastel, a small portion of nail polish, and some moss I found at Michaels. The vulturoo's coloration was based on a king vulture and a tree kangaroo while the springhare-sparrow was based on a white-throated sparrow.


This was my first real attempt at full-blown sculpture, so it was very much a learning process. Things could have gone a lot worse, especially considering I had no idea what I was doing with the wire armature supports, so I'm thankful the entire thing didn't break under its own weight!

Vulturoo wouldn't be smiling anymore!

29: A Smidge of Productivity

Finally, some finalized lithographs! First up is the pterodactyl plate, the acetate painting on the left and one of the prints on the right, and second is an edition I'm calling "Baumsaurs", star-crossed lovers of the Deciduous and Conifer houses.

This...this poor plate. I murdered the thing- I...ouch. But it was a great learning tool, I'll give it that.

The orignial for this piece was drawn digitally in Painter, with a few resolution issues while I made the transparency for the photo-plate. The actual printing for this edition went nigh-flawlessly, and I'm eager to make even more plates now.


In Electronic Illustration, we were assigned a very open-ended project, given only the theme "Transformation" with which to work. Clunking around various mythology sites on the internet waiting for something to click, I discovered a Slavic forest spirit called Leshy, who shapeshifts and changes size to befuddle wanderers in his woods. Forests and guys with glowing eyes? I can do this. So now I need to design the man! Above are some initial concepts out of my head, working with strictly the theme of the spirit. Tonight I'm going to do some proper research about historic Slavic people, what they looked like, and what their spirits would look like.


Also for Electronic Illustration, we made pen-and-ink drawings of landscapes based upon our own photos and colored them with Painter's transparent tools (watercolors, markers, anything on the 'gel' layer setting). Not sure I like how this turned out, but as far as landscapes go, it's something, right? The photo was taken on Mt. Pilatus in Switzerland a few years ago.

...and this is more personal nonsense from the sketchbook, but I quite enjoy how it turned out. Her name is Lli, and she kills little runners For Religion. :c

28: No Rhyme or Reason

I don't post enough anymore, do I? Here's a mishmash of (more) school project concepts and some personal doodles. I'm working on a fairly ambitious sculpture project for my illustration methods class, for which I'll make a separate process post once it's complete.

The lowdown on my printmaking situation: As much as I love looking at woodcut prints, turns out I'm kind of awful at the process. And 18 credit hours overloaded me like woah, so I bid an unfortunate goodbye to relief printmaking. Thankfully, I recently managed a solid grasp on the lithographic printing process, and just in time for mid-terms next week! I need to have another photographic transfer plate and a traditional lithograph stone drawing completed fairly soon, so here's the concepts I've been noodling around with for those:
Trees and reptiles are the thing now.

A silhouette of this guy was another option, but it still seems strange to make numbered editions of a personal character no one cares about.







And on an ending note, here's an experiment from illustration methods; a traditional and digital collage. The end product is a bit...garish, and is another example of a project I wish I'd had more time with, but the process was very rewarding. I definitely need to try something of the sort with more personal projects.

27: The Grayscale Concept Post

Quickie concept for a Freddie Mercury portrait. And then I realized it had to be 7x10". Time for some revamps!

Quick-and-dirty mockup for my first woodcut. The process is proving frustrating as hell, but I need to remember that it's my first attempt. Pictured is a man about to make a bargain with an angry sea, a homage to the Decemberists song "Annan Water".

Acrylic painting on acetate for a positive photo-plate lithograph. The plate itself turned out rather well; I hope to have some printed by the next time I post.

Scribblings from the past few weeks.

We got to play with Painter's acrylic tools in electronic illustration class. The texture and form of the face could use work, but I feel that the colors I chose show a bit of progress. :] About two hours.