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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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

12: Before School Starts...

This came out of nowhere and it's pretty close to my heart, as cheesy as that sounds. Completed in maybe 2.5/3 hours in Corel Painter.