Sunday, October 31, 2010

Dead Brain Cells

Another page of warm-ups done before work. Struggled this morning, couldn't get much on the paper. Blah.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Color Study and some other things

This is me figuring out values and colors for the Jack and the Beanstalk painting. It's still not right... I might make Jacke/the rat yellow instead of red, and the stalk a little less saturated.


And here is Poison Ivy painted in green because I was trying to figure out the green I wanted to use and she was a good test subject.


And finally, some doodles. Hooray doodles! Some of these are going to be bigger projects, I'm just scoping out the feel for them.


LOOOVE IS IN THE AIIIIIIRR. Also, I made friends with a bee.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Smoking Frog in Technicolor

Ok the technicolor bit is a lie.


So these new watercolors are lovely in that they are so vibrant and bright. But I am experimenting with ways to knock their intensity down since the vibrancies all start battling each other for attention in a piece. Even when I mix a grey, it's a very intense grey. So I'm adding little bits of gouache to them to try to fade them out a bit. It seems to be working ok so far.

Ruined two color studies just playing round with it for my final Jack and the Beanstalk illustration. Going to do a few more tonight hopefully with better results!

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Vegetarians are Sexy


One day I'll have the guts to be Ivy for Halloween.

Anyways, just doodling last night, going to watercolor this at some point. The pose needs to be more dynamic... meh.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Kitty Love and a Smoking Toad

Couple of thingies I doodled in class. Will bring them to a more finished state tonight if I have time. Cat love might become a sticker or card.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Jack and the Beanstalk

This is a homework exercise about finding the moment to illustrate in a story. We had to pick a section of text from a story given to us ( Jack and the Beanstalk) and illustrate the before, during and after moments.  I couldn't decide which one to do, and because more practice is always good, I chose to do two of them.




I was having trouble getting the emotions and sightly threatening feel of the story in while keeping Jack completely oblivious (Jack was always sort of a jerk idiot in my head), so I added in his rat friend who has much more common sense and is more aware of things than Jack is to help out.

We will choose one in class today to bring to a finished product.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

A Yeti and a Raccoon Get Posted Onto a Blog...

The racoon was more of a warm-up than an actual contestant, but he's kind of cute. Snowball fights are serious business. I need to come up with a better pose for the Yeti.



I'm thinking of doing a whole series with the pandas from yesterday.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Fun with the Figure

We did some figure drawing in class today. I whipped out my watercolor pencils. I started out just messing with shape a bit and it took me a while to warm up. The first batch is pretty bad.







Always good practice!!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Just a little thing

Got in the mood to illustrate a few basic fairy tale scenes. I tried to watercolor the beauty and the beast on at 1am, and ruined it completely. Trying again tonight.


I am trying to work on my penmanship so I can stop coming across as a 7-year-old serial killer in my hand lettering. More of my works will include text so I can practice that.


Of course, I wrote "Cindella" instead of "cinderella". Obviously I was so busy working on my letteirng I failed to notice everything else. Hooray for 2am spelling failures.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Snake Lady and a Hasty Comic

Here is a doodle from yesterday that turned into a little watercolor warm-up.



And a hastily sketched and colored comic about crosswalks.

Not making fun of Koreans- I seriously heard a Korean tourist say to another "No no no we not walk during hand!!" . I just loved it.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Adding the Narrative round 2 (ding!)

Here is my second attempt at this homework for the Childrens book illustration class. I had a chance late last night and this morning to see what other people did and now I'm much more inspired (man I love school!!!). I will probably do more of these this week on top of whatever else my homework is. I obviously need to work on adding a narrative to my work.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Sunday Cyclops

So I painted that little cycops doodle and am not terribly pleased with how it came out. it think i overworked it. The thing about watercolor is it's supposed to look effortless, and I'm still dabbing and rubbing and scrubbing at it like Acrylic or oil. Blaaah.





Anyways, I'm working on this assignment for the childrens book illustration class, and struggling. The assignment s to take a very normal scene or character, then add an element to it that makes it abnormal, or throws the viewer off, or adds an element of storytelling or danger. This is what I did yesterday and I think I'll try a different scene today, see if I can come up with something less terrible.






I'm working on another one that has to do with a swing set. Hopefully it will be less lame!

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Working Digitally

For my Childrens book illustration class we have to draw a mundane scene or character and then do two more images of that same scene or character but altering something to add an element of storytelling. I chose to do this digitally because it's easier to swap things out and make changes.

Here is one of the mundane scenes I'll be working with.



And this is one that didn't make the cut (it was too interesting to begin with).

Back to work!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Cyclops

Here are some things I did yesterday. Today I'm working on homework a lot. I'm sure I'll post some of that tomorrow!


Just a silly sketch that turned into watercolor practice.

A sketch I'm going to watercolor.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Neighbors and My Face

Here is a doodle of some of our very unique neighbors, colored in with my new watercolors (still figuring them out a bit).

 True story.


And here are some faces I made at myself in the mirror. I was totally inspired by this Boulet comic: http://www.bouletcorp.com/blogen/index.php?date=20100317 . I read through all of his archives in the past dayish, and man this guy ROCKS MY SOCKS OFF.

Here's my ugly mug, done with a lot less finesse and style than Boulet.



Hooray.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Wishes WARNING- Genitals

Idea pulled from http://www.bouletcorp.com/blogen/index.php?date=20100219 .




If I could wish for anything for myself, these are the first things that popped into my head.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh man the world is so lucky I wasn't born with a penis.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Airborne Bunny

Here is the final character page for my Norman character design done in India Ink with a nib and brush.

And the colored bunny illustration.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Norman

We have a character design assignment for Illustration class, so these are my thumbs and sketches. I'll be refining and inking today, and will also be coloring in some previous work, so tomorrow's post should be fat and juicy.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

More Dragons

I spent most of yesterday working on a homework assignment that isn't very exciting but is very good practice. I won't post it because it is not all that much fun, but it did consume some time.

I did, however, paint a couple of dragons. For the first one, see my previous post. Here is the other guy, done with India Ink (for outline), watercolor pencils, and a touch of white gouache.


The background is a little louder than I meant it to be. Oh well... it was an experiment!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Dragon Fever

I ran out of watercolors, and so now I'm working with watercolor pencils. I've never really used them before... they're kind of fun!!!






Back to translating complex 2D shape drawings into 5-step 3D turnarounds, whee.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Overcoming The Art Block

Took a lot of bad art to finally overcome my nasty art block. This Worfle (Art-block devouring creature) was the tail end of that crummy art streak:


So, fianlly I came up with some better concepts. And here are the inks (still rough with pencil lines) that I will be painting later.

I also have school things I'll be posting at some point. Huzzah!

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Sick

I got hit with something nasty and spent all day yesterday in bed fighting a fever and drinking tea. Here is the art I did yesterday in between naps and whining about my situation. It pretty accurately describes how I felt.

Still feeling pretty sore but am up and about and back to participating in the world.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Norman

This story came to me in the shower, and I'm definitely going to finish writing it and illustrate it and try to get it published some day. But anyways, this me fleshing out the main character- Norman. Poor Norman is a major klutz.


School starts tomorrow. I'm excited!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Coffee Break

A doodle I did while having a coffee outside yesterday. Had a really busy day, I didn't have enough time to do much more than play around with some paint.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Half-Finished Things and Invisible Things

I've got four things I'm trying to finish for friends before the end of the weekend (school starts again on Monday!). In between,  of course,  I do warm-ups and practice.  Here are some watercolor warm-ups.



The watercolors I'm using are really cheap cake-things and I think they may actually be part-gouache. They aren't as transparent as they should be. But real watercolors are sooo expensiiive! (Maybe I should set up on the street with the homeless and a big sign "Need $$ for Paints!" )


Here are some dragons I'm going to paint today.




They are fat ad ugly and I love them.



An this next thing originated from a conversation about women in martial arts... and what most men expect when you say those words together. Also, a little derivative from the ridiculousness of Japanese anime characters.
Yeah.