Thursday, December 29, 2011

43: A Slapdash End of the Semester Post

I said I'd update by the end of the year, and by god I will. First up in this motley lineup is some of the character-based work I completed for my Illustrative Drawing class- I ended up calling the childrens book project 'Ruby & Dun: Arborfall' to insinuate that it's part of a series which could be expanded upon.


I was intrigued by Angela Rizza's technique of traditionally inking and digitally coloring her pieces, so I decided to try it out for the last two projects of the semester. The scenes above and below were completed in this way...it's definitely something I'll have to try a few more times to really get.


Trying to print this image gave me hell- another reminder that I need to work on my fluency with the digital art process.

Some adaptations of medieval gargoyle designs into characters. I didn't have to change much about them at all- gargoyles are truly one of my biggest inspirations in character design.

An extremely quick Christmas card illustration, and a mini-test of the digitally colored line technique.

And on a much more fine artsy note, here are my two favorite pieces from my landscape painting class, both oils on illustration board. The second is a 1-2 hour on-site study while the first is a studio adaptation of another study. Painting has always been a struggle for me, but I learned a lot in this class. Mr. Riley's passion for his craft and acceptance for different majors and skill levels was infectious!

Next semester should see an increase in the amount of art I produce- this one was clogged with a lot of liberal arts credits and slow-paced illustration courses. See you then!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

42: Incoming!


The semester's almost over and I'll have quite a few pieces wrapped up in a week or so. Stay tuned!

Monday, October 31, 2011

41: Ruby Project Update

This project has been eating me alive, and I've only just figured out the overall plot of the story. It'll be typed up in its entirety fairly soon, so have some of the better concept sketches and heads in the meantime:





Monday, September 26, 2011

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!

Friday, September 2, 2011

39: A few More Floating Things



My art has become the Menagerie of Floating Animals, so my next post will be filled with environments and backgrounds and all sorts of fun stuff. Hopefully. 8|

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

38: trail mix


Mixed media headshot commissions.


Corrected the wheel/pod anatomy on some sketches from a while back- P. Pullman's Mulefa species. Really rough background was slapped on there with no rhyme or reason, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it.


Doodles of a deity of peace, trying to figure out the head shape. (I love African masks, aahh)



...and a few more marker and pen doodles!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

37: Two Side Views



All of my artistic culmination is side-views of whimsical antelope creatures. :'c

Friday, July 1, 2011

36: Artslam 2011 Roundup

The entirety of what I produced this month can be seen on my Flickr album, here. The following are some of my favorites...








Sunday, June 12, 2011

35: Summer Blues

Over a month since my last update? I'm ashamed of myself! Although...my art has been sadly lacking lately, and it's been amazingly frustrating. Here are some recent scribblings in any case.

Silly requests from my tween-aged sister and her friend. Bling giraffes. :|

Marker experiement with one of my Insuti guys.

The One Who Cannot Concentrate on Baseball Games. In all seriousness, I'm loving the various stances of the pitchers.

Something from this year's Artslam which I quite like. Artslam is a Livejournal-centric drawing challenge focusing on world and idea building, and I partake every year. Here's last year's blog post on my Artslam work! This year, I'm out of my comfort zone as I'm not focusing on my Insuti world OR animal people, and it SHOWS with some of the drivel I've drawn thus far. Hopefully I'll uh...loosen up.

I will draw Pokemon until the day I die.


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

34: A Few Finalized Things

Watercolor assignment for Kovach's illustration methods class! Had a very interesting time with this, and it spawned a want to experiment more; always a fun feeling. This was my first time using my new Utrecht watercolor set, and I couldn't be happier with them!

A silly bunch of product design ideas. You might not believe it, but coming up with a name for the set was the most difficult part.

A few tiny, quick black and white illustrations for my three-part Leshy project, drawn with the scratchboard tool in Painter.

The two larger finals in my Leshy project- a simple character vignette in the first, and a more story oriented second piece in which he transfigures a path to befuddle a travelling woman. Both of these were completed in Photoshop, and it was my first time going for a cell-shaed papercut feel. The first piece is the one I lost the full resolution for. :c At least I've got the second!

Friday, April 29, 2011

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.

Friday, April 15, 2011

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!