Old Wives' Tale zine

One of my finals was the make a zine about anything. I chose 10 different Old Wives' Tales (kind of like an urban legend or folkloric belief). Here are the better ones from the batch. I basically just have a peculiarly strong affinity for bellybands.


"If you knit your hair into a garment, it will bind the recipient to you."

"If your cheeks feel on fire, someone is talking about you."

"If a bird tries to come into your window, there will be a death in the family."


graphite, matte duralar, ink

Empty pool (revised, now with a leaf!)

I've been chipping away at this for awhile, but I finally feel it's at a presentable stage. You can view the previous stage here.




All done in photoshop.
Blogger kind of messed up the color.

where i end and you begin

I was assigned to do an album cover for a specific song. Predictably I chose Radiohead. I'm having fun playing with the masking effects of duralar. . I think I'll use it more here shortly.


graphite, oil, matte duralar

sketch deuce

These were fun. I tried to have a every aspect shared between the pages, sort of like opposites.




acrylic, pen, oil, shellac, ink, aka mixed media

Four page comic: Urban Golem

So I used the same theme for two of my finals. For narrative we were assigned a four page comic. It was hard condensing this into four pages, so the storyline seems kind of unclear and rushed. But I had fun doing it. My goal was to just keep the pencil moving and not to over render it, which I'm happy that I stuck to.

I wanted to use a style similar to how I draw my thumbnails. Quick and sticking to relatively few, flat tones.






side note: I'm not a fan of destorying historic buildings, I just had to come up with something to tie it together -.-

Thumbs for illustration final

after the advice, here's what im working with. every thing is still up in the air though, esp. regarding the action of the debris. it needs to look more like an arm but still have the movement.

Okay guys, I really want some advice as to which to do. I included the first image just to explain that the debris is actually the golem's arm, it's actually a sidewalk that came to life yada yada. anyways, im pretty set on doing it in a horizontal format, despite action scenes usually being vertical. Some here are more effective than others, but i can't really decide which to do. if you guys have some advice on any particular one to make it more successful, please tell me!

note- im not sure if im going to do it traditionally or digitally. ill decide that later.

thanks guys!

Shellac-filled fun!

Graphite, gouache, acrylic, amber shellac.

This is a four page spread in my sketchbook. That's right, not two but four. Had a lot of fun doing this. It's sort of a preview of something I'm working on for narrative class.
Unfortunately the scanner was converting them to black and white despite it being in color mode. I'm not too good with the machines, so I'll upload the color version at some other time.

Sketches

We had to do a movie poster, so a friend recommended me the movie Cashback. Long story short this guy freezes time and draws pretty girls. I tried drawing her eyes five times until the matte duralar was too scratched to even hold the charcoal. I just couldn't get them right. So it goes.

Influenced by Sam Weber and early 20th century surrealist Oscar Dominguez. Oscar pushed and pulled gouache in a similar way to create really nifty textures.



charcoal, ink, a bit of photoshop

Here are some fairly quick sketches of my friend who really don't hold too much of a likeness, but were still fun to do with a 4B

graphite on toned rives

This is just outside my bedroom window. I don't draw observationally enough, but I'll be doing much more if it next semester.


pen on lightweight rives

Entry to Tata Gala

I combined an assignment of "Modernizing a Myth" with the show TATA GALA that opened yesterday in Florida. Not only are there some awesome illustrators there but it's a fundraiser for breast cancer research. Since amazons have one breast for their quivers in archery, i associated it with mastectomies.

Usually I'd say crits welcome, but I think I've scrutinized this thing so much I've just kind of killed it. Oh well, I learned a couple things. The foremost being that I need to paint more often. The second being that female anatomy is the bane of my existence. I actually edited this more via quality print after sending it into the gallery. She used to have quite a butt.

Your picture is finished if it is one-third as good as your original idea."
-Howard Pyle



Oil on Wood panel

Three Fears

For sketchbook class we're assigned to illustrate our fears. I went for the obvious on this one. I'll post a couple more when they're finished. I also haven't really rendered something in quite awhile, so it was kind of nice to get back into that.

Fear no. 1: loss of eyes



Fear no. 2: loss of teeth


Fear no. 3: loss of left hand

Graphite, pen, Acrlyic, Oil on toned Rives

Grandma

Ink Test

I've recently taken down squishing ink onto a page and toying with the results. The one on the right is actually the other side of the semi-transparent matte duralar. I didn't plan for it to be a Rorschach test but Ink splotches usually go well when mirrored together.



Sumi Ink, Graphite, matte duralar

In Progress

So I've basically been in a rut for most of this year, as of now. The end result of my projects haven't really been fitting my expectations, so I've been severely lacking with the blog updates. As the semester progresses I'll have more work, for better or for worse. Hopefully for better!

This piece isn't really close to being done yet. I've spent most the time establishing the lighting and values. It's actually a real pool I saw a few months ago and have been dying to have a go at, and I was fortunate enough to be able to incorporate it into one of my assignments. I'm debating adding another figure to help balance the composition.



100% photoshop. Feel free to crit! There's still some changes to be made/major refinement, but still.

Fire and Flowers

Finally some new work to post. I'll be adding images on a weekly basis now that classes are going on. For this we had to use a medium we're not familiar with, so I dried some flowers and grabbed a lighter to see what I came up with. Also I made myself another sketchbook for sketchbook class! This one far better quality than the one before.

Warms and Cools

oil

French Comic Exhibition

I recently received pictures of "Bulles a Croquer", a comic exhibition in Brittany, France this past June. One of the Illustration professors at MICA, Alain Corbel, displayed his student's work from his Sequential Art class but also extended the invite to Illustration Club. I haven't taken the class yet, but I made a six page comic to contribute to the show. Looks like it went well, some tremendous European comic artists attended.

My work hanging in the background.

The show was in an old car factory!

More Old Man

I started this sketch a few weeks ago but just got around to the watercolor today. Unfortunately I don't have a scanner handy so the powershot will have to suffice for now.



Graphite and watercolor on Rives BFK

Spidey Sense, Tingling!

A local gallery is having a show with the theme "Superheroes."

Needless to say, I had to hop on it.

Unfortunately, I only had a week to do it. Im pretty happy with the traffic light, but Spidey could still use some work. Oh well.




oil on rives BFK

Keith Progress/change

The left is after matte medium and a few ink washes, the right is after more medium and really thin oil paint. I'm trying to make a bunch of stages with it, but still keep it complete at any given one. it's fun.



oil

Keithers

I've been wanting to do a portrait of my brother, Keith, for a loonnngggg time. This captures his personality pretty accurately. I think im going to paint over it, or at least do some washes.

Once again, now the photo reveals the errors in my proportions. His arms are too short! Also poor camera angle, making them even shorter.


charcoal, graphite, on tan rives bfk

fun preliminary stage here

william bouguereau study 1

I've been doing some master studies both on paper and on photoshop, here's the first one. This sorta debunked my opinion that rives didn't hold graphite well. It does. I don't have a scanner back home, so the quality from my powershot isn't the best.

I always love how the inaccuracies always become SO much more apparent once it's on the computer. Oh wait -.-




graphite on rives

Progress in Oils

Oil on 240 lb. Hot press Arches WC paper, 19x25"

I've been working on this painting for almost 3 months, on and off. It reaaally tested my patience at times, but I learned a lot from it and where I want to go in my future painitngs. The scan didn't really capture any of the luminosity and made his skin too purpley, but it's interested seeing some colors the scan revealed that I hadn't noticed.

The pages read from right to left in a pretty scattered way to tell the story of the boy/old man's life. I used really thin oil paint for the crayon marks. It was fun to jump back into my early days of drawing.

Details

Sketchbook pages

This is a prelude to the sketchbook remix class I'll be taking next semester. This was great to do in the middle of other projects during finals.


Placemat from Chinese Restaurant, acrylic, watercolor, matte medium, sandpaper
I realized I need to know how to draw ears from memory, so I drew a few of some friends and a few of mine. I also really enjoy painting with oils on unprimed rives. I kind of emulated a few of my favorite pages from James Jean's college sketchbooks.



graphite, oil, acrylic, colored pencil.

This is on the last page of my current moleskine, but I think im going to work more with my homemade sketchbook now (the one above). The three women on the right are actually from the same image by Norman Rockwell. It's one of my favorite pieces by him, so I spent a lot of time redrawing the same portrait, trying to capture her perfect expression. The middle one is the closest, but I still didn't get it completely.





graphite, acrylic, gouache.

Speed paintish

Here I did a self portrait with a similar palette to what John Singer Sargent would have done. Or at least that's how I saw it. I always make myself look way too young.





About 2 hours in photoshop.