Random Painting #1

While I'd rather title this "NUCLEAR CHICKEN/COCK", it's a random digital painting I did back in March of this year for a draw daily thread on a forum. Not sure how long I spent on it, but the legs make me think I was watching a lot of Futurama at the time.

Minimal as it is, the background still shows more purpose than some of my earlier works, an ongoing struggle of mine caused by being a character doodler first, painter/illustrator second.

That's it for tonight. This dilapidated blog has just been given a handful more updates, in burst form as usual, but hopefully I can start updating this thing weekly or bi-weekly.

A digital painting that's dated late September '08. The painting went through a series of problems and successes, as can be seen by the guy in front, who doesn't look half bad, and the guy behind him, who looks more like a rigid joke. This piece is important because it was my first post-college painting that really highlighted my need to think through my environments better. You'd think that this would be something I wouldn't want to show off, but really, I find the opposite effect.

Truth be told, even "Random Drawing #4"'s environment needs work, but that one, admittedly and sadly, wasn't an afterthought.

Pixel Monkey

A friend wanted a company logo for a side-project of his, and he was fixated on the following citeria: 1 monkey, 1 apple and 2 sandbags. Preferably with said monkey sitting on the sandbags. The bite taken out might not have been a requirement, but I ran with it from the get-go.

It took me a week or scribbling on my tablet and in my sketchbook to even angle myself towards putting the elements together into something cohesive. I even spent a few hours just searching over Google images for pictures of monkeys and chimps while trying to decide what to do.

T-Shirt stencil

A little over a week ago I decided I wanted to try stenciling, and spent an evening flipping through my old sketchbooks trying to find an image that was thought out enough that I'd be able to re-draw it digitally and vectorize it instead of starting from scratch and having to spend even longer figuring out the light/dark details. Early on the original drawing (not pictured) popped into mind. It then took me 30-60 minutes to find which sketchbook it was in, since I couldn't remember what year it was originally done (SP06), or where over half of my sketchbooks were (garage in a filing cabinet). I spent about a day re-drawing, polishing and vectorizing the original into the above. Then I got some feedback from some friends, most of which liked it, but changed it to below when two friends had very strong opinions about not liking the simplistic background.




This became the final design when I realized the bullet holes looked better as snow, and that the black background was more dramatic. As you can see two sheets were used: 1 for the guy, and 1 for the snow/breath. Here's the first printing of the stencil on 25lb. normal printer paper--something I will never use again, it barely avoided melting when it got wet. The slipping of the registration was actually caused by the whole issue with the paper nearly melting.

Run for the Billions

Requested logo for a programming project for someone I know on EFnet. He didn't want a total rip-off of the Monopoly mascot, but he did was it to be inspired by that visual aesthetic.

This is actually not the version I submitted to him just over a year ago. That one is as follows:




You can see that the "RUN" is emphasized instead, and that was a grave mistake on my part and solely based on not wanting to warp "BILLIONS" at the time.

Thinking about whether or not it was used, I'm quite sure I actually missed his submittal deadline by nearly a whole hour. So here's a tip: if your pro bono logo artist does everything last second, don't figure that the artist will do the piece any sooner if you refuse to say when the deadline is and assume this will make he or she take it as initiative to do it hours or even days sooner.

Random Drawing #4

Drawing done mostly at a coffee shop. 2B pencil, .5mm black ballpoint pen (non-waterproof) on 9x12 60lb. sketchpad. The rough pose of the character had been done a week or two prior, but was tossed aside until earlier when I was at a coffee shop and itching to do some cross-hatching. No rulers, just an eraser pencil to guide the edges of the light beams, which is why the rest of the lines drift and change angles so much.

Photographed, 256-greyscaled and brightness/contrast adjusted.

(Was photographed because my now-ancient scanner has no Win7 drivers.)

"Ahead of it All"

A self-portrait painted digitally. Done achromatically, the second image is the color overlay used on it. While the second layer looks far from refined on its own, I still like the look of it and posted it along with.

Fish Edit

If you've used any of the Windows 7 RC's, then you'll recognize the image immediately as an edit of the default background. Alright, so fancy as the original is, it's too bright for my eyes as a background, and of the images packed with the OS, it's the only one I liked.

Rather than look around for a replacement image, or an idea to create one with, I opted to abuse filters, layer modes, and quick masks with it because I honestly do like it, but needed a darker image. Little projects like these are great excuses to mess around with tools you want more practice with. At the most basic it's an inverted color scheme with a quickmask to pluck some of the fish's highlights since the fish looked downright ugly when completely inverted.

I can't credit the original image's author because I have no idea who it was.

Random Drawing #3

Done in my sketchpad while hanging out at a coffee shop. I just really wanted to draw a fat monster who was tired of it all, then doodled the rest around that idea.

The Girl Gets the Bird

This started out, and essentially still is, as a response to an acmeanimaton.org challenge. That challenge was to have a girl (the age of 8-10) walk onscreen, find a dead bird, emote, walk to and pick it up, emote more, have the bird wake up and fly off, then have her emote as it ended. All within 30 seconds or less.

Playing with narrative I wound up getting it closer to 90 seconds in length, taking nearly 4 months of work, and close to a whole ream of paper. The very last of the animation being done digitally over the scans.

There is no audio at the moment, I'm considering consulting some friends about changing that.

Vectorized Self

The photo itself was taken by a friend of mine, Lee Kauftheil, with an infrared modified Nikon DSLR camera and a fish-eye lens. Vector traced by me between Photoshop and Illustrator CS3.

Random Drawing #2

At my last office job they had these slick uni-ball pens with a nice flow that cross-hatch in a way that reminded me of printmaking. This drawing was after I finally tracked down a box of them to play with.

They worked fine, but aren't waterproof. So word to the wise: I got lucky this time (not a few others), but remember to be careful about condensation on your glass/bottle when drawing with non-waterproof inks.

Random Drawing #1

Name is literal. It's a random drawing on a small piece illustration board. 2H/2B pencil and some black Micron pens.

Hulk's Coffee

If you can ignore the scale, you don't realize that's probably a 5 gallon cup of coffee. Except that I just I just told you of course.

Unholy Trinity

Yes, the name is a tacky pun on Masaccio's famous Renaissance painting "Holy Trinity", which must have seemed very clever to me 3-4 years ago. The final drawing is about the 3rd generation, drawn over layers of tracing paper for an intaglio project.


(Another preliminary drawing for the same project)

Steampunk Doodle

Taken from the olde sketchbook of random ideas with a dash of internet pop-culture.

Another piece from my tracing paper phase where I'd develop a drawing 3-4 times in pencil. Finding it a waste of not-that-cheap paper I couldn't ink very well, I wound up going back to 60lb sketch pads, 2B/4B pencils, Micron pens, and a scanner.

Alteration by Generation

The first painting was an experiment in landscape work. The source was a photo of an abandoned factory with some Photoshop work to blow the too-middled contrast. The composition wound up working as a photo, but being a miss on canvas, so the second one was made in response to that outcome and a desire for surrealism to pull further away from the source.

A third one was always, and still is, planned, but the one to three work break from the same subject has stretched out indefinitely so far.

2009 Calendar

Calendar project done in Illustrator. While a fun experiment for making 12 themed images, these are my favorite of those.

The inspirations came all across the board from comic books and a hybrid of Richard Amsel's "Barry Lyndon" poster and Saul Bass' poster for "The Man with the Golden Arm"--the latter seemingly a favorite of every design student to emulate at least once in their life.

The Chin

Pencil sketch plan for an unfinished vector piece. Worked better as a pencil drawing, so it's been on the back burner for about three years now.

Two Trees

A painting commissioned by a friend. The pencil sketch and the final image ended up being rotated different ways when displayed, though a clear one wasn't intended. Other elements were then altered when he needed it sanitized if he displayed it at work (he ended up not) and by me when color temperature was introduced.

Drawing: 8.5"x11", pencil on paper
Painting: 24"x48", oils on gessoed hardboard

Rock and confusion

After re-reading Frank Miller and Geof Darrow's Hard Boiled, I took a shot at capturing Darrow's style of blending frozen time with visible momentum.

Runner up business card

I designed a few smiley guys for the business card, this was the runner up. It was free-handed in Illustrator without any tracing. Not that that isn't obvious with the odd shapes, but still worth noting.

Melting

Pencil sketch shot at surrealism.

2B and 4B pencil mostly, probably some 6B at the end. Drawn on a 60lb. 9x12 sketchpad. Scanned, greyscaled and brightness/contrast adjusted.

Business card

A business card I designed for myself back in '07.

Manny Calavera Collage

This is a digital collage used as a template for a photo etching project. The printed form is around 6"x9" and colored with watercolor

Was displayed in SFSU's judged Stillwell show, FA06.

Mega Man

My parody of the box art for the US version of Mega Man by Capcom.