Greek Sphinx

My favorite of all the things I drew today.

Summer Art Goal

I've been thinking a bit about the summer and how I'll have a bit more time than I have recently to do art for fun. I've been trying to think of some sort of art goals that I could make for the summer in order to keep me drawing and finishing pieces and posting them on the blog. I thought of having all kinds of specific goals, but getting too specific I think will make it seem too much like a project that I can get tired of.

So this is my goal.

Every week starting this week, on (or maybe sometimes before) Saturday, I will post a piece of art that I created that week that I can call finished. I might continue to work with and edit these pictures, but between work and classes I think I should have enough time to finish a small study, master copy,  experimental piece or whatever. Usually this should be a completely self-initiated project, though if there is a particularly busy week then I can count something from class or work that I especially liked.

I'm telling you this because I need to answer to somebody. Remind me on Fridays that I need to have something post-worthy in the next 24 hours. If you like what I post, comment, and along with mentioning things you like feel free to suggest ways to improve as well. I'm committing to this goal publicly here and to myself, but if anyone feels like helping me out by just checking up with me I would really appreciate your help and support.

So.

I'm going to sketch. My first piece of the summer will finish off my seasons series, and then... who knows what I'll do?

More art.

So I've just been posting all kinds of things here in the past week or so. Probably because it's finals season, and I've been finishing off some projects. But alot of the stuff I've been posting have been personal things.... so I dunno. I've just had a really productive streak I guess.


I'm being done with this one because my hand hurts. I have a tendency to squeeze a tablet pen, but not a regular pen or pencil or paintbrush. This makes painting things in photoshop problematic. This was started as an oil painting, then brought into photoshop to finish the details. I still want to finish the oil painting, but for now, here is the finished-in-photoshop version:

Quail in Fall

Deer in Spring, Foxes in Winter.... Quail in Fall.

I struggled with this one a bit more than the others. The patterns on the quail were hard to simplify, and I had to give in and use a mesh rather than have everything a flat shape. I may revisit this again after I haven't seen it for awhile to see what fresh eyes can do.

Grumpy Mark Twain progress photos

Today, I had my Illustration 5 final--only 1 more final to go, hooray! For the final, we had a "rush job", to kind of simulate a job that would have only about a 2 day turnaround, which happens sometimes in illustration. Yesterday we were emailed our "prompt" photos, one of which was this:

Hello, Mark Twain!
So for the assignment, we were supposed to use the prompt image but incorporate another object as well to show something about the person. So I looked at the photo and started brainstorming.
He looks kinda grumpy, I thought. Why is he grumpy?
Well, what makes me grumpy? When I'm trying to read and someone comes and TALKS to me, is what.
So I put together my reference photo.

It makes me laugh.

Then, painting. I took photos periodically throughout the process, just to see how it looked. Because sometimes when I'm almost done with a painting, I forget what it looked like before.

Many people seem to try to get a very accurate drawing before diving into paint. However, drawing is my weakness, while painting is my strength. So I tend to skim over my weak point to get to what I can actually do well.

Once I got the mustache in it started to actually kinda look like Mark Twain.

Finished! Then, I brought it into photoshop...

And there he is--grumpy Mark Twain!

And the actual painting part of it took about 3 hours--not bad!

Latin banner piece

This is for the Latin 43 course I'm working on right now... its juts a small part of a bigger banner, but I liked it all by itself. I may play around with it a bit more at a later date.

Winter Foxes

As a sequel to the deer in spring picture, here is one of foxes in winter! Summer and fall are forthcoming.... but first I have to work on finals. Meh.

Mistborn cover, and arguments with photoshop

I've painted a few things in photoshop. Honestly, I still don't really love photoshop. When I'm painting, I want to, like, PAINT. You know, with brushes and turpentine and canvas and that kind of stuff. As much as you can play around with the brushes and layers and filters in photoshop, I still miss my paint.

I'm trying to develop a better relationship with photoshop. This is what we were able to do together. Not that great... I am very not satisfied with it, but... its coming maybe? Meh. Maybe I'll just be the illustrator who does huge oil paintings instead of jumping on the digital bandwagon.

Chracters, etc. belong to Brandon Sanderson, the art is mine. Thanks to Brooke for being my awesome model. 

Doe and Fawn

This is a personal piece--it wasn't for homework, just something for me, myself, and I. I just wanted to experiment with shape and simplification and...stuff. There is definitely a whole lot of Secret of Kells influence going on here as well, though the designs are completely mine. I'm not sure if I'm totally done with it, I'm thinking about incorporating some textures. I may leave it alone for awhile so I can come back with fresh eyes.