Mid term figure dump

So I have it figured that rather than dumping everything at once in one super long post, I'll spread my figure stuff out a little better this semester.

To start things off, here is my first figure painting ever.  Hoo-hah.

Approx. 2 Hours

Some quick pastel gestures:

Portraiture: Approx 3 hrs each

vine charcoal and charcoal pencil

Graphite

Marker (Copic Wide)

Somewhere around an hour and a half

5 minutes

Conte Crayon 5-10 minutes

  

5 Minute Color Pastel Gestures

  

Pastel 2-3 hours

And that's everything for now.

Williams bear...

So yeah, this would be the first time I've ever elected to do an oil painting for an illustration project, and considering I'd say it came out pretty good.

In all his poorly photographed glory

Face Detail

I figured I'd put the explanation after the image, as it's probably better when there's some confusion involved. We were given the option of doing either a satirical portrait, an ironic parody or a glorified portrait of a faculty member of the school. My original plan was to draw Mr. John Williams here standing on a pile of dead ninjas, bears, tigers, sharks etc. shooting lasers out of his eyes at a T-rex, stabbing a shark and backhanding a student... which I was really really excited about doing but the teacher changed her mind on the idea when she decided it wasn't satirical enough (after letting me work on it for a week... ugh). So yeah, this is my replacement idea. I like the other one enough that if I find the time I might just do it anyways...

On another note I have to find a more effective way of photographing paintings.

More Painting...

So the semester is rolling along. I'm finally starting to make things in painting class that aren't entirely disgraceful, haha. We spent the last couple weeks of class painting downtown, here are the highlights. Compared to some of my peers it all looks pretty shoddy but compared to myself I'm looking pretty good, haha. These are all about 3 hours a piece.

This last one here is part of a series of 12, 12in by 12in paintings we have to do, all thematically connected and whatnot. I'm doing little animal hybrid things, which I realize isn't the most original idea, so to make up for that I'm trying to make sure the pictures are extra weird. This is the first one I have done... at given how many I have to do and when they're due, I should be putting them out at a rate of about 1-2 a week... and on that schedule I'm already one behind... shit.

Roosterfish

When I get the time I have some figure drawings worth uploading, but for now I have a lot to do...

-Rob

Something absurd...

So this... this is something a little different...

I've gone through cycles on the idea of creating something like a web-comic... nothing with a cohesive plot just random things I think up/think are funny. Every time I go through this cycle I'll just stockpile ideas that I never end up using for anything that I either forget or just wish I would get around to drawing. This is something leftover from one of the times that I almost started.

The strip


100% Pure Awesome

Honestly I don't know if it's funnier with or without the little comic... that... thing might speak better for itself.

Concept - Nemesis - Force Fit

More work from my concept class... the idea this time around the idea was to force fit two given concepts into one creature or vehicles. My combos were a dragonfly and a ferret and dive bomber and a tiger. This is what came out.

Yeah, it's all pretty absurd stuff... I'm happy with it.

Under the gun

So for illustration class we were asked to do a quick spot illustration for a visual metaphor. This is my illustration for "under the gun" which I cranked out in prisma markers in about 2 hours or so.

I'm pretty happy with it mostly (considering the time) but there are definitely things I'd like to fix.

Coincidentally... I'm a bit under the gun myself right now... probably have about another 6 hours worth of work ahead of me tonight... hoo boy.

Off to work then..

Graphic Design...

So they have us taking Graphic Design for Illustrators (or intro to graphic design, I honestly don't remember which it's called) right now. The first real assignment we had was to make a corporate identity for ourselves... business card, letterhead, envelope. This is what I came up with. Hand written font might not have been the best for legibility but I felt like it was suitable and haven't had any complaints.

Business Card


Envelope

Letterhead

I'm particularly fond of the envelope... something about that just makes me smile.

Oh, and on another note, something from wayyyy at the beginning of the year I forgot to post (way back in August or September or something). Pen & Ink Cuttlefish.

I spent an awful lot of time on this one. Looking back at it I sort of wish I had made it a little more about the pose but at the time it was really an exercise in pure rendering... pretty much just wrist down artwork to prove to myself that I could and as far as that goes I feel like it came out pretty good.

That's all for now, should be more fairly soon.

Painting...

So in painting class the teacher had us paint a still life composed of almost entirely white objects. The catch was that we weren't to use any white in the first stages of the painting. While it was frustrating at first, after a point I was pretty reluctant to start using white...

I kind of like the way it turned out in the end.

I haven't really figured out a good way of photographing my paintings yet, so bear with the image quality for now.

The underpainting


Finished, or about as close as I can get it right now


Shell detail... this is where I spent most of the time... it didn't photograph particularly well but I'm actually really happy with it.

So painting hasn't really been one of my strong points so far... but I think I'm finally starting to get somewhere with it... we'll see how this develops.

First post of the second month...

So here's the first assignment I've had to do for illustration this semester, it's not actually due until the 7th... she really gave us more time to work on it than she usually does. French gave us all stories, or excerpts from them, to illustrate. I got A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud by Carson McCullers. The chunk of it I got (yeah, it seems funny to cut parts out of a story that short) really just cut out the beginning, where it describes what people are wearing and the end. It started with "The man laid one hand on the paper boy's shoulders, then grasped..." and ended with "was he drunk?"

In any case I tried something new for this one (sort of... really I just tried something that I've tried before with terrible results again, with much better results) and it worked out pretty good. Rather than starting from scratch when I took it over from photoshop I pretty much just colored it and tweaked the value, leaving the initial drawing almost completely in tact. I kind of like it, but if I do it again it'd be better to have a more resolved drawing to go over...

Graphite drawing on tracing paper.


The value pattern (digital over graphite).


Final

The results were nice, method was quick, and it was all relatively painless... all in all it was a pleasant experience... which is good.

After this one month assignment it seems like things are going to be picking up pretty quick, we already have the next assignment with tight sketches due the same day as this final here... and we're already supposed to be thinking about the assignment after that... we'll see how this goes.