4 months tomorrow

It'll have been four months tomorrow since I last posted. I have been working on stuff! Just been busy with work-work (and also just very lazy with scanning/uploading anything). Well, here's to more frequent posts!


Some animated gifs, these two are about 2 or 3 months old at this point.

 And here's one I did last night; started cleaning up and realized I was a bit too loose with keeping proportions/forms consistent sizes. Lots of fun though, was primarily a test for animating a character with those sort of proportions.

The new blogger set up is interesting, some pretty cool options. Yes though, be back with more soon!

CHICKBALL

Quick update, painted this for about 15 minutes before getting in bed last night. This little guy sits on my desk in front of my monitor, was a bit tough getting his colors in the light; I think he's a bit too blue/greenish in spots but I like em.

Speed Paintings

Speed is a relative term, of course; between 30 min - 1 hour I'd say. Both from reference, the environment was tough due to the large amount of detail and the ellipse(s) on the second was pretty tough to freehand as well. Good practice either way... I'm learning, slowly but surely!

Modelsheet Studies

Been trying to do at least daily studies of this character as a suggestion off of Rad's How-to blog (been a big fan of his for a while, learned a bunch from his blog as well). He suggested drawing a simpler character like this for a month to really get used to how the construction works before moving onto more complicated designs. Learning a lot from the studies, I think it's helping my personal drawings gain a bit more solidity (little by little at least).

Sorry for the scan quality, my sketchbook is 9" x 12" and my scanner is 8" x 12", so it doesn't quite scan completely clean.

Bottle

Back again with a PS painting of a wine bottle from reference. Realized a few steps in that the drawing was off (measured one way and not another) , but I wanted to practice my rendering so I just kept at it. Fun practice, about 1 - 1.5 hours.

Backlog

Long time no post once again; gotta get into a groove with this thing! I have been drawing more as of late but primarily studies that I haven't scanned in. I'll start posting what I do going forward from here, but for now this is just a post of some work that I never posted.

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Character doodles, first in PS then in Flash.

Grayscale speed paintings from reference, all between 15 - 60 minutes

A study of an apple

And a pixel self portrait, as a sort of partner piece to the one of Katelyn in my previous post.

I'll be back with more soon!

We'll

First up is another quick animation study, something I've wanted to try for a little while. Definitely need practice at it but I had fun with this one and see where I need to go for the next one.



Aaand this next one was a little portrait I did of the ever lovely Katelyn Walsh.

Bounce walk to work

A quick study from the other night, messing with a few things I'd been thinking about. Goes well with the theme from Pee Wee's Big Adventure among others.

STURDY

While I'm getting things scanned in, here's a quick study I did today from the artist Earl Oliver Hurst, this great illustrator from the 50s. Love his body shapes and the way he draws ladies; ended up drawing a hand from one of his drawings as well as an attempt at this lovely drawing. I drew it pretty quick and I notice a good number of flaws (face is too large among others), will probably take another stab at it at a slower pace when I can.

Also, I found that artist on Today's Inspiration, a blog that goes over a large number of illustrators from the 40's and 50's. Really good study and inspiration material!

Be back with more! Thanks for lookin'!

PS Sketch dump

Sooo, that whole frequent update thingy I said at some point previously? Well, let's just say that I'm going to be trying harder to keep that up from now on!

I have been doing art things! Mostly just sketches and the like, but I have realized that I tend to progress the most when I'm constantly drawing. At some point I stopped carrying a sketchbook on me in the last few years and I feel like around then is when I plateaued. I used to be a gesture and sketchbook fool, just trying to draw wherever and whomever I could; and, ideally, I can get back there. BUT ENOUGH OF ALL THAT.

FIRST UP, a study of a laundry detergent bottle and an environment sketch. After these I decided to move back to gray scale studies/doodles for a bit to work a bit more on my values. Stopped a bit early on in the study, started to move to the next level of rendering and then thought the better of it.

So, sometime between the above sketches and the ones below I went to the MIT Robot Museum in Cambridge, MA. And while my robot designs are not like the actual robots they have there (and they have some pretty amazing robots might I add) , I had a fun time with em.

Pretty simple shapes, but I figured it's good practice in rendering forms and also in painting in PS in general. I started to try pushing the value scale a bit more in these next ones; still need alot of practice with it but I think they are working pretty well at the moment. The bottom one (little floating guy with the eye-ball (HA)) was probably the most finished PS thing I've done in a while, definitely had a good time with him. The rendering came out a bit softer than I'd have liked but I'm happy overall.

And last but not quite least, this weird looking dude happened at some point. Mostly just playing with shape and then trying to identify form with this one. Not sure why he's got such an intense look going though, or why he's saying NO (though it also sort of looks like NJ).

Alrighty though, I'll be back shortly with more things! Got a bunch of things to scan, just being laaazy (plus I recently started doing some freelance work once again). Also, not sure if I've mentioned him on here before but I highly recommend taking a look at the work of Rob Laro. Huge fan of his style and his modeling/texturing work, definitely a huge inspiration.

Yes though, thanks for looking!

Angry large forehead, Helicopter knife fight

Got a couple of things to share, both done in Photoshop.

This one just sorta started off as a doodle then just slowly turned into this unhappy looking guy. Mostly was just messing with blending a little bit, as well as shape/form; had fun warming up on it, both for my hand and for getting used to drawing in photoshop.

Aaaaand this one was based a random sentence given to me by the lady Katelyn: "A helicopter in a knife fight with a sombrero eating a turkey leg." I didn't manage to fit the turkey leg into it and I'm not too happy with the sombrero so much, but I had fun with it overall; the helicopter was definitely fun. Also, Katelyn gave me that AMAZING pun, which definitely makes it better
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environmentality

BACK ONCE MORE.



Quick-ish study from reference (magazine, and I don't have a scanner here so I can't show the ref unfortunately); can tell I started to think more structurally in the center before I just called it. Was nice to be doing it again, been a while. GOTTA KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING!

Thanks for looking!

SOMM

BACK!!




Accurate portrayal of my current state, I really do have my sweet on my mind. The ' in "Sweet's" is intentional too.

Been trying to get back into using Photoshop for drawing/painting more lately; used to do it alot and I fell out of the groove pretty badly. Got time off for the next few weeks, though, so I'm gonna try my best to rock it out.

Be back soon! I PROMISE!

HAPPY 2011 WOOOOOOOOOOOO

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Gotta start the year off well with at least some sort of post, it is prime after all.

Done in flash, gotta get into a normal updating schedule. I RESOLVE TO POST MORE THIS YEAR. Following in the footsteps of someone else I know.... BE BACK WITH MORE! Thanks for looking!