CLICK ABOVE.
So as 3rdSpud last posted, I gave him a hand providing some artwork for Avon Union’s CD. He also posted some black and white line art that I done-did. I originally had a bigger more colorful vision for the finished piece, but we were pressed for time, and the simpler black and white version you saw was more than enough. So I handed it over to 3rdSpud, who handed it over to the band.
Now, the band had free reign to work with the artwork and put on the CD however they wanted. Over the weekend I got a copy of the finished product in the mail, and let me say I happy with the changes they made. Luckily for Avon Union, their drummer David Mayman is also studying Graphic Design and with limited time he threw down color and photoshop to help bring the art to life.
As an illustrator, you often have no idea how the work you turn in will be manipulated or presented. Fortunately, there are plenty of times when it turns out well. Like now. For instance. Check it out.
My God the Colors.
Welfare State has nothing to do with this.
Need Some Quicktime?
The story begins with me making a trip to Stockton to visit my good friend Nick. He attends school there at The University of the Pacific. The reason for the trip was to spend a few days in the dorms, meet some people, and make a few recordings. So I packed my portable studio into the trunk of my car and made the hour drive to Stockton.
Once there, we set up my things and got right to work. After a few takes, however, hunger set in and we stopped and headed for the store. Along the way we ran into a few of Nick’s friends who happened to be planning some sort of outdoor festival at the school that weekend. Turned out, Nick was going to play in his band the very next day. I thought nothing much of it and proceeded to follow Nick out to the parking lot and drive to get some food.
CLICK ABOVE.
The next day we awoke and went to breakfast. He found a way to sneak me into the cafeteria and so we ate breakfast. As we were walking back to the dorms we came across what was starting to resemble the stage for the festival. I meet some people and before I realized I had offered up my services to do the sound engineering for the show.
When Nick’s band, Avon Union, came on I was immediately impressed with their enthusiasm for playing and offered to record the band at a home studio in Fremont. We made the necessary arrangements and the recording took place in mid-December. The songs were then mixed a month later when they returned from their winter break from school.
What you have here is one finished song from their EP and the artwork. The later was a collaborative work between Deadlymarxist and I. I felt the band had to be illustrated as larger than regular size and suffering from carrying all their instruments. It was an attempt to show the amount of hard work that is involved in producing music and the size difference was to say they have the necessary ego to be professional musicians.
A big thanks goes out Deadlymarxist, Fabian for engineering this putaso of a project, thee Frognuts for his input / opinion, and of course the musicians involved for actually finishing. The process from inspiration and creativity to a finished product is truly about interdependence.
You can find further recordings of Avon Union by clicking HERE.
CLICK ABOVE.
Clowns used to be about the funny. Big shoes, crazy colors, and flying pies.
But now they about serial killers, nightmares and poison pies. What happened? I don’t know, maybe the trend toward clowns being poorly disguised evil started with that serial killer that dressed up like a clown.
Well clowns can still be funny. Or ironic, or whatever the hell the line drawing I’m posting implies them to be.
Originally titled “Pie-Slaughter”, this black and white drawing turned out better than I thought. Good enough to garner a spot at the Academy of Art spring show back at the beginning of 2007. Oh and I sold a print of it too.
My inspiration was the desire to illustrate an emotionally heavy post-man-slaughter situation, but replace the key players with clowns and weapons with pies.
CLICK ABOVE.
I’m wondering, now that I have the ability, whether or not to devote some time to coloring this piece on the computer. No wait, I know I should devote time to coloring this piece, but time is the problem right now.
Also, for your benefit, here is the preliminary perspective study for said drawing.
CLICK ABOVE.
Today I post a digital painting called, ‘What Now?’. This painting was done as a final for my Illustration class this last semester.
It’s an important painting for me, because after one year of Art School, it’s the first of my works that I am happy with. Oh sure, I can still see the flaws, places where I could go back and improve things. But overall, I managed to use composition, color and perspective to paint the picture I wanted. Please Enjoy.
The original size for this piece is 15″x 20.” It was created with Photoshop CS2. It took me about 40 hours, spread over three weeks, to complete. I haven’t named the characters or explained their present situation. I mean, I know that the child in the painting dreams he awakens in very real and dangerous worlds, where his only friends are the his toys come to life. But how old is he? What are his toys names? Why does this keep happening? These are questions I have not answered but should have.
My excuse is that I was pressed for time, and was focused on coming up with a compelling composition and not a back story. I realize now that it was wrong of me to side-step coming up with character and story descriptions. Why? Well, making a story to go with your illustration, or to inspire it, enriches the final piece. It also makes me look like less of a thoughtless bonehead when people ask about the painting.
In other news I’m back in school. My schedule is rough. Five days of workin’ from dawn till dusk. Three days of school and two days of work. Nevertheless I have a collaborative project in the works with ThirdSPUD and another with Thee Dynamic Effect.
The first project is cover art for a CD, and the second is production art for an animation short. Good times.
Bonus: Also, my friend Gabe was inspired by our threadless t-shirt design submission, from the inspiration was born an artwork serving as promotional art for his daughter’s b-day bash. I got a kick out of it. The theme for the party was Pinata mayhem. I went. And there was. We named the pinatas Paco and Chuey. Click here to check it out.
This last month of time has been spent going to school. An unlikely place for creative work, but I managed to convince my Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts (BECA) research professor that writing an essay on drug use and 20th century music would fit the guidelines for the course.
It never did, but it did allow me to research the topic. It stemmed from the moment I asked myself, “Do drug addicts make better music?” I didn’t attempt to answer that question mainly because what I consider good music, someone else might think is trash. So, aqui esta…
We’re getting Older.
It was supposed to be “New Art Wednesday” here, at least that’s what I told myself, but I let it slip. Doesn’t matter, because here I am now, with another project. This one was finished Tuesday morning, the assignment was to use the power of Photoshop and Painter to take someones portrait and age that person. I started out with a picture of the spectacled, yellow-tied man on this webpage.
What I ended up with was what I have posted on this webpage. Originally I was going to do the extra work and make it a color portrait. But after doing the black and white value study I found that it looked pretty kick-ass that way. It also added to the “aged” effect of the project. So I saved the extra color work for never.
My process was to take pictures of three old men, and then with photoshop make a composite “old-man” mask on top of the original picture. I adjusted the composite so that the eyes, brow, width of the mouth, and nose were at the same place. When capturing likenesses, the eyes, brow, lips and nose, both their placement and size are very important. Then I opened the photshop image in painter and in a new layer painted the thing, referencing my composite in photoshop.
Shackles.
The bonus drawing is from my clothed figure drawing class. The bonus drawing started as the thumbnail you see to the right. Before I finished people assumed that I was going for some kind of S & M thing, they were in for a surprise. My mind isn’t always in the gutter like the rest of America. It’s in the sewers. Pardon the imperfect quality of the image, but since it’s “Bonus” material I did the best I could with a camera, which is not much but good enough.
What’s to look at?
When I look at the drawing I posted today, I smile, because even though I drew the thing I have to try and figure out where the details came from. Sort of like trying to find the meaning in a weird dream.
This is because even though most of the big elements of the composition were thought out in my sketches, which I have also posted, I came up with everything else as I tried to fill in the empty spaces in the composition.
Drama!
The houses, suburbia, are an image and concept that has been on my mind. I don’t like suburbia. The houses, hunched together yet isolated from each other and far from their food sources make me mad. The crevice that is expanding and eating away at the suburbs probably comes from watching a documentary on people building beach houses that fall victim to errosion, then building houses near the same place again. The penguins marching along, from who knows where, are cool. I like penguins, I think most people do, cause penguins just don’t give a shit.
B & W
The wild mouthed tractor going to fame from no fame is my depiction of a lack inhibition.
The flying ship is an homage to the MAD blimp thing that would float around the pages of MAD magazine, an artist and reader in-joke.
I don’t know if the blimp thing still makes appearances. I wanted to draw it though, and it took plenty of false starts to get it drawn convincingly in Isometric Perspective.
Where Ideas are Fleshed out.
The second part to this assignment was to take markers to the drawing and put in shading.
First shade it to like sunlight, then shade it to look like light is coming from one point within the drawing. The drawings I posted here do not look like the originals, these have had their contrast upped in photoshop because they needed it. Yeah, I still have a problem with value in my compositions, I’m working to fix this. In the meantime, Enjoi.
Needs more Colgate.
Click on the picture to the right, then if you please, read.
This painting always gets a reaction, usually more than I expect. I know that it’s a little, just a little, ghoulish, what with the zombie-green skin and red eyes, but I didn’t think it was “creepy” or “scary” as described by some people.
I photocopied a photograph of a cheery old man I found in a magazine, then drew outlines of the face and its shadows onto illustration board. Then I painted. I painted with the intention to “liven” up an otherwise charming but boring picture. I ended up with something interesting, but I may have overshot the creepiness. Not that I mind.
Bugs. Bugs. Bugs.
Click on the image and view a painting. A painting that serves as evidence of my first semester of Art School. Let me tell you, it was quite a semester, starting in September and running until the 23rd of December 2006.
After about three weeks the semester became a time of non-stop sitting on my ass painting, drawing and obliterating any semblance of a sane sleeping pattern. I grew a potbelly, grew my hair out, and learned a lot about where I stand when it comes to drawing.
About the painting.
The rundown:
6.25″ x 10″, Gouche Watercolor Paint on Cold-Press Illustration Board. Presently Untitled.
It was painted for an assignment in my Introductory Color and Design class. The task was to create a pattern design that would interest and confuse a viewer’s eye at the same time. The design had to be complex and interesting enough to accomplish this. The key here was to produce a pattern with rhythm and visual movement. I think I accomplished this. In fact I am really happy with the color scheme I chose and how I was able to harmonize it. I scanned and took pictures of the basic steps to this project. Check em’ out.
Things are Sketchy.
Rough Colors and an unused alternative.
Testing.
Freakin’ Logan.
So here is my final for my Analysis of Form class. The goal for the project was to find a photographic portrait with a good light source and then render it with charcoal. The medium that I used was charcoal and charcoal pencil. I think I spent about 24 hours on this project. Hope you like it, enjoy.