Some more Tarantino nonsense...

Fanart!!

Some stuff from the past few days.

A couple new caricatures

An Artist always has something to draw.

Well, as long as they have a mirror...

MM, MM GOOD.

don't know if this will really work in my portfolio, but I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

Just for fun

A new Piece of Witcher Fanart. Done as a companion piece to my poster. 

Cleveland Marathon Tee designs

 

Meh...

Newest piece. Same concept as my Bus stop illustration. Mildly effective. not impressive, not going in the portfolio.

I hope i can hit our last project out of the park, cause this was a bit of a failure imo.

More in class sketches from head, hands and feet

Bought a kraft paper pad a few weeks ago and I'm really enjoying using it for this class.

GET IT...

Had a little time to finish this up finally. I would have felt remiss if i didn't get a James bond caricature done this year, as i have done at least one a year since 'Casino Royale' Came out. It's almost a tradition. And seeing as though 'Skyfall' is coming out this week, and It's the 50th anniversary of the super spy, i had to get at least one done. You may see a Javier Bardem caricature up soon as well. so stay tuned.

oh, and just for fun, here's my first attempt ever at Daniel Craig's James Bond, circa '06 -'07

When in doubt, add a s**t-load of textures.

Here's my tentative final for my latest illustration project. My valiant attempt at a Art Nouveau look. I poured over pages and pages of Alphonse Mucha's Illustrations trying to absorb as much as i could. I think it ended well. However, there are certain goals i didn't quite achive, and that i'd like to attempt again. for now this will do. let me know what you think.

The Beginnings of an Idea

So i had a really silly idea for a Bond Skyfall illustration. Hope i can finish this by the film's release.

UCI traffic box finals

finally put this to project to bed, may have a few tweaks, but overall they're done.

Colors! finally

still tinkering, but i think this is the general direction I'll be going.

Creature Concept final.

Finished this project up this week, here's what i ended up with.

Emma Stone

For some reason i had this stuck in my head all week. needed to put it on paper. Besides, i miss doing random celebrity caricatures.

New 'Alice' Concept

A new idea for my Alice in wonderland illustration. Let me know what you think.

Sketchbook experiment

Just a bit of fun, forgot how much i enjoy using colored pencils.

click to see the rest of the image, (nsfw)

My Current projects

So, here's what I'm working on at the moment for my classes.

First off is our Alice in Wonderland illustration. Apparently there's a very wealthy business man in the Cleveland area who's a BIG fan of the book and all related art. Our instructors figured it would be a good idea for the program and the school if we put together a book of AiW art for this guy to entice him to donate some money to the illustration program, and as promo for prospective students.

I haven't read the book, or seen the films for that matter. I tried to get through the book, but i'm a little to preoccupied to really delve into it properly. So i tried to address the story from an outside perspective. I wanted to portray an Alice who is capable of imagining such vivid nonsense, essentially, a disturbed, crazy child. At least i thought that would be funny and or interesting. This is what i came up with. Just an idea for now...

Next up is the creature concept project. I was kinda stalling on this project so i wanted to nail down a composition today. I have one fully fleshed out, perhaps not the best, but it's something that i can work with.
I think i may be trying to cover too many bases with this illustration as is I wanted to address it's environment as a whole, it's diet, and the fact that it's amphibious. Of course the most difficult part of the illustration i have yet to address. I am still unsure of how i want to create the bioluminescent look of the creature. and whether i want it's skin to be see through. It may look cool bit it's yet another element that my clutter up the illustration. I can make it work, but it just feels a little busy to me right now.

Then we have my sketches for the University Circle traffic boxes. If i haven't mentioned this project yet, it's a series of 20 or so illustrations the class is doing for University Circle that will be used to decorate the traffic boxes in the area. The illustrations are to represent the neighborhood of University Circle throughout it's history. The periods i chose were the turn of the century and the 50's. As you can see, i depicted scenes in little Italy and the local parks.

My only concern on this project has been achieving the look that the client wants. On the first round, the UC guys thought my sketches were too cartoony. So, this is my first edit trying to create a more serious look. It's a difficult process for me because i'm so used to having direct contact with my clients. In this class we have to wait a week to hear from our Professor and receive the critique second hand. I guess in a way this can be more accurate to a real studio, but i like to have a direct link to the folks i'm working for.

Drop in on the comments section if you have any thoughts, critiques or whatever.

Dexter, Season premier.

The premier of the new season of Dexter was tonight. Thought i'd put together a quick sketch and share some thoughts on the episode.

Overall i really liked it. I especially liked it after such a lack luster season last year. Just in one Episode stuffs already moving along, and that's precisely what the show needed. They could have spent the whole season with deb wondering whether Dex is a serial killer or not, but they chose to move past that and develop further.

I think my only problem so far is that all of a sudden LaGuerta's pretending to be a cop again. They could have picked anyone else to find Dexter's slide other than her. I guess it kind of makes sense, given her relationship to Doaks. "Surprise, Motherfucker, I'm not the bay harbor butcher!"

Anyway, looks like these last two seasons are on the right track to be pretty good. On another note, I'm pretty pleased that i finally got  descent caricatures of both Michael c. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter put on paper. I've been having a hard time figuring them out since i started watching the show.

The Glowy, long necked, see-thru Tarsier thing

Here's my concept for the latest project in my Studio class. The project entails combining two or three different animals into a new creature. Initially, pretty self explanatory. The only stipulation was, we couldn't just copy and paste body parts. Also. it couldn't be too fantasy or sci-fi. This is one of those projects that's very open ended and you really have to art-direct yourself and make smart decisions.

This was a tough one to get off the ground, at least for me. I new from the get go that i wanted to somehow incorporate an adaptive mechanism, like certain animals use of color or defensive adaptions like the puffer fish. Out of this, the idea of bioluminescense really stuck with me, particularly the look of the Jellyfish and also of certain angler fish. I just thought it was a really cool visual and could be very interesting if combined with a vertebrate.

A real challenge on this project so far was the lack of an internal visual catalog. I rarely draw animals. You might even say it's a weakness of mine. So, when asked to combine a bunch of disparate creatures into one i had a hard time even articulating my ideas on paper. So, it was off to the library to grab every visual dictionary on animals we had. 

So I went ahead and sketched some ideas; a bunny/puffer fish that when threatened puffed up its fur to a ridiculous degree, and maybe even used it as a weapon like the porcupine. I also sketched out the idea of a frog/angler fish, this really sedentary swamp monster that used a glowing lure to attract flies and other bugs. This one started slipping into the realm of fantasy when i envisioned what it would look like if it were to lure people, the size of a building, a neon sign as its lure. Finally i sketched out this concept of a Peacock that used this bioluminescence. For good measure i tried a couple other concepts like a tortoise/hare and pig/bird, that didn't really pan out. I was inclined to go with the bird.

However, all of these ideas still had a copy/paste look. Just one animal with the body parts of another attached. At this point i asked for some clarification. To put it straight in my head i stated the gist of the project like this,
      "Create a brand new creature, it's environment, what it eats, etc., and use the features and characteristics of existing animals to visualize it, instead of starting with the real animals and making something out of them." 
This idea made a lot more sense to me, and fortunately my Instructor said i had the right idea. With a clarified vision of the project, i set about changing my bird/jellyfish.

I imagined the habitat of this new creature to be a dark swamp or maybe an underground lake or cave system. This would be a creature that lives in the dark and eats the kind of things that grow there. I imagined this creature as mimicking, or maybe being chemically evolved by bioluminescent mushrooms that grow in these caves.  I eventually used a couple new animals as well, the Northern Tarsier, and the ant-eater, which im still unsure about. It's still at the point of sticking different animal parts together, but  it's getting to the point of not being recognizable as any of it's components, which is key.

Anyway, let me know what you think of what i have so far.

Boston T-shirt designs.

curious to hear what people think of these.

More hands!