The Vanquisher of Evil...bushes...

I'm doing another project for a parent.  this time it's for my Mom.  She has been asking me for over a year if I would illustrate a favorite memory.  She likes to laugh about when I was a young tyke I would run around beating bushes with sticks and play swords.  I was really in to He-Man (still am) and I guess I had picked up some curse words on TV or something, and swore at the bush -- much to my Mother's dismay.

at any rate, here are some full sketches after about a million thumbnails.  I emailed them to Bill Carmen, my illustration instructor, and he wasn't amused that I split the composition in half vertically.  When he pointed it out, neither was I.  I'll admit I was pretty embarrassed.  I know better!

I was still hung up on what to do about the extra space as shown here, it is still empty.  I have a new set of compositional sketches that are in the approval process.

Oh and this will be an acrylic painting as well.

Hallway

This is a "thumbnail" of a project in my drawing II class.  It is going to be roughly 50 x 42" completed.  We had to come up with a "space"  and put some object or creature element in it.  no humans allowed.  I found a cool photo online of a hallway in Prague and couldn't think of anything interesting to put in the space that someone else wasn't already doing.  I decided to change a few things from the original photo of course and add a tree and some vines in photoshop to get a composition.

Once I start roughing the actual one in I'll add more details, but at least I have something to start.  This could be a cool painting project as well!  we will see!

right side is my original sketch.  I erased a ton so you can see a lot of ghost images.  I got yelled at by another student for trying to render it too much...it is a preview sketch after all, says they.  :P

anyway, I like the composition.

Acrylic Portrait studies

I decided to do some acrylic studies of some portraits.  A friend of mine inspired me to do so because he has been practicing with acrylics on his free time (even as school).  It made me realize how much of a slacker I am.  So I decided to do a couple (although not as successfully as his).  I used liquitex because I didn't feel like experimenting with my Golden today.  

these are both pictures i found on the internet.  the left is a green ground underpainting straight out of the tube.  It gave me some interesting colors as I was using an underpainting technique.  the one on the right Is a black/white/yellow mixture that is supposed to be a verdaccio type color, although I don't think it is.  what do I know tho, I've never known what that even is until I tried to do some research on what grounds some of the Masters used in their paintings.

apart from the inaccuracy of the illustrations themselves, I tend to still use some thick paints even when i am trying to do glazes.  And I can't seem to leave the line work alone so I put some of them back in at the end.

Over all they aren't very successful maybe, but there are elements that I really like about them.  I find underpainting really gratifying.

Life drawing from reference

These are studies that I have done during the Christmas and New Years break from School.  Most of them are from pictures of real people, while others are studies from other drawings.  The legs, for example are He-Man's :P

I'm trying to be conscious of bone structures and where muscles attach to bones.  I'm excited for another semester of Life drawing, as I decided to take it again!  

random sketches

I have almost 3 hours between classes this semester.  That is both good and bad.  Good, because IF i''m motivated I can work in my sketch book and do studies.  Bad because...well, who wants that much of a gap between classes?  anyway, I used some of that time to try and squeeze some creativity out of my brain. I like the tope left guy.  the bigger armored guy was a frantic mess as I didn't realize where the time went and had to get to class, but wanted to work some stuff out.

anyway, hopefully more of this sort of thing and better.  I like the 50% grey marker.  its fun.

lizard studies

I had an image in my head of a dragon about to overtake some knight or warrior.  A cliche idea, but it was in my head anyway, so I decided to do some sketches of a dragon head.  I want to draw from life as much as possible and since dragons aren't real I went to find pics of lizards.  here are a few quick ones before I leave for the day.  I'll have to get some more done because they were pretty fun.  ignore the foot.

the middle lizard head is squeezed way too narrow.  but it was a fun learning process.  Some of it made more sense to me because I had watched some videos of Feng Zhu and some of his insectoid paintings use similar spikes as this horned lizard does.  so watching him paint those help me understand some of the spines as they wrap around multiple surfaces.

anatomy quickie

I've been sketching, I swear!  I just haven't done anything digital for awhile.  It has been frustrating because I should have had TONS of time during the break to do lots of painting and drawing but I just haven't in reality.

anyway, I had to get something in today to make myself feel like less of a slacker.  I decided to start doing quick anatomy studies.  even tho these aren't even close to correct.  It's hard to actually draw with a wacom for me.  I much prefer scanning in line drawings.  but anyway this was pretty fun.  something is better than nothing right?!