Mere Thoughts

MOVED

2011-09-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

The sketchblog has been moved!

Find me (and my art) HERE!

2011-05-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

2011-05-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

2011-05-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

2011-05-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

2011-05-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

2011-04-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Watercolor Self portrait for practice

Grow

2011-04-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

Done for The Grey Journal's April Theme: Seeds, Roots, and Growth.

Watercolor and cut paper, photographed on a rock outside my apartment.

Alley oop!

2010-08-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

Warm Ups

2010-07-30T09:41:00.001-07:00

Been holding out

2010-07-30T09:30:00.001-07:00

Have some art! All from my printmaking class. From the top: A Linocut, a Screenprint, a Lithograph, and an Intaglio Etching

It lives!

2010-06-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

Small illustrations from my final project of my final semester!

2010-03-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

Drumroll Please

2010-01-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

Finally getting around to posting those final prints for the printmaking assignment, and here they are!

Printmaking drawing/sketches

2009-11-23T16:22:00.000-08:00

There is No Spoon and That's a really BIG cat

2009-11-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

Quick Paint

2009-07-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

Drawing of a character for an RPG. Yes, his face is supposed to be that long. Colors/shading were slapped on quickly.

Past and Present

2009-06-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

Every now and then there are fun little memes that crop up on other sites I frequent that get my mind and my hand going. This is one of them. Started by Thundercake at Deviantart this one asks you to show your past and future self, to show how you've changed. I had fun with it.

Existence

2009-06-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

Would you look at that? I exist again. I really need to get myself on a schedule with this bugger. Here's to trying that this summer.

Otherwise, I feel like I owe an update. I've finished my 4th year of the Design and Illustration program - give me one more year and I should get my soul back from them! What a glorious day that will be. In the meantime, I am working quite happily at my internship at the video game company here in town, where shoes aren't required, the nerf gun darts fly daily, and I am quite at home.

So until I get some actual art worked up, I have a giant image made of sketches that I've thrown together.

(Warning: The file is rather large and will likely take a bit to load.)

Still Pluggin' Away

2009-04-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit of a crazy semester.

So I shall attempt to appease you all with this:

A Promotional Site done for my Flash class. Which is a site promoting the webcomic Lackadaisy Cats by Tracy Butler.

Oh, and also a bit of costume work for your entertainment pleasure.

An Update!

2009-03-09T20:37:00.001-07:00

An update! Oh my!

Click here to see my first project for my Flash Animation class. It's a web banner ad. Pay no attention to the rest of the site, which is a screenshot. The moving, flashy thing is my ad.

Mannequins.

2009-02-07T13:28:00.000-08:00

Deadlines are a bit crazy right now, so have the drawing I just finished in my Life Drawing class.

Get Something From Almost Nothing

2009-01-29T20:31:00.000-08:00

When it comes to characters, a silhouette can be extremely informative, telling everything from their age to their attitude on life. Because it's essentially just a shape, you have to lead the eye to fill in the details and information itself, using what you do have to make the suggestions.

I might not have been thinking quite that far when I created these silhouettes for an assignment two years ago, but I think I understood the gist of attempting conveying a character and personality through a silhouette. Shape, angularity, posture, hair, props, actions and more all went into each of these character prompts. We were given the description and the template for the "album pages" and told to portray the characters. Take Aunt Adelaide the fortune teller and compare her to Aunt Reba the hairpiece saleswoman (below). They both have sharp features and almost angular faces, with overall round forms, however they both feel like very different people. Reba looks very prim and proper, possibly prudish because her posture is perfect, and everything from her clothes to her hair is exactly in it's place and fits perfectly - because of this and the position of her fingers she feels very stiff, and thus stuck up. Yet, Reba also feels like she's trying to hard, possibly because of the fact that she's trying on her own wares. Adelaide, on the other hand feels much more laid back and much less put together. This is conveyed through her slouch, the rumples and folds in the clothes that don't seem to fit quite right, and the hair that seems to be not-so-carefully done - another detail is the string the crystal ball is hanging from, which tells you that she's not too honest in her trade.

So even the slightest differences between the silhouettes of different characters can have a huge difference.

That being said, were I to be given this project now, it would likely be done rather differently just from what I've learned between then and now.

Don't Sneeze Too Hard

2009-01-24T13:30:00.001-08:00

Over my Christmas break, I got together with a friend and we spent the evening seeing if we could make a full comic each in that amount of time. I decided to do something small and silly - I didn't even really plan this out out very much (In fact, I got done with page three and went "Shoot...I don't know what to do next")

So, here we are. My 4 page, quickly done, mini-comic.

Excuse Me, But Do I Know You?

2009-01-19T15:03:00.001-08:00

Well that was a lovely hiatus in which I worked way too much, finished a semester of school (only 3 left!), got engaged (To the wonderful mind and voice behind the Public Servants Quarters ) enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and break from school, worked entirely too much again, and started a new semester of school.

And here I am back again! Though only one image for today, because I think I'd rather have more frequent smaller posts than large posts that only happen once in a blue moon.

This image is from the 3D design class I took last semester, and more specifically from the Soft Sculpture project, which we were to use in a website design.

Clouds, Shiny Bowl, and Snow!

2008-10-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

Our latest project in my Advanced Graphics class was a book cover series project. We each read three stories and did a series of three book covers for it. Simple, right?

Wrong. The difficulty lies in making the covers similar enough to be recognizable as a series, but different enough to make them individually interesting as well as not making the series boring. Basically you don't want your series to just be a fill in the blank template. I made them similar by using the same style and organization of the type (same fonts, put together the same way, separated by three lines, etc.) as well as by making the illustration be a mix of a photograph and a drawing. They're made different by the placement of the text (this is a big thing that it's flexible), using different media for each drawn portion (Top: Ink, Middle: Charcoal, Bottom: Graphite), as well as just having different illustrations.

My favorite is The Snowfall.

Come One, Come All

2008-10-23T18:09:00.000-07:00

This time, I display the circus poster done for my 3D illustration class, made via paper sculpture and photoshop. Enjoy!

Not too bad...

2008-10-13T18:49:00.000-07:00

...for not having digitally painted in a while.

Just a quick (1 hour) digital painting to keep myself from getting too rusty.

The Faces Watching Me

2008-10-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

Haven't had much time lately to draw for myself - or to sleep for that matter - but have some more faces I did using myself as reference.

Snow White and Rose Red

2008-10-01T17:06:00.001-07:00

Not to be confused with Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. No relation other than the name.

This was an assignment for my 3D Illustration class. We picked a fairy tale from the list, found a model and had them pose for us and then adjusted/aged the image and created a page layout for a collectors style book.

So without further ado:

And this image by itself in all it's fake aged glory:

'Eh Goggles?

2008-09-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

Because I've been neglectful in the past with updating, and because it felt so good to just draw.

With a Flourish, Part 3

2008-09-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

See, I said I'd keep going.

This is a continuation of my discussion/explanation of the why and how behind my design at this blog. (Part 2 is here, Part 1 here).

Today's discussion? Vectors.

Most images you see around the internet (if not all) are what's called bitmap images. These images are composed of, essentially, a map of colored dots, or pixels, that all form the image. The way that bitmap images are composed means that when you enlarge them, all you're doing is enlarging the pixels, so the result you get is a blocky, or 'pixelated' image. Vector images are different. Instead of creating a line by putting one pixel after the other, after the other, vector images create a line by using math, an equation, which tells the program that this line should be so wide, should start and stop with this length/proportion and should be this color. Because of this, you can endlessly enlarge vector images because the equation stays the same, you're just proportionally increasing the numbers in the equation. Okay, so thats how I understand it to work, anyway, but I haven't had math in years, so I'm a bit mathematically challenged at this point.

Anyway, the point being that vector images can be much sharper at every size than bitmapped images because it's relying on math instead of a colored sequence of pixels.

Because of this quality, I wanted to create the swooshes and swirls for the background design as vector images, both so I wouldn't have to worry about the rough edges from my pen marks, and I could make sure it was much more even. I wanted my circles to actually be circles, instead of my shaky hand's approximation of circles. It also allowed me to have consistent line widths where I wanted it - and over all, just have much more control over the forms.

Unless people are curious, I won't go into the intricacies of how exactly I created the image via vectors. Lets just say I made use of lots of circles and ovals as guidlines for myself.

The headline was also vectored - but for that, I wanted to incorporate Art Nouveau typography (which was very flowing and hand done. Made to fit the specific area) But I also wanted to tie the background into the header to make them relate to each other - but I didn't want it to just be text stuck inside a border.

I tried several sketches before coming up with one I could work with.

I started off with only partial borders, encorporating the same kind of swooshes and spirals in the background, but they weren't quite working for me. So I tried again.

I found this one to be more in the direction I was looking for, so I decided to run with it. I had to change the dimensions from my sketch in order for it to be the right size for the header, and some other changes and additions were made during the vectoring - but that tends to happen anyway.

Here's the final header:

American Proverbs

2008-09-21T17:52:00.001-07:00

The assignment? Take an "American Proverb" and illustrate it with found objects.

The result? Take a look:

Studies

2008-09-12T07:26:00.001-07:00

Just a couple more sketches and studies from the Twelve Dancing Princesses project. This time using marker to help with making the sketches more readable.

The Original Invisibility Cloak?

2008-08-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

The train derailed again, and this is me trying to get it back up. Part three of the blog design stuff will come soon. But for now, have this. It's a motif-thing to go with the story/Fairytale The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Displayed are the branches with the silver, gold, and diamond leaves, as well as the goblet from the dance.

Yay for quick photoshop jobs! There should be more to come on this, possibly with an explaination.

(Read the story here)

With a Flourish, Part 2

2008-08-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

In my last post I mentioned the work that went into the graphics of my design here, at Laura's blog. I also mentioned that I'd go into a bit more depth about it.

This may become a few part series.

I started out doing a good amount of research, looking at different styles within Art Nouveau. For each one I found that I liked and though might work, I sketched it down in my sketchbook, both to keep it in my mind, and so I've have everything in one place when I needed references. This way, I could also have all the different styles all there to look at so that I could mix and mesh the different things. The sketches with stars and arrows pointing at them are the styles I thought would work best. I wanted something more flowery, flowy, and less geometric.

Once I had these images in my head, I mulled them over, turned them around, mixed and matched them in my mind. And sketched. A lot. On whatever was available when the idea or urge came to mind.

Like my arm, for example.

Soon, though, I was working on finalizing a design I liked. I started here.

I wasn't quite satisfied with this, it seemed a bit too much, too involved. So I tried again.

This one felt much better, the trapped flower worked well, but it didn't quite have the feel I was going for. I thought maybe something between this and the first one.

My third attempt was better, but it just didn't flow nearly as well as the first two.

This was my last try and the final inked design. This is the one I ended up vectorizing. It had some of the more flowery aspects of the first design, while also being a bit more open and simple like the second, but still flowed well, which fixed the problem of the third.

Next up: Vectoring! And possibly the header.

With a Flourish

2008-08-09T15:03:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned it a few times this summer, but in the void of work that was this summer I had a wonderful friend, Laura, who hired me to redesign her blog. As a French major, she writes her blog in French -- anything from translation tips to information about the internship she did in France a couple years ago. Amusingly, this didn't help me much, because I don't know a lick of French, but thankfully she was there to translate for me when I needed it.

The blog started out with just the Blogger Minima Template. Two columns, black and white text, and that's about it. Laura wanted a more open layout, one that didn't squeeze the text of the blog space into a tiny little area like the template had it. She also wasn't big on the one column of text being the only thing that made it to the bottom.

So, my directions were to un-squeeze the text, to make said text seem not so alone on the bottom portion of the page, and, lastly, to give the blog an Art Nouveau feel. Otherwise I had almost complete freedom.

(For those that don't know, Art Nouveau is a style/time period of art and design in the late 19th, early 20th century. It focused on very organic, flowing forms. It was VERY decorative, and quite frankly, it's my favorite period in art. Read a little more about it on wikipedia -- also, if you know who Alphonse Mucha is, he was one of the more famous artists for the style and period.)

This is the finished result.

I started with the layout, and once I got that fixed up I went onto the Art Nouveau portion. I did research, sketches of that research, and sketches of my own for the background image - and then for the Header. The sketches were vectored (A vector image is one that can be resized without losing quality) as a way to give them a clean, crisp look. But the thing I had the most issues with was the transparency/opacity behind the main portion of the blog itself - the coding was a bit difficult to figure out and find.

I'll be posting again soon to show a bit more of the thought and process that went into the design and graphics of the blog.

Past Due

2008-07-27T12:51:00.000-07:00

Remember that children's book illustration for The Giving Tree? Well, I've been saying for a while that I was going to show the character design sketches for that. Now that I've finally dug that sketchbook out of the box it was in (I'm one and a half boxes away from being completely unpacked!) I can share!

So here we have the typical character turn around on the top of the page (And on a few of them, you can see the base shapes and forms I used to make the character), but what made this one interesting is having to design him at different ages. The age difference is so vast, that I was worried about not being able to recognize the character as the same -- So, to prevent this, I made an effort to keep some of his features similar. For example, his head-shape doesn't change through the years, and though his nose gets somewhat bigger, it stays the same basic shape. I also kept his eyes the same.

Oh! And for those wondering, I have found a job! I'll be working at my campus bookstore - yay minimum wage?

Practice, Practice, Practice

2008-07-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

Just a relatively quick coloring of a drawing of an old character of mine. Practicing my coloring and trying to find a way that works well for me.

I've discovered I find coloring much easier when I use one of the shadow colors as the flat base color, and then chisel out the lights and highlights from there. For some reason the shape just forms much easier and much quicker that way. (I had previously been using a mid-tone for the flat base and then applying the highlights and the darks - and for some reason this took much longer and didn't look nearly as good. Maybe because of a lack of contrast?)

Brother Wart

2008-07-21T22:08:00.001-07:00

So while working on the graphics for that blog I'm working on I was reminded of an old assignment, one from a couple years back, an avatar project. We were to pick a person - living or dead, real or fiction - and create four avatars, or representations, of them. These avatars had to represent different aspects of that person.

Obviously I chose King Arthur, British legend, king, and hero. I chose, also, to use birds as the avatars, partially because according to some versions of the legend he was turned into animals by Merlin as a child as a way to learn lessons. I also really like birds (This reason outweighs the first). The songbird represents the fact that he was loved by his people, the eagle represents his power, the owl his wisdom, and the heron his nobility.

The originals had all the bird with little crowns, but I thought that looked silly and unneccesary when I looked things over today, so I took them out. However, the owl still looks pretty keen with his crown.

An Update

2008-07-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

So, that was a nice break.

The summer has been a bit wacky. Internship woes turned into job woes, I moved back to Springfield into my first apartment, spent two weeks cleaning the kitchen and working on getting internet set up, I've slept on the couch until Friday, when my Dad was finally able to come down, build my bed, and bring me my desk -- all while woefully unemployed.

This means I should have plenty of time to do art, right?

In a sense, yes. Sketches and doodles, mainly. Though I have been hired/commissioned to do the formatting, graphics, and design for a blog belonging to a friend of mine, so I've been working on that as well, and I'll share that as soon as it's done.

What else have I been up to?

Well, things like this:
One video

And this:
Count 'em. Video two.

And random makings of silly, such as this:
My attempts at being witty

Hopefully, now that I have furniture, I can get myself fully unpacked and I'll be able to find my other sketchbooks and be able to post something worthwhile soon.

Comic Character Designs

2008-05-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

As I said in that last gigantic post, here are the character design sheets for that comic.

The goal of these was to get a feel for the characters before actually drawing the comic. This way, when I started drawing the panels, the characters would come more easily and naturally, and they wouldn't look stiff because I hadn't thought out how they would look from each angle and how they would move. Expressions are important as well - without them, a scene can seem very flat as all characters need to be able to interact with their surroundings both visually and verbally. The visual is even more important when there are no words in the comic.

End of the Semester!

2008-05-12T22:47:00.001-07:00

It's finally here, the end is in sight! Just have one more project to turn in, one take home test to do, and two finals to show up for, and I'm done. Exciting, is it not? It also explains why I'm a week and a half late on my post.

Well, this one's another doosy, so get ready.

The first thing I'm showing today, is the comic project I just finished for my Image Design class. We were to choose a childhood toy (technically our favorite, but any would do), and draw a comic about that toy. I chose one of the stuffed animals I've had since I was little (Ok, littler than I am now at least): Piggy, my stuffed pig. Now, Piggy's a bit beat up, he's had some adventures in his day (entirely innocent, I assure you), and so I thought a comic on one of his adventures would be a great story.

Now, I decided, through the course of making the comic, that it would probably be best to leave it without any dialogue (You know, the fact that the dialogue I had planned was more a tribute to my geekdom, than anything else had absolutely nothing to do with it. ) The story told itself without any of that, and I felt that adding in the speech bubbles and words would just clutter the design up - so I left it free!

Also, when I was working on the comic, I wasn't sure if we were allowed to use greyscale or not, the assignment sheet specified black and white, but nothing else. So, in order to get greyscale without breaking the rules, I found some screentone patterns and used those, which I discovered to actually be really helpful, because it limited me and kept me from going overboard. It also made it much easier to keep my greys consistant between panels and pages.

The way I put the comic together was panel by panel. After laying the story out, thumbnailing, and then laying the panels out in a computer program, I printed the panels one by one, and did my pencils and inks straight into that panel. When I was finished with that I scanned everything in, toned all the panels individually in photoshop, and then put them all together into the pages. Each step (pencilling, inking, toning) took anywhere from 6-14 hours. It was kind of crazy.

Anyway, enough of me babbling on that. Just read it!

As I promised, here's the children's book (Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree). This was done with cardstock hand-cut and glued together. The 3d effect is given by separating the pieces into layers by using small pieces of foam core. I made the paper for the tree, itself, because I couldn't find a texture I was happy with; so I took a brown paper Kinko's bag, wrinkled it up until it was soft, and then sprayed spray adhesive to one side of it, and glued it onto a piece of dark-brown cardstock.

Up next: Character design and sketches.

That time of week again...

2008-04-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

End of the semester stress and craziness is starting to kick in -- A.K.A. for some reason, I picked the most busy time of the semester to do a project that, by it's nature, would take up all my time (and my paycheck, for that matter).

We're doing illustrations for Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, and I've decided to do a kind of 3d-like cut paper style. I saw it here and just couldn't resist (And if you check out the example, you have to check out the rest of her work, it's simply amazing.). It may be time consuming, but I'm absolutely loving working on it, it's so different from what I've done in the past, and so much fun.

I should be able to have pictures up on it next week.

For now, though, I have what I was attempting to scan last week (Still don't know what was wrong with my scanner, but it's working, so I'm happy). It's nothing too special, just more practice, this time more realistic. Done from the image Josiah by brandonwitzel on Deviantart.

It certainly isn't perfect, the face is a little too narrow to match properly, bu it was good practice and it felt good to do something more realistic for a change.

Next up

2008-04-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

Well, I was going to post up another drawing I did this week, but seeing as my scanner has decided to rebel...that's not quite possible. So, instead, have some photos!

These were taken at McConnell Springs in Lexington, KY. I'd love to go again when everything's green, and not just the water plants. The second image has been colorized for fun.

It's about time

2008-04-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

So, I've been missing for a while, school (or lack of it as was the case during Spring Break) has gotten me off track. Waaay off track.

So, since I've missed so much, I'm posting much more. I won't be explaining much in this post, so feel free to ask if you have questions! (I like answering questions)

Inspiration comes in the strangest places sometimes, and can induce attempts at world-building. Like this, the idea beginning at some clouds I saw outside of the window of a plane I was on.
More sketches for the same world-building attempt
Sketches of some characters of mine. Ignore the bad attempt at a gun. I'm working on that.
Hand done type assignment for my Illustration class. It's an invitation to come see a documentary that's being shown at a film festival in Rwanda.
More fun with those grey markers on brown paper. Also white gel pen this time.
Quick mermaid sketch.
Character design sketch.
Practice at drawing poses, dresses, expressions, and fabric, done from the stock photography of Faestock at DeviantArt
Practice at drawing expressions, done from the stock photography of Faestock at DeviantArt.
First of three illustrations done to Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
Second Metamorphosis Illustration. Tatting shuttle, a pen, and a needle and thread
Last image of the Metamorphosis illustrations. This is the final version of the one from previous posts.

Another page in the life of...

2008-03-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Hmm...It's been a while, hasn't it? Perhaps I should set a specific day to update on. Maybe that would get me updating more consistently...

Have a page out of my sketchbook. Done with pencil and grey markers (which I've found has a really nice effect on brown paper)

She's a little long (face, legs, torso...everything really), but ~~I really like the effect of the marker.~~ *Ahem* I think the effect of the marker on the brown paper works well.

Process Contiued

2008-03-04T19:50:00.000-08:00

Two posts in three days? Unheard of!

Anyway! Today was a beautiful day of 8 inches of snow and no class, so you all get another post.

So! The second step! Inking the bottle. This is fundamentally different from the watch because it relies much more on the form of the bottle and on the lighting than on specific things on the bottle itself. Inking the glass bottle is something that's a little bit more fluid and allows for more flexibility because other that the outline, it's all up to me to decide how my bottle is going to look as a (fake) 3D object.

The first image is the base outline that I did prior to taking photos. You can see my pencil sketch underneath the ink where I'm giving myself an idea of where I want to draw my lines to define the form. The sketch is rather loose.

In the second image I've followed my sketch and placed outlines in the basic spots to show the thickness of the glass, as well as the base of the bottle.

The third image you can see where I've added lines to form the top of the bottle, to show it stepping up to the neck. I've also thicked the outlines to show which side of the bottle is in shadow as well as to give more dimension to the glass. Having lines all one thickness on an image makes for a very boring image.

In the fourth image I've thickened a few lines a bit more to show form, but I've also added some hatching to indicate form and shadows.

The last image is the finished product, everything hatched, shaded, and inked.

Process

2008-03-02T17:37:00.000-08:00

That ink project from my last post is still continuing, and I think I'll keep posting as it goes along. I'm actually having a lot of fun with this project, I've a newfound love for ink and watercolor. Except my ink isn't waterproof, sadly. But that's workable.

I also, for some random reason, decided to take pictures while I was working on one of the drawings. So these pictures to the left are an example of how I ink. The preliminary pencil sketches are already laid down, and I've already got certain things outlined at the beginning, so the inking process I'm showing you is for the clock face and the inside of the glass bottle.

The first image shows the drawing with most things outlined, as well as my tools: a plasic film canister for water (these things come in awfully handy for so many things because they're airtight. I use them for paint storage, water, safety pin storage, and all kinds of things. Save 'em if you got 'em), a bottle Pelikan black ink, a scrap of fabric I use to wipe my pen nib on to dry it after cleaning it, and my trusty pen (The nib is a Hunt Globe bowl pointed nib, or so it says). The second image is a close up of the face of the pocket watch. I already have the main parts outlined, so what's left is the detail.

In the third image I've started inking the details. First I went in and inked the arrows which point to the hours/numerals. This way, even if I get off my pencil sketch, I still have a point of reference. You can also see how I go about inking, first outlining, and then filling in.

The 4th image is mainly just progress, but also shows that I turn my paper while I ink, keeping my hand out of the wet ink as well as allowing me to drag the pen properly to get different thicknesses of line.

The 5th image is just more progress, getting further along and finishing up the numerals.

The 6th and last image for today is the final pocket watch. I've finished the numerals, put in the tic-marks for the minutes, and added shadows along the edges of the watch to show the dimesions of it. Another way I did that, was to thicken the lines, you can see this along the bottom of the watch, where the base is thicker to mimic the shadow you'd see at the bottom of an object.

Next post: inking the bottle and the final product.

The Answer

2008-02-22T14:03:00.000-08:00

A couple posts back I showed a social poster designed during one of my classes for a contest in France (We've gotten confirmation that they made it, and they'll be judging the posters in late march. So around the beginning of April I'll find out if mine made the cut. And yes, Katie, your ring is on a poster in France.) I've actually been rather suprised by the answers I've gotten, both from those of you that commented here, and from classmates and friends I've showed it to. Meanings from "Marriage is timeless" to "Time is running out before marriage" to commenting on the "biological clock" to family values and things like marriage and family needing time in order to be successful.

The meaning I was trying to get across is that anymore it doesn't seem like our culture takes marriage seriously. Girls are given advice about what to look for for their first husband, their second husband, and it doesn't seem to be something that's sacred anymore, and I see this as a bad thing.

That being said, I like "Marriage is Timeless" better.

In other news, the semester has been steadily marching on, and so we've been going through a lot in my classes. This week I show you three ink drawings that I did for my Illustration class. We were to read Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis and do one cover illustration, and two inside illustrations. Unfortunately, two of these are getting scrapped because they weren't quite successful enough for the goal of the assignment.

This is actually something that happens a lot for my classes. I may
be productive and produce a lot that gets rejected before I finally achieve what I'm going for. This happens to most (if not every) artists, designers, and illustrators, a common malady, you could say. And while it is kind of tragic and seems like a waste, many of these illustrations or designs that didn't work for one thing might come in awfully handy in a later project or assignment.

Maybe this is why I'm such a packrat.

Happy Valentines Day!

2008-02-14T18:12:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines Day!

Have a Rose. (Done for a magazine layout for my Image Design class, but I think it works for this, too.)

Also, have a cool link - Some of the art of Mark Khaisman. This guy does art out of packing tape. Yes, you heard me. Packing tape. He layers the tape on plexiglass and lights it from behind, which creates a really interesting effect:

Check out more of his works at his site.

Explanation to the poster from my last post to come in the next post.

Students, All to Chaumont!

2008-02-05T21:36:00.000-08:00

Every year there is a student poster contest held in/by Chaumont, France. It was our first assignment in my Image Design class this semester to create an entry for this contest. Our posters had to be a social poster commenting on this years theme: "We, Men and Women".

I chose to comment on marriage, but that's all I'll say. I'd like to hear what any of you think the message of the poster is.

I'll post the meaning I was trying to get across in a later post.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2008-02-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

Well, maybe not completely different, it's still art.

It's been a few posts since I've put something up that wasn't done for class. I've been working on a good amount of sketches and drawings on my own, most character design. One of my friends is working on a story for a creative writing class she's in, and she plans to try to get it published once she finishes it. I've been involved in the making of the story, as she's used me as a sounding board for the initial world and story building (Which was a blast, I must say. World building is a lot of fun.) So, because of this, I've been doing a lot of the characters of that book. Maybe later I'll show the process of trying to get one of the characters looking right, but for now, what I have is a sketched and colored of one of the main/supporting characters of the book.

I was trying something new with the coloring/painting in photoshop on this one (Found in a tutorial made by Etoli on Deviantart). Making use of both the flow and opacity option on the brush tool instead of just one or the other. I find it gives me a much smoother and easier to work with brush. It also made the coloring go much faster for me than previous methods I've used. It was a nice discovery, to say the least. For those that are curious, the settings I had my brush at for most of that painting are between 60-75% opacity and between 5 and 15% flow.

The finished product

2008-01-31T14:30:00.000-08:00

Or almost finished product, at least. That image I showed in the last post was one of the ones that I chose to use in the final part of the assignment. This final part included taking one of the sketches and using it as an illustration in the context of whatever it was made for. And as that sentence made no sense, let me explain. That drawing was done with the idea that it would be part of a graphic novel. So, I took the illustration, 'finished' it in photoshop and applied it to a page layout for a graphic novel.

This is the result:

Just a single panel was all we needed, and I may have done more, but I didn't have the sketches to do so.

Comics are one thing I would like to seriously try some day. I've fiddled with them in the past, doing a project with person or that, or even trying it on my own, but none of them have been very successful. They get so far, and then things get busy. Perhaps one day I'll actually get a full story out.

That's right, more centaurs!

2008-01-27T20:35:00.000-08:00

I tell you I'm going to swear off these creatures after this project.

So, it's no suprise that I'm brininging more centaurs to the blog, but let's all pretend to be suprised and impressed, shall we?

Here we see the progression from a thumnail sketch (Take a guess at which it is. I'll give you a hint, it's not on the left.) to a larger sketch. Thumbnail sketches are used mainly to quickly get out ideas as well as to give an idea of composition. They usually take only a few seconds, a minute tops. You want a quick gestural drawing to show you what's going to be in the image. Then, later, you draw a larger version, still a quick sketch, to get more of the idea of how things are going to lay out. Once you're sure of your composition and all the elements of the picture, you do the full drawing. Or, at least, that's what my professors tell me, but I want them to show me a professional who has time to spit out 200-400 thumbnails for every project their given to work on, let alone a student. While I'm in the habit of doing thumnail sketches for my pieces, it's rare that I draw more than 15 or 20, and then I usually go straight to what will be the finished piece, whether that be an illustration I draw, or something that starts right on the computer.

Still, it's a good habit to be in, doing thumnails and many sketches, because usually the first ideas aren't the best. For this centaur project, my best ideas came from the sketches I did in the middle of the mass horde of centaurs. From about 100-150 or so out of 174.

I'm still swearing off the beasts for a good long while after this assignment is over.

Centaurs...Lots of Centaurs

2008-01-19T17:23:00.000-08:00

Today in the wonderful world of my sketchblog, I bring you thumbnail sketches. And a lot of them.

My current assignment in my new Illustration class is to do about 200 or so of these before picking the best and making larger, more detailed sketches of those. We're to use only markers, and no fine tips. The topic we were all given are the centaurs of greek legend.

While I do make thumbnails now and then, especially for my class assignments, I find myself tending to not use them too often in my free work (I should change that. At least for compositional reasons). This many thumbnails for one thing is quite unusual for me, though, I find I tend to run out of ideas pretty quickly. Good thing I have most of a week?

So without further ado....

Back from an unofficial break

2008-01-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

Tornado's in January, who'da thunk it?

In other news, I've been neglectful, I'm sorry. Hopefully, now that I'm back on routine, since the semester is starting up again, I'll be able to keep myself on track more. And hey, maybe I'll have more for you all to look at than my face in watercolor, 'eh? We'll see how things go with this semester's classes. I may even have a website to go with this blog by the end of it, what with my web design class being this semester!

Here's to a good semester of growth and good work! Have the "finished" version of that digital painting from a couple posts back (as well as an alternate crop...because I was having fun messing around)

Simple, but here!

2007-12-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

So this'll be a pretty quick post, but it's here, and I'm posting in a timely manner for once! Got to appreciate that at least.

So, I feel like I'm copping out on you all for doing this, but all I have for you this week is another watercolor...ok, so I don't feel so bad about it. It's break, I'm out of my normal routine and I don't have a scanner handy that works decently, so you all get stuck with what I got.

Enjoy!

Just in time...

2007-12-14T22:50:00.001-08:00

I bet you all thought I wasn't going to post this week! More likely my ego is large and none of you even noticed, but for whatever reason, here I am at 1 in the morning posting. Yay!

Unfortunately all you get is kind of a messy work in progress. Ever since classes let up, I've been drawing a good deal, it feels great to say the least. But I've also been working on my digital painting, because if I ever had any skill in it, well, I'm getting rusty. So I'm using what I've learned this semester in classes and applying it to digital painting, which, I must add, is a blast.

So anyway, I've picked up a few sketches and have started coloring on them using different techniques and styles and such. Needless to say, more than one have been abandoned because my attention span for this is remarkably small, but I want to improve, so I keep plugging away. Like this one, for example, which I am currently working on. Please, no critiques, I already know my mistakes.

Blood, Sweat...and Ink?

2007-12-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

So, this blog's not even been up that long and already I've missed a week. At least I have a good excuse? School obviously thinks my life is tasty, because it's been eating it like crazy. BUT! I have goodies for you now! I'll let you see one of the things that I've been working on that was due two days ago.

Meet my type Specimen book. The concept: If you could only use 6 typefaces for the rest of your career, which 6 would you choose? We chose, and then took those 6 typefaces and made a specimen book for them. We wrote the content, designed the books, drew the illustrations, got them printed, and hand bound them, even wrapping the covers ourselves, if we had hard-bound covers (Yay for scrapbooking paper!) The photos don't do it justice, but they can give you an idea.

So that's it. Front to back. It looks so much better in person, but it's there! And It's done! And it cost me way too much money and stress.

It's pretty.

Aaannnd, as a bonus for not yelling at me for having nothing up last week (all 3 of you...ooh, proportional oldstyle lettering....) Have another watercolor Self portrait.

I look like one of the heads from Easter Island, which makes me laugh, at least.

It's a Miracle!

2007-11-20T17:55:00.000-08:00

Two posts in one day? Unheard of! Except, perhaps, right before a break. And I feel guilty because my last post had a portrait that I'd already posted.

So now, have a watercolor!

This assignment was possibly my favorite of any we've done so far in my Illustration class. The assignment was do do a self portrait in watercolor, but we had to distort our faces somehow. I rather abused the wonderful thing that is Photobooth on my macbook. Did 8 paintings for that assignment because it was so much fun. I love watercolor.

Yeah.

2007-11-20T11:08:00.000-08:00

Quickly trying to get a post up before I have to go to class. Obviously, I didn't get the post up that I was wanted to last week. This isn't even that post, but I wanted to get something up. School has decided that it likes the taste of my time and brain. I will have to put school on a diet.

Everyone remember that Pastel piece that I put up a couple posts ago? Well after doing a few projects, my Illustration class scans in our assignments, digitally manipulates them, and uses them for layouts of things that we might end up designing in the real world, including books, CDs, magazine, you name it. We've even had a few people do liquor labels. So what did that pastel turn into? Why, an ad for an energy drink, of course.

There should be more...

2007-11-14T16:41:00.000-08:00

I promised a friend that I would post something tonight, so I am, even though I don't have everything done that I wanted to post. So you all get a tidbit now, and probably a tidbit later.

Somehow, I've gotten myself into the idea that I'm going to alternate between posting schoolwork and what I do in my own time. We'll see how long that lasts. But for now, my own stuff (and probably (read as "hopefully") another post later tonight or tomorrow sometime with more of what I wanted to have ready to post for today.) Every now and then I get an image in my head that I know won't leave until I get it down on paper...or at least until I get it close enough. Usually they aren't even anything special, like this time, where the image in my head was a girl standing in an oversized hoodie, slouching, and done in kind of a weird stylization. Unfortunately I couldn't get stylization down quite like it was in my head, but I like the result. I even inked it and slapped some colors on there! Without further ado:

Scared Yet?

2007-11-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Late night shifts are sure interesting. Especially when you spend the time listening to Broadway tunes. They also make you go "Hmm, I think it's time to update my blog again". Interesting, no? Anyway, I'm getting distracted, so on with the show!

My current Illustration class is all about methods and media, and so to help us do that, and just for ease, we're spending the class doing mainly self portraits. It gets pretty boring doing the same face all the time, so we mix it up. One of the recent projects was to do an off-the-wall expression in pastel. I rather like the results. The sketch is pretty awesome, too.

I, myself, am rather fond of chalk pastels (Oil pastels can walk off the face of the earth in my opinion.) There's just something fun about how messy they are. You can really dig in and get your hands dirty, and that, I think gives it personality. It's like fingerpainting with dry media.

A Page in the Life...

2007-11-06T14:17:00.000-08:00

More like two pages, really.

So, my dream is to one day become a character and concept designer/artist. So I fill pages and pages of sketchbooks with things like this. Characters, poses, expressions, anything and everything that comes to mind (Which means I get an awful lot of junk pages). These pages happen to be in a small Field Notes book I'm filling for one of my classes.

When I started on drawing characters and the like, I followed Japanese Anime closely and modeled my style after that. In he past couple years I've been trying to move my style away from it. Have I succeeded ? Not yet I don't think, but I'm getting there.

Famous Teachers

2007-11-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

Check it out! One of my professors, who has since moved on to other things, is being featured by Mac Pro!

I present to you Qian Qian

First Post!

2007-11-02T21:57:00.001-07:00

Yay for the first post!

So I'm kind of new to this. Not blogging, I've been keeping a blog for years. Rather, I'm new to keeping a sketchblog, so you all are going to have to keep me accountable to this thing...all...2 of you. Indeed.

So a little about myself, even though all of my lovely readers know me.

I'm a third year Graphic Design and Illustration student at Missouri State University. I've got two years left after this one, and after that I'm off into the wonderful wide real world. My dream job would be to be a Character and Concept designer, so that's what I've been working on in whatever spare time I can manage to scrape together.

For this blog, I'm going to be doing my darndest to post once a week at least with a sketch -- hold me to that! I need the consistency. Also correct my spelling. I need that, too. ANYWAY. These so called "sketches" will be anything art wise that I've done lately. This could be part or all of an assignment, or something I've done on my own; I'll try to keep it a good mix.

So to start us off, have this. A scratchboard self portrait from my Illustration class. Disclaimer: It doesn't look like me.