Mighe Klochwüd

Color & Story

2011-08-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

So now for the stuff I'm a little more proud of. All these images were done for a class called Color and Story. There were plenty of exercises to explore light and its effect on our perception of color, palette choices, contrasts of color, and mood and such.

This was a story told in three sequential panels at three different times of the day.

This image and the following three are from a semester long project that endeavored to flesh out key scenes, color scripts and characters from a given story. Our story was Howl's Moving Castle. Yes, I'm sure you've seen Miyazaki's adaptation, but we read the book! And these are a few scenes I took to paint. The first one is Howl using Calcifer to move the castle.

This is Sophie racing toward's the Witches fortress in the Waste to retrieve Lily Angorian.

And Sophie's first encounter with the Witch of the Waste!

Sophie returns Howl's heart.

My character lineup: Sophie, The Witch, Howl, and Calcifer!

Summer Landscapes

2011-08-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some landscape paintings I did for a class called Digital Landscape. We'd start painting them in gouache on location then go back to the labs and tweak/finish 'em. I wish I put more architectural elements in these. Anyhoo...

Some Spring 2011 Work 2

2011-08-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

I took a portraiture class with the awesome Sean Cheetham and this is some of my work out of that class. I need to rephotograph most of these oil paintings - there's some glare and the color is a little off. But you get the gist!

Some Spring 2011 Work 1

2011-08-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I tried expanding on some of the ideas I had for an adapted King Solomon's Mines. Being a bit of a dork, I set the story on an icy planet. Yeah....So, these are some more sketches of one character, Twala, and a couple of creatures inspired by the African creatures in the H. Rider Haggard novel.

Fall 2010 Work

2011-08-21T17:49:00.001-07:00

So, I know I haven't posted much in the past year. I've been pretty busy and trying to find my way of doing things. That means a lot of stumbling. But here are some highlights (?) of the past year:

This here feller was my version of an icy Alan Quatermain from a reimagined King Solomon's Mines. It was for a class called Inventive Character. The painting started out fairly graphic...then obviously took a turn toward the rendering tendencies I have.

I didn't quite care for the paintings I did for the character class, but the drawings weren't too bad. Here is my drawing for Gagool, the sinister centuries-old witch.

This painting and the following landscape studies were done on-location, taking no more than an hour and painted smaller than how it probably appears on your monitor. They were done in gouache for a landscape painting class with Dreamworks' Kathy Altieri.

And now for some concept paintin's...

These two were done for what ultimately became a matte painting that I am, again, not very proud of. So you get to see the progress. The top one is just a simple gouache idea with slight digital touch ups while the bottom one is a more detailed digital paint over. I always feel my quick stuff has some quality that is lost when its more developed...

I'm Back

2011-02-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

So I haven't posted anything in almost a year. Yeeeeeeah.

Now I'm taking a portraiture class with Sean Cheetham and this is what came out of the second week in-class painting.

Not too bad. Now for a background painting...

It was our first assignment in Background painting class with Dominick Domingo. It's just a one week assignment created from a story of my own choosing: King Solomon's Mines. I hope Haggard would be flattered if not proud.

I'll try to post more frequently and certainly post the stuff I've done over the past year. Hoo-ray!

Nude Body

2010-03-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

This was the first painting for my "Nude Body" class with Kent Williams last semester. It was a self-portrait with an inanimate object that is a representation of an animate thing. What? Yes. I tried not to take things too seriously.

Anyway, if you're wondering "Was he really neked when he took the photo reference?" The answer is "no." And "yes." Which really means "mostly," and not "totally."

This is the third and final painting of the class. We painted from a live model in class and later took photo ref to refine it. I super-refined it. Maybe too much so. But hey, both my finished paintings were hanging in the school's gallery last semester so I guess it couldn't be that bad, ay? (Maybe they just had nothing better?)

The End of the Term: Digital Life

2009-12-24T22:57:00.000-08:00

So here are in-class paintings from my Digital Life class from the second half of the semester...

Week 7

Week 8

Week 10

Week 10

Week 11

Week 11

Week 13

First post of the new semester!

2009-10-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't produced much this semester so far, but here's what I've done that's somewhat interesting. All this work is from a class called Digital Life taught by Cliff Nielsen. The class is basically a life painting class with a computer and wacom tablet. It's actually purdy fun!

This is week one - a still life. I'm a little rusty and a little slow... I haven't really painted a lot with Photoshop, but have enough experience to know my way around the program. For the class we can either use Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop. I've been sticking with photoshop the whole time so far..for better or worse.

Week 2 was another still life and I didn't get any further than the previous week!

Week 4 (I don't know where I put my files for week 3) was good to me. This here was a 10 minute pose.

This was another 10 minute pose.

A 25 minute pose. It's kinda sad that given 2.5 times the length of the previous poses, I actually accomplished less!

Week 5

Week 5 again, hour long pose.

Week 6, 10 minute warm-up.

Week 6, I believe an hour long pose.

Week 6, a 1.5 hour-long pose. Prolly my best so far

Animal Maaaaaagic

2009-08-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Some of the 'final' paintings for a fun class called 'Animal Magic.' A sugar glider, sand tiger sharks, cow jumping over the moon, mountain lion, camel, dromedary camel, and bearded dragon were all animals that we saw first-hand and drew to later paint at home. It was a fantastic learning and drawing experience whether the animals came to us at school, or we went to them at the zoo, aquarium, and wildlife reserves. Here's some sketches from in class...

MORE Sketching for Entertainment

2009-08-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

These are the final pages I used for a portfolio of the class 'Sketching for Entertainment'. There is the final composition and the ideas leading up to it.

Sketching for Entertainment!

2009-07-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Hershey kisses and acorns!

Inventive Drawing!

2009-07-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

Sketching for Illustration!

2009-07-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

Printmaking!

2009-07-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

Expressive Type!

2009-07-21T14:30:00.001-07:00

Perspective!

2009-07-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

Drawing Concepts from Term 2

2009-07-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

So yeah, this is my work from Drawing Concepts....

A Radically Condensed History of Post-Industrial Life

A less radically condensed history....

Space Flower Made of Moon Bubbles

Edifice of Vice

Crime and Punishment

Cat skull (I love me dead kitties)

Phillipe's

Defense

Comp and Painting (Part Deux!)

2009-07-21T13:27:00.000-07:00

So this is a continuation of the artwork from my second term class "Composition and Painting" with Richard Houston. Right here is a mastercopy of John William Godward that took me about 2 hours.

This is a Homer mastercopy that also took about two hours.

Quick sketch of a costumed in-class model, probably done in one hour.

Oil sketch on paper, done during one of the life drawing workshops.

Ay Mios Dio!

2009-01-06T14:16:00.000-08:00

So, I've been busy and lazy. Its a week before my next term starts and I haven't got around to photographing all my work from the past term. I'm kind of disappointed with what I've done. I didn't feel there was much time to finish projects how I'd like them. I feel there were only a handful of opportunities to actually work on something I felt motivated about. But anyhoo, I'll try to post what I did with the time alotted and assignments given...

Composition and Painting!

Rembrandt mastercopy! Yeah, we later colored on top of this monochromatic study

I was actually stoked about doing mastercopies of some of my favorite artists: Wyeth, Rockwell, Goya, and Bouguereau.

Life study of someone else doing homework at Art Center. Go Brianna!

A still life we had to set up ourselves. I think I spent around 10-12 hours on this and was probably the most successful painting I did during the term.

OOOOO, one of the few models we had to paint from during an entire class period.

And thats all I've photographed from the class. I could put up my color chart or my paintings of color blocks, but I don't think anyone wants to see that crap. I wish I scanned one my final paintings in the class: It was a Klimt emulation integrating a clown we had painted in-class. Weirdest request ever, but it came out decent methinks. If anyone REALLY wants to take a look at it, it made its way into the case by room 108. Otherwise, bleh.

Lots of drawing, a little composition, Part deux

2008-08-23T09:20:00.002-07:00

Lots of drawing, a little bit of composition, Part 1

2008-08-23T09:20:00.001-07:00

I tried to cram the highlights of 10 weeks worth of life drawing into two posts...

Ee-mah-hee-na-toe-mee

2008-08-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

It's Been a While

2008-08-23T01:58:00.000-07:00

Well, its been liketwo months since I've updated this. School just got so hectic. I'm finally close to recovering from all the pressure, all-nighters, and stress that the past few weeks of school has created. This is going to be a small update, just a taste of what I've done over th whole term. Hopefully I can give more explanation and insight in a later post. But pictures are worth a thousand words....

Head and Hands

Jeff Is God

2008-06-07T02:19:00.000-07:00

So this is the last (or first since its at the top of the blog) update of my classes so far. Its just after week 4 and I think i see a little progress in my Head and Hands class. Jeff Smith is an amazing laid-back guy but serious about feeling through the problems of drawing the head. Its not been easy adapting to his "risky" method of drawing. But it has been rewarding. Heres some of the projects we've been workin on outside of class first:

The Hundred Heads Project

Well I've done the first 12 (though I didnt quite finish the two Durer-style paintings on the piece of wood to the right). The first 3 artists I chose were Durer, Modigliani, and Schiele. I hope you can tell which is which. I think my self-portraits in the style of the artists came out decent.

The Skull's Muscles

So we've attached like 9 muscles so far. Had tests on them too. I think I got em down.

Skull Rendering

So we have a skull rendering due on week 9. I thought I'd get a head start. He asked for a rendering and he'll get one.

In-Class Work

So these are drawings from our in-class model. The first are from the very first day....lil rusty.

Week 2 came out a little better. "Feeling" it more. He doesnt want us to take proportions or measurements at all with our pencils, just use our eyes. No lay-ins or balls for the head or any kind of "weak, scared, and fearful" drawing. Just commit to something without being a puss. You can erase, but that line you draw next better be THE right line for the curve you see.

Week 4 got much better I think. Even with short poses, I think things just clicked a little faster. Week 3 was memorial day so it was two weeks without head drawing, but it all came out all right.

Comp and Drawing Thumper

2008-06-07T01:22:00.000-07:00

So drawing neked people in Comp and Drawing can be monotonous. I'll give you a glimpse into all the drawings I've done over these 4 weeks. Just a glimpse of all the beans, boxes, and basic shapes. I've tried to put them in chronological order and grouped according to the model.

Our weekly drawings of twenty random household objects....

And last week, we drew Thumper! Had a sheet of 13 Thumpers from the Disney masters and had to make up 17 more to make 30 total thumpers. I was the only one who drew small enough to get them all on one page.

Next up for comp and drawing are Bambi and Lady heads from Disney. And we actually might get to the "Composition" part of Composition and Drawing!

Design 1 oh boi!

2008-06-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

Bruce Claypool is such a way cool guy. But he is such a bitch when it comes to grading and precision. We had our first real assignment turned in yesterday and the grading curve was quite high. My twelve compositions of "problem solving" got a 10 out of 10 for their effective solutions to the concepts, but I got a 7 out of 10 for craftsmanship. Why? Well, he really didn't like the small portfolio I put them in. That's it. They were fairly perfect for being hand cut (except I used a hole puncher for the circles), but the first few slip pages of my portfolio got wrinkled mysteriously, and Bruce just generally didn't like the unoriginal idea of a portfolio as a presentation device. Whatev.

Here were my solutions for the following concepts

Figure Ground Ambiguity, Figure on Ground, Random, Order, Asymmetrical Balance, Symmetrical Balance, Diagonal, Horizontal, Vertical, Emphasis, Kinetic Energy/Movement, Black Eye Freud.

They're not in order so try and figure out which piece represents which concept.

We now have to find some uniting theme for photographs we'll take to represent these eleven compositional concepts. Uh....sounds fun, right. I thought of setting up all the fast food I eat into weird settings to do it. I do eat a lot of fast food.

Oh then the grayscale. Five hours of painting swatches to get just the right shades of gray for a perfect transition. And when I say perfect, I mean it. Nothing less will suffice. After cutting out 60 shades of gray, I picked out the 11 to make a good gradation. Bruce said it was good enough to leave alone till next week. I spent 2 hours picking them. This is what I left it at:

Le Fin

K So Now K

2008-06-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Imaginatomy. I can't love this class more. Rey talks a lot and could surely go on for hours about his immense knowledge of the anatomy of EVERYTHING. But its great to learn about every facet. Form certainly follows function. We're continuing to work on our human skeletons which are starting to take shape nicely. Some progress shots:

after week 2 -

after week 3 -

after week 4 -

So while we were constructing the human skeleton bone by bone, we started to think about our creature and had to present six different silhouettes of ideas. They could be similar or along a similar theme, but I chose to do a variety. I looked at a lot of skeletons and weird animals, but I think my ideas still came out somewhat tame:

He liked the top one and the little one. I remember him telling everyone that most people like to do the typical giant-could-eat your-house-evil-looking creature. Thats the top one. But he also said very few go down the small or mundane road. The cows and rats of the universe. So thats why I threw in the little cute creature. He thought it would be cool to do something non-monsterish and stand out that way. I thought "Hell yeah." So I'm doing the lil guy. I thought it would be a mix between a frog, kangaroo, kangaroo rat, and rabbit. Jackie dubbed it the "Rangaroo." That fits.

It's Rainin' in Sow Pas

2008-05-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

There's a war zone outside my room. Flashes of light are piercing through my windows while the pitter-patter of rain soften what I don't think I've heard in years - THUNDER! There's a freakin storm here in Pasadena.

A storm. A tame one, but I'll take it.

It's the middle of the second school week and there hasn't been any metaphorical thunder and lighting yet. No ominous clouds of huge, seemingly unsurmountable projects on the horizon. It seems quiet. Like a cliche calm before the storm. Though I can see it will get very busy, very fast near the end.

Jeff Smith, my Head and Hands teacher on Mondays, has given us a week-by-week assignment list which is helpful. The big project that seems little now is what he calls the 100 Heads Project. We picked 25 artsist from classical Western to Japanese and Comic-book artists. From each of these artists we have to replicate three of their head drawings/paintings on a 3" x 4" surface (paper, board, wood). Then we have to do one self-portrait for each of the twenty-five artists we chose, drawing it in the artist's own style. So, 25 ARTISTS x 4 PIECES IN THEIR STYLE = 100 HEADS. Oh, but heres the kicker. Those 25 self-portraits. We'll have to make a book out of them. Scan them, enlarge them on the computer and print them about 12" x 18." Oh, I almost forgot! Along the way we will be attaching the separate muscles of the head (made out of clay) to a plastic skull we bought until one half of the skull is covered in muscle. It'll look cool. Jeff is a really cool guy, but right now I don't know if I appreciate all the work right now.

My comp and drawing teacher, Will Weston has got LOVE for THE BEAN. His life revolves around THE BEAN. I think he loves it so much he wants to share that joy with us students. He has us break down the human figure into a bean torso, showing which part of the bean comes forward and overlaps itself. I get what he's saying and why he's introducing an intro to basic shapes, form, and construction. But c'mon. This week we added "boxes" to our beans. Making the pelvis and rib cage a curved but angular sorta box shape, to understand the front, sides and back of the figure. Also, I guess to understand what you're seeing and leading up to putting shadows on the form. I should call him Mr. Bean.

My weeks would be better if I didn't have to wake up at 7 am 4 out of the 5 days of class. It'd be even better if I didn't have Writing Studio. After dodging another 90 minute writing sample (the last one in Writing Studio: Intensive got me into this regular Writing Studio class. HOORA!), our teacher Ms. Dalton gave us some reading to do in a packet. She loves packets and short essays on photography. These were art reviews. So we read them and then tried to go out in the world and find two other art reviews, analyze their format and structure (why the author says what where) and write a brief essay on that. All in preparation for writing our own art review at a current show. Thats kinda cool, but now I gotta find some decent galleries with work I'd actually enjoy writing about.

Design 1 seems like my old 2d design class with Christine Oatman at Palomar. We've been cutting out black shapes to arrange on white paper to convey certain themes. sounds fun. And we presented a poster of what we thought was "Good" design and what we thought was "Bad" design in eight different categories (mostly of Art Center majors). I think it went well.

Imaginatomy! I am speechless about this class. I'm the most excited I've been about any class in a looooooong time. Before we dive into our creature's anatomy (which we still have to present 6 different ideas on next week), we're gonna start off by building our own human skeleton. SWEET!

Anyway, it looks like theres some actual sunlight in my room now. I guess the exciting part of the storm has passed. Sad. I guess I'll have to get some work done now.

First Day, First Class, First Project

2008-05-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

The first day of class was ok. I had Writing Studio: Intensive with Ethan Johnson. He seemed ok, until he decided to give us another writing evaluation test. A "sample" he called it. He intends to use it threefold: to determine our ability as writers, to compare it to if he suspects plagiarism, and to have on file as a comparison to the final essay. At least this essay prompt was better than the one in orientation. It gave a short article titled "The Newer, Darker Hero" about how pop culture heroes are becoming more brutal and generally immoral compared to their past counterparts. It was interesting writing about "the changing nature of the hero" and if we saw this evolution as negative or not.

After 90 minutes we had to turn em in and he skimmed each one to see if we belong in the intensive class or not. He put mine in the pile to be reviewed for advancement. Score.

No department was open after the class, so I couldnt talk to anyone about the changes I still neede to make. I went home...

and started on my own personal project. Its just a drawn outline on board right now but I'll paint over it soon.

lates bitzes

Art Center is F***ING AWESOME

2008-05-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

So this was the fourth and last day of orientation for first term peeps like myself. After meeting lots of new people, hanging around and getting lost in L.A., as well as having scary stories about crazy teachers and all-nighters thrown at us n00bs, I think this is gonna be a great place. Want some details, you say? Well here's a 'lil recap of the first three days:

Day Uno

I started off on the wrong foot. The completely wrong foot. The wrong foot 12 miles away from where I was supposed to be.

I recieved a letter from Art Center a couple weeks back giving a vague idea about what was gonna happen on each day of orientation. The letter said to meet at the "Ahmanson Auditorium" at 9 am on Tuesday morning. OK. I hadn't heard of or seen this auditorium before but I figured it was on campus somewhere I didn't go investigate. So I went to ask one of my roommates about it. He hadn't heard of it either. Great. I decided to turn to trusty 'ol Google.

And being that good never-lets-me-down friend that Google is, it gave me an address for an "Ahmanson Theatre." It was close enough so, HAZAA! It was in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. "Weird," I thought, "having an orientation off campus. Whatev, man. It says its there and thats where I'll be!"

So, I go downtown first thing Tuesday morning. I found some parking (not free though) around the listed address for the Ahmanson and walked around to find it. Well, the "250 S Grand Av" that was listed was wrong. Google gave me the address to the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art). Crap. But, I remembered seeing some signs with "Ahmanson" on them. So I walked down a couple of blocks and found a complex of some huge separate theatres. I found a little map and directory of the plaza and found which one the Ahmanson was. Piece-O-Cake, right? I just go there and find the other students. Wrong. The doors were locked up, with nothing around except for some old smoker and some noisy construction on an adjacent building. I decided to call Art Center.

The receptionist told me, "Oh, we have our own Ahamanson Auditorium." No shit. So I said I'd be there soon and started to head back to my car. Or so I thought. I start heading into unfamiliar territory and couldn't find the street I parked on. I figured, "Hmm, I guess I headed the wrong way," and turned back. After a few blocks the other way, I knew I had officially become lost. I broke down and asked a hotel attendant where I can find the street I parked on. He conveniently had a map and showed me I had pretty much walked in a circle. So I had to head back....over 1 block, down 5, and over about 4 more. The street I was looking for didn't run through the way I was headed correctly in the first place. It stopped a block west of where I was looking for it.

I got to my car and was going to pay the parking peeps. I forgot they don't take cards, so I had to head to the nearest cash machine a block down. More walking....It was Bank of America's atm and I don't have an account there so I had to live with being charged $3 to get some goddamn cash. But I did it. Headed back up to the parking, gave the mexicans their cash, and figured out how to get back to Art Center. All the time walking around pumped the parking fee up to 20 bucks. I had just wasted 2 hours and $23.

I was relieved to get to Art Center. Everyone wasn't even in the Ahmanson Auditorium at school anyway. I guess I dodged sitting through 2 hours of information punching and inspiration injecting presentations. No critical info or stuff I didn't already know. I met up with the other Illustration majors and had a lil sit-down brief get-to-know-each-other pow-wow in a cold room. The general ackwardness ensued. Our mentor's name was Oscar. He was a lil fella with glasses and hair that kind of funneled to a point in between his eye brows. He was cool, but we could tell this was probably his first time doing this sort of thing.

We made acquaintences until lunch. Got some chow, and talked a 'lil more. Then I heard about the test. I knew we were all required to take a writing test, but found out it was just after lunch. Fantastic. That would give me some time to freak out about it; I hadn't written anything critical in years...well except for the essays for the Art Center admission. But I had weeks to do those. Art Center gave us just 90 minutes to come up with something amazing.

Oscar hearded us out into the cold and wet faculty parking lot to take the test in the annex building next door, which housed some extra rooms and the financial aid office. We sat in another cold room. I think everyone was a little nervous. We came here to do some art dammit, not write about when Pollock shat his pants over some Indian sandpaintings.... or better - how we feel about that. Oscar handed out our prompts and everyone tore off sheets of paper from a pad. Our prompt was about how some old art critic, John Ruskin, got all pissy over people not using the new cameras to examine and critically look at nature. They just took a picture and were done with it. So we were supposed to relate that somehow to our current state of digital technology. The question read soemthing like "How has the recent digital technology aided us to see and look critically." I thought it didn't, but I wasn't about to say that. I'm pretty sure I blew it. I wasted some time on brainstorming and pumped out a 3 paragraph essay to keep me from being placed in the ESL class. I left relieved.

I could've gone home but stayed to take an optional test to waive the Digital Design I class. It was a multiple choice test all about Photoshop and Illustrator. Easy. Breezy. Beautiful. Digital Design test. I got 89% and was able to waive outta that class. Booya! Too damn much in one day.

Day Dos

This is getting long. So I'll get to the point. Kinda

Day two was awesome. After some free breakfast we all sat down for another presentation and some Q & A with a panel of current students. Took a tour of the campus (oh boi! like I haven't seen this place six times already). Free lunch again. And then something cool - the optional Exploring L.A. trip

Ok, so it wasn't a whole lot of exploring L.A. But it was definitely my best decision so far in this orientation. No one had to go, and there was a short list of people who signed up to go. Even fewer people actually showed up for the trip. But the 15 of us left on a huge bus anyway. I should have taken my camera. Venice beach offered some psychotics and wild characters: A roller-skating jamaican with an afro playing an electric guitar attached to an amp around his waist serenaded one of our girls, while some dude shouted about voting Hillary into office as he balanced on a short ladder with a stick on his head, two fake snakes in his hand, and a group of people surrounding him for the photo opportunity. Oh yeah and we spotted just a couple of the world famous, leopard print bikini-clad body-builders at the outside gym. One of them had a boombox playing "The Warrior" I believe. Apparently the weekends are better and this was tame. I'll have to go back

But the best thing about the trip wasn't the freaks or the huge bookstore dedicated entirely to art books (Hennessey & Ingalls in Santa Monica. It's AWESOME!!). All of us in our little group got to know each other pretty well. The film majors, the product designers, the environmental design girl, graphic designers, fellow illustrators...it was the best part of the orientation I think. In just a few hours everyone turned from knowing almost no one at the school to making hopefully long-lasting friendships. Everyone came from somewhere different (Taiwan to Missouri to Switzerland) and had a great story to tell. And by the time we sat down for dinner at CPK, I think we all felt a little more comfortable with our little place in this big town. I don't know how else to put it. Except we were really damn tired afterwards.

Day Trace

Showed up and sat through about 4 hours of presentations by various departments with only a 45 minute lunch in between. A LOT of INFORMATION. And not a whole lot of retention. The best part was the relaxed and comical Career Developement ladies. They entertained us and we entertained them for the last 30 minutes before we got our official student I.D. cards. A long day but fairly uneventful.

Day Cuatro

I woke up and immediately checked my inside.artcenter.edu to check out my schedule and found that I was placed into the "Intensive" writing class. And since I waived out of the Digital Design class, I had only four classes total.

Showered and showed up to school to find just a handful of students there at 9 am. None of them knew exactly what we were supposed to do. I tried to resolve any last minute stuff with the staff (like my schedule). I had to replace my waived class with something since I figured it was a pretty small load (relatively) of four classes. So, I tried to get some insightful advice. I talked to a counselor and she sent me over to Enrollment. Talked to them and they said to consult a counselor. Great. I asked if the Department Chair was available and was informed that she was unexpectedly off to a conference with the Assistant Chair. Even better. I had no one to talk to about it. Wasted some time in the library with an illustration girl and then a film major buddy until lunch. Another assistant chair dude came and sat with us. He was cool and chill but made a lot of references to high school, which I thought was odd since most of us had already been to college and had an average age of 23. But he was funny and informative. He gave a lil illustration group meeting with another department helper and thankfully gave me a better idea of what I can do to fill up my schedule.

And now I'm just sittin at home writing this, waiting for the 6 o'clock Sunset Social. Should be fun. It's been a good orientation...but just a little drawn out.

YAY ART CENTER!!!

New Times

2008-05-04T19:40:00.000-07:00

This has been a long time coming. I just finished moving up to Pasadena. This is gonna be my first night in P-Dena and hopefully the first of three great years. Got a new futon, new rolling chair, new (kinda) drafting table, new glasses, and finally got myself a haircut. Excited? You bet. Ready? Not a chance.

Some new stuff y'all

2008-04-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, so to take abreak from painting, I decided to go back to my love of drawin'. Mmmm-mm I can taste the graphite. Anyway, I've done these studies over the past few weeks. All of them are about 8' x 12" with black and white charcoal on toned paper. Enjoy!

So, this is a study of good 'ol Leonardo...das right homies, da Vinci. Anyhoo, it was from a cartoon (no not the spongebob kind) he did back in his prime. I think this is his best rendition and amiable expression for the Virgin Mary.

This is one of two studies I did of one of my favorite widely-underrated artists - William Bouguereau. He was a French dude living in the 19th century and his work, although popular at the time, was eventually overshadowed by the up-and-coming Impressionists and the modern era of art that followed (amateurs, all of 'em). This particular study is part of a painting right here in sunny (bleh) San Diego titled "Young Sheperdess." I focused on the head portrait of the girl rather than tho whole composition.

Another Bouguereau study, but this time its of a whole painting called "Evening Mood" or whatever that is in french. I always like his balanced images - very calm, soft, wonderful combo of both hard and soft edges (uh mostly soft...), glowing paint, extremely subtle value changes...just perfection of composition, luminosity, color harmony, and figure drawing. Ok, I'm done worshiping him

And this is a product of the other studies but using a stock photo as reference. I tried to use what I learned from the other studies and make it my own with a photograph. Ken Joudrey, my instructor, likes it so I guess its good nuff.

Next post: World of Warcraft painting sketches and progress shots!

Same ol Biznis

2008-03-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

So I got some updates on paintings. I haven't blogged for a month, so this should be packed, right? Not quite...but I got some progress shots of that pandora painting thats taken fo-eva:

This is where the painting stands today (colors may be a little off) and i think its come a long way since I first began. A lot of little details were added that hopefully gave it a second read.

And the following paintings are tiny in real life - 5" x 5". They were done for my brother in a just a few hours in acrylic. Its a good sign of me getting just a little faster...hopefully.

le fin

Beginnings and Ends

2008-02-23T02:08:00.000-08:00

So, heres my progress on Pandora. I'm relieved to see I'm almost done. Color has always been an issue with me so I'm going to have to work that out a bit, hopefully with just some simple glazing. Theres a lot of little touches and things I have to do, but for the most part its the beginning of the end.

The Mod, on the other hand, is far from finished....
After some direction for more "bulky" armor, I sketched this:

I think I could still go bulkier, but I just don't want to go rediculous crazy immobile bulky.
And heres some more creature sketches. I was told to be less "Cloverfield" and more "alien." The body should be pretty humanoid and muscular - a perfect human body. Fast, strong, and menacing. Well, two outta three ain't bad? So since the body was more set, I focused on the head and tried for something more "not from this world" (not related to the commercialized Jesus store). Still I think I have a long way to go as far as these concepts...they're just too predictable (some still look too "earthy") and shotty (not enough thought or time spent on em).

Anyway, in other news, I got a letter for Valentine's Day a day late. It was my new lover Art Center. If you don't know already, I got accepted! I'll have to say goodbye to Palomar very soon. I'm going to start in the summer and hire David Blaine to figure out how to make 15 grand to appear outta thin air.

I love you too, Art Center

Fish!

2008-02-07T13:12:00.000-08:00

So here's my latest progress on Pandora. It's getting increasingly frustrating for some reason. I'm worrying over the color harmony all of a sudden even though I still have some playing and glazing to do. My instructor did a little demo on it (the top right part of her clothing) after I asked him how he paints. So hopefully he can quell my concerns over color. But I just had to put it aside and sketched out some ideas for the MOD....

Ok, so these look more like some poor creature you'd see in a bad Godzilla film (are there any good Godzilla films?). But we need them to be somewhat human in structure (bipedal, posable thumb, lack of twenty slug legs, etc.) to make the animations easier and gamplay more cohesive between factions. It was nice just to play around though. I obviously looked at some undersea creatures. They all look like they're from another world (and they practically are: most of the ocean is completely unexplored). So I figured some inspiration from "unda da sea" might create something more alien-monstery. But I should try to be less obvious about where I draw inspiration.

In other news (or lack of it), I haven't heard anything from Spectrum or Art Center yet. I sent in three prints of paintings to Spectrum for the annual contest more than two weeks ago but they havent even taken out the admission fee yet. I'm wondering if they even got it. Oh well.

boo-yakasha

meh

2008-02-01T00:03:00.001-08:00

looks like sasquatch with armor

Art Center and More MOD

2008-01-31T00:04:00.000-08:00

So, yeah I dropped off my portfolio at Art Center. I tried to put "finishing" touches on my essays (one which still probably didn't address what the prompt was getting at but whatever...) , remembered to date all of my pieces at the last minute (which half I made up since I can't remember when I did them), signed all the sheets and gave 'em the nonrefundable fiffty bucks. I was kind of relieved it was done. But I was also reeeaaallly worried. I saw a lot of other portfolios just sittin there; I mean there were about 15 or so freshly shipped packages...most with really nice personal designs on them, like a huge business card. They were all obviously goin for the same thing -- submitting it for the entry scholarships. I saw my portfolio (a huge Uhaul box) and suddenly felt I had a better chance of teaching an octopus quantum mechanics than being accepted...much less recieve a scholarship. I was a little shaken. I hope I hear soon the good/bad news. Other stuff from the past week...

I've made some goals for paintings and whatnot. Since I'm quitting my work the 16th of February, I'll have A LOT more time to focus on personal stuff. So, I made an arrangement with a teacher to help me out with some promotional pieces. I'm going to come up with a piece to show Upper Deck's art department. They make the World of Warcraft trading cards and after seeing some of the paintings on the cards, I'm pretty sure I could do better. I'll just figure out what to paint. And I'm also going to enter into an illustration contest with a money prize! Downside is, its for a creator was the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. yeah....whatever I'll take the 5 grand!

More plans for the mod, but not enough work on it. This is just a quick sketch I whipped up tonight for a different armor...a little bulkier and heavier, but not enough

Personal Proyectos

2008-01-20T21:47:00.003-08:00

So I've had a couple ideas for a while and haven't really fleshed them out yet. I managed to get some really nice frames from where I work (for free! they were "oops" frames) and figured they'd work great with these ideas. Problem and blessing is that frames are HUGE!! 38" by 50"! So, since I'm gonna be painting big, I wanna flesh out all the details beforehand. The pics below are the first idea roughly sketched. There'll be a boy companion to go along with it. I don't know if you can even see what I'm getting at here, but its a little symbolic. Keys in the background, a door knob, and a mischeivious young girl on a bed with her bare feet nestling grass...its supposed to be subtly provocative. The boy version will be a bit more....overt. Enjoy?

the last here is a digital rough value thumbnail with some details being rendered slowly.
Yep...I'm done

MOD!

2008-01-20T21:47:00.002-08:00

So me and a friend have this project to create a mod (modification of an existing game but still using same game engine) of Half-Life II. We create our own story, characters, environments, models, the whole shebang. Guess whos the entire art department. Yup, me! So, granted I've been lazy but after doing some sketches of military type characters, I drew out a more detailed gettup (but not finalized). And no modeling could begin without some orthographic views! Would like to tell you more about it, but its just too comlex and this is only a sample of the work we'll have to do for it. Hopefully I'll find time to get more done. Enjoy!

Back and Black

2008-01-20T21:47:00.000-08:00

Fo shnizzle dizzle. In between work, the holidays, school, preparing for Art Center, and personal laziness, I got into a bit of a rut. So, trying to recover from a bumpy start, I'm going to make this blog a regular thing. Without further ado:

My Projects

Pandora
Since like last year I've been working on this painting. It's supposed to be a painting of the myth/legend of Pandora. Why no box? Maybe you should read the original text - Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. No box, just a big jar called a pithos. Anyway, this is far from finished, the face looks a little pasty but I have to do someglazes and fix the lips and whatnot. I was hoping to get it done before the 25th so that I could enter into the Spectrum annual contest. But it ain't gonna happen and I don't think its good enough anyway. Oh well. Here's some progress pics...

cant put any more pictures on here so i'll make a new post to continue...

My First...

2007-09-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

serious blogging adventure, inspired by one Ash Thorp (http://progressofprogress.blogspot.com/)

I'm hoping this will give me motivation and kick my arse in gear to produce work and sketch like there's no tomorrow. Here's to hopes cuz laziness is addictive.