Some new stuff y'all

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

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

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!

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

looks like sasquatch with armor

Art Center and More MOD

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

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