11/29/12

This This is Really Cool

(Picture of the a9 rig from the fundraising site)



A friend of mine showed me this fundraising campaign on indiegogo: Click HERE to check out the fundraiser.  It's an armature rig for artists (or really anyone that needs an armature for any reason).  From the images and video presentations it looks like a really useful tool and I thought it was worth a donation, so I've already pledged to get one of the large armatures.  These look way cooler than the traditional wooden ones art and crafts stores carry - without being ridiculously expensive.  Oh and the other cool thing about this fundraiser - no risk. If Kamal Siegel (the inventor) does not reach his goal everyone gets a refund, if he does reach his goal you get exactly what you pledged for - no "Well I didn't reach my goal so you don't get your pledge and I keep the money" on this fundraiser. Anyways, just wanted to share for anyone who might find this as useful as I do.

11/28/12

Art Educators 2012 Opening!


Opening reception November 29th 4-7, regular exhibition hours M-F 1-4
Come check it out! I put a couple of new pieces in it.

11/25/12

I Draw Some Pretty Weird Stuff

Well it's been a little while since my last post, so I wanted to update with some pages out of my sketchbook.  I just recently finished up some pieces for an art show (more details coming later) and I've been working a lot in my sketchbook; so in lieu of the pieces I created for the art show (because I don't have them at the moment) here are some sketch pages:

(Kind of a reminds me of an angry ditto)


(...oh hai there...)


(Hairless space-gorilla or something...)


(Someday I'll be a beautiful butterfly)


(Want to go on a date?)

11/6/12

Chair Persons

(Digital Media)

Just wanted to get around to posting up this digital painting I worked on. It's a group portrait via still-life. In this type of portrait it is important to convey a sense of the people involved through the use and arrangement of still-life (in this case chairs). After visiting the New Britain Museum of Art a few weeks back and checking out their digital illustration exhibit, I was inspired to try a work done in Corel Painter to give it a painterly feel that Photoshop doesn't do as well. Corel Painter is a pretty cool program, at least from what I can tell from using the "Essentials 4" version - I think it would be cool to see what's available in the professional version. Anywho, that's enough from me. Until next time!

10/29/12

Genesis Coupe Finished!

(Digital Media)

Hey all!  Well sittin here in Connecticut during Hurricane Sandy has given me some time to catch up on a long list of projects. So I made sure to finish this drawing up while I still had power (fingers crossed that I don't lose it as the lights keep flickering around me). Anywho, I'm glad I had a chance to sit down and finally finish this over the course of the past week. Below is a series of work-in-progress shots leading up to the final product you see above, take a look!




10/26/12

24-Hour Comic Book Day work

Hey everybody! So 24-Hour Comic Book Day was awesome! It was really great to sit down for an extended period of time with no goal other than making some art - plus I got to work alongside some other creators and it was a really great time.  Unfortunately I didn't make my goal of 24 completed pages; however I did quite a bit done and mostly finished. I have some edits and small changes I would like to make in addition to adding text to the pages themselves, but otherwise I'm a few pages closer to another comic. I bet you're asking yourself, "What was the most challenging part of the event?" Well, aside from trying to stay awake for 24 hours, it was the actual writing/creating/planning. Usually when I'm going to make some work (or in the case of my last comic) I can spend weeks upon weeks just letting the idea sit and changing it until I come up with a final project. Working on this new story was part planning and part making it up as I went along (since per the rules we weren't allowed to start the event with any ideas or pre-planning). OK, enough talk from me, here's a few pages that I scanned in.  They're mostly finished.





10/20/12

24-Hour Comic Book Day!

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while - but I do have some new stuff to put up soon. Otherwise just a bit of news: I will be participating in 24-Hour Comic Book day tomorrow (or technically today as it's 2:00 in the morning...) at Legends of Superheros in Middlebury, Connecticut.  I'll be there around 10 or 11:00am until 10/11:00am on Sunday.  I'll be working alongside a few other local artists with the goal of each creating a 24-page comic book in just 24 hours... which is CRAZY.

CRAZY-AWESOME that is! Ok time to get some sleep!

9/28/12

30-Day Drawing Challenge! Group Six - DONE!


DONE! DONE! DONE! Last group! Well, it's been quite an interesting past 30 days, some days were definitely more fun than others, and some days I just had more time to work on it - but I loved the experience and learned a lot.  I think I started developing a really fun drawing style that I plan on working with in the future. My favorite out of this group was day 27 - mostly because I'm in it.

26. A Comic


(Slenderman!)

27. Last request if the world was ending

 (So if the world was ending - I'd just try to go to another world)

28. A MEME fight

 (It's going to be a quick fight)

29. A greeting card drawn with non-dominant hand

 (Brings me back to the days of poor motor skills...)

30. A banner celebrating being DONE!

(DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE)

9/21/12

30-Day Drawing Challenge! Group Five

Group number five! Ok so I've really gotten hooked on the whole colored paper with pen/ink and whiteout. I decided that doing a book cover to a book I've never read would be more interesting than redesigning one where I already know everything about it. Also, have you taken a re-read of Jack and Giant Beanstalk recently? In the version where the giant didn't kill his father and terrorize the village - it's just a story of a kid who is invading this man's home, stealing from him, and eventually killing him, ie: Jack's the bad guy! Anyways, points to anyone who knows who Lord Jabu Jabu is without googling it.

21. A Monument coming to life and wreaking havoc


(LIBERTY SMASH!)

22. Redesign a book cover

 (*I've never read it - but it's how I imagine they look the whole time)

23. A freaking baby


 (A freaking baby freaking out)

24. A fairy tale


 (Fi-Fie-Fo-Fum)

25. A doodle

(My doodle ended up looking like Lord Jabu Jabu)

9/17/12

30-Day Drawing Challenge! Group Four


Group number four! I had a lot of fun going back to prismacolor markers for the Jedi drawing, but I was saddened to find out I had quite a few drying out... which is unfortunate when they cost like $4 a marker.  The battlesuit is my favorite drawing of this bunch, I'm really liking using a colored paper with marker/ink and whiteout/white paint pen.  It's bringing me back to me drawing classes where we used colored paper with black charcoal and chalk/white conti. Well, that's all for now, see you soon!        


 16. Influential person as a Jedi Master

 (Socrates! Though it sort of just looks like Obi-Wan...)

  17. A battlesuit designed for a mundane task

 (Spreading "Iz Not Butter")

 18. Zodiac sign as a warrior or wizard

 (Warhammer-Beastman inspired ARIES ram warrior)

 19. A pirate

 (Come on! Come on! Let's go space truckin'!)

20. An elderly person doing Kung-Fu

(The retirement home was never the same)

9/15/12

"Your art has value"

Ok, I'm running a little behind on scanning up the next batch of drawings, but I'm going to try to get around to them tomorrow.  Until then I would like to share an article that a friend and fellow illustrator shared with me.  It's a great bit of advice to other illustrators (or really anyone in the art field) about how to avoid bad clients.  The message here is this, don't work for nothing or for cheap clients, many times I've had people ask me about some potential work only to be surprised/angry/confused as to why I would quote them a price that was more than the $40 they planned on spending. So go ahead, it's a quick read and full of some good information: A Steady Diet of Bad Clients

9/10/12

Portrait of a girl

 (Pen and Ink)

Just a stylized portrait practice for a potential future project.

9/9/12

30-Day Drawing Challenge! Group Three

Group three! Half-way done! Day 14 gave me a good excuse to revisit a sketch I had done some time ago. Also, hurray for crayons!

11. Non-threatening super-villain

 (He hates bubbles!)

  12. A man-eating plant

 (Feed me Seymour!)

 13. A flying vehicle

 (Flying city)

 14. A zombie

 (You Block-Head!)

15. A robot

(1001001001111001010011)

9/3/12

30-Day Drawing Challenge! Group Two

Ok so here we go, group number two.  Admittedly some of these get a little more time than the others, depends on the kind of day I'm having and how much work I have to do.  Also, the 5-minute "blind" Batman drawing is my favorite of the bunch - I should try doing more drawings with my eyes closed.



 6. Closed-eyes drawing of Batman

 (BATMAN!)

  7. A real or fake dinosaur

 (All I could think of was "Reptar on Ice")

 8. Something changing/evolving/transforming/morphing

 (Seriously...who would have thought that Magikarp could evolve into something so cool?!)

 9. A favorite food as a "Gift from the Gods"

 (Well I decided to go with Mario's favorite food at his time of need)

10. A super-hero with a "useless" superpower

(With the ability to shrink the size of his legs!)

8/29/12

30-Day Drawing Challenge! Group One

Hey everybody! Guess who got their computer back?! (For those of you unaware, my laptop was having some issues but it's all fixed now) So during the past week I've had to take an impromptu break on the Genesis Coupe project, so I decided to start a 30-Day Drawing Challenge.  I remember having stumbled across a few of these some time ago and created my own hybrid list for 30 days of drawing awesomeness by using some of what I felt were the best ideas from several lists gathered on the internet (along with a few tweaks of my own of course). So, rather than make 30 annoyingly short posts, I've decided to break them up into 6 slightly longer annoying posts! Hurray! Below is the first set:


 1. A self-portrait

 (What an attractive young man)

  2. A monster

 (It's what's on the inside that counts)

 3. An inanimate object coming to life


 (What a HORRIFYING moment to come to life)

 4. A president as a ninja


 (President Taft as a NINJA-Turtle)

5. A favorite word

(How I imagine it looks when someone says this word)

8/21/12

Genesis Coupe WIP

Hadn't posted in a while so I figured I would keep you all up-to-date on my current project.  I'm doing an illustration of a red 2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe. You may remember the sketch I did of it some months ago in THIS blog post.  But this time, I'm going all out in a full, more-than-two-hours drawing this time. So here's a couple of WIP shots.

 (Digital Media)

 (Digital Media)