Thursday, November 13, 2008

Big Nose


Today I decided to put everything else on hold for a few minutes so I could just draw with my daughter. This is what we drew. My daughter was more impressed with the pencil sharpener than with the drawing, though.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Detach


This week's topic for Illustration Friday is "Detach," which seems kind of nebulous to me. Even though I usually try to do a new piece for the topic, I felt that this worked well for how I pictured "detach." Camping, hiking, and especially skiing are my ways of detaching from whatever might be bugging me at the time. This piece was a 5-10 min oil study that I just love. Sometimes you don't mean to make anything special and it turns out well.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Sail


"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale..."
So, I tried to push myself and see how fast I could pump out an illustration for this one. So I spent from last Friday till now trying to come up with an idea and then about 20 minutes drawing this and coloring it. I am not super happy with the color job, but better to have it done, I guess. I think the idea is still good, though. Maybe this will become one of those ideas that I revisit later when I am more patient and focused.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Poof!


This week's Illustration Friday topic is "Poof!" This hits especially close to home for me, since I experience "poof" on a daily basis. This is my morning routine.

Sketchbook

I just scanned in a bunch of stuff from my sketchbook. I thought I'd post one of the pages here and if you want to see the rest you can go hit up my gallery.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Old Wrinkled Man

For some reason I love drawing old wrinkly men; they have such personality to them. The big noses, the sagging jowels, the huge domed craniums, and the drooping earlobes. There is such experience, wisdom, and years and years of hard work behind leathered sun-beaten faces like that. This one I did as a doodle on some scrap paper but decided to ink with a brush and throw some washes of color on it. It almost gave it a Chinese look.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Horse Boy

My daughter and I just finished reading "The Horse and His Boy" by C. S. Lewis. I don't know any other 18 month old that asks for C. S. Lewis over Dr. Seuss for a bedtime story.

It was fun to read it again and it made me want to do an illustration for it. I think the colors are overly saturated, but if I keep noodling on it anymore I might go crazy.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

A Potter Painting

I gave myself a goal to do an illustration every other day. I do the thumbnails and the final drawing the first day and I tone it and color it the next. Here is my first one. I feel like it is unfinished, but my wife says to stick to my goal and move on. If you have any suggestions on how I can finish it please let me know.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Wide

This quick little doodle was done for the Illustration Friday topic "Wide"; looking at it now, however, I think that this would more appropriately fit the topic "Bizarre Genetic Experiments Involving Prominent Members of the Republican Party." Maybe it's just me, but this guy looks like a cross between Cheney, Bush, and McCain.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Monkeys



I started these for my wife a year or so ago, but things got busy and I didn't finish them until recently. I'm still not super happy with them, but they're cute. They are expressions that our daughter made as an infant portrayed by monkeys (since that is her nickname).

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Be Mine...OR ELSE!

It was back around Valentine's day when I did a doodle of this guy. I thought, "He may look mean, but I'll bet he's a tender guy underneath those spikes." So I gave him a lacy little valentine to hold to show that he is just sensitive and misunderstood.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

You're Everything That A Big Bad Wolf Could Want

Here is another "Little Red Riding Hood" character design. Definitely inspired by the Sam the Sham song. Here the wolf is a "lone wolf" who stops in at the local greasy spoon "Grandma's Place" and meets the cute waitress "Lil' Red." Originally I had him giving her a toothy grin complete with subtle wolf-man fangs, but the closed mouth smile seemed more his style.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Batman Color Key


Here's a color key I did from a Batman storyboard panel I drew as an assignment. I wanted to push some odd colors into the sky to intensify the moment. It was fun to push around acrylics again.

More Sidewalk Chalk

Here's another sidewalk doodle.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Sidewalk Chalk: Not Just for the Kids




So I have spend a lot of time outside with my daughter drawing on the sidewalk with chalk; next to going to get the mail, it is her favorite thing to do. I have really come to love drawing with chalk and charcoal on the sidewalk. Here are a few of the drawings I've done with her.

Jack Spratt Could Eat No Fat....

These are designs for Jack Spratt and his wife for a film idea I came up with that was sort of a fractured Nursery Rhymes kind of thing.
Here are some more of those African character designs I did a while back.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Musings of Simon Cowell

Usually I reserve my blog to showcase current projects and sketches, but today I am going to digress and blog about something that has been on my mind a lot lately.

It occurs to me that the rising generation in America is more privileged than any previous generation. That being said, they are also, arguably, the most damaged. Why are they damaged? I think this goes so much deeper than bad media, over-indulgence in fast food, video games, television, or even the rise of cell phones. As a society we try to blame our maladies on these things all the time and consequently we ignore the real problem. The problem is that we don't want to take the time or effort to teach them anything.

It's easier to plop a kid in front of a TV show or movie than take them outside to play or read with them. It's easier to tell a kid that there are no losers when they come in ninth, rather than explain to them that sometimes we don't excel and need to work harder and practice more. It's fast to pick up KFC or McDonald's rather than have the kids help you make dinner; it's far easier afterwards to toss the wrappers in the trash rather that have the kids help you do the dishes.

This mentality of "it's not worth the effort" has lead to a generation of over-indulged, lazy, irresponsible people who have an exaggerated view of themselves. I don't think it is coincidence that this same generation has had a dramatic increase in cases of A.D.D., A.D.H.D., and other behavioral problems. This hit home very suddenly this week as I was teaching an art class to a group of sixth graders.

I posted the work that had been done that past week up on the blackboard to critique it. I first asked d the kids what they liked about each piece and I got many responses, but when I asked what they thought could be improved about the pieces they were hesitant to speak up. I began offering my own suggestions for improvement. Some of the kids were defensive, others appeared hurt or offended. I can understand disappointment with critique, everyone experiences that, but by sixth grade I think you should be able to handle suggestions for improvement without becoming irrational. It was time that these kids learned that.

Today I sat them all down and asked them to tell me what "critique" meant. No responses, no hands, just vacant expressions. I asked them if they knew what a "critic" was. One hand. The response was , "I know a food critic says what restaurants are good and bad." Good, we had a starting place. We talked about why that would be important. I asked how many watched "American Idol." All the hands shot up (along with a lot of whispers about which contestant they liked best). I asked how many of them knew who Simon Cowell is. More hands and more whispering, mostly negative comments. I asked why they don't like Simon. "He's mean." "He makes people cry." "He doesn't say anything nice about them." Now we've hit the nail on the head. In their minds critique is an attempt by to make someone look foolish or feel bad because of poor performance. This seems to be most of America's view of anyone who offers critique.

I think Simon Cowell is pretty much always spot on. I'll admit that he can be a bit abrupt in the delivery of his critique, but he wouldn't be doing those singers any favors by coddling them.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Red Riding Hood



Here are some character designs I have been working on for "Little Red Riding Hood." The top one was very inspired by the simplistic graphical designs of Cartoon Network. The second one was more of a herald back to the Chuck Jones Roadrunner and Coyote type of animation.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Grandpa & The Bear


This was a personal project that I used for my final last semester. My grandfather always tell us grandchildren about the time he was chased up a tree by a bear while he was working in Idaho for the Bureau of Land Management. It's a great story, but I knew that as a cartoon it might be a little scary unless I embellished some bits (like the part at the end when the bear was shot or the fact that the bear was indeed trying to eat Grandpa). So I altered the story to be more little kid friendly and storyboarded it out. I really wanted to make this feel like the era that it took place in so I opted for a very retro 1950's style. These images are character shots of Grandpa and the Bear.

African Dog

Last semester in my storyboarding class we did a project based on a myth that teaches why man lives as long as he does and why he goes through the phases of life that he does. I had a lot of fun designing characters for this story and wanted to do it in a sort of African, tribal, cave-painting kind of style. This character is the dog (which we later traded out for a jackal instead), I'll add this and the other character designs to my website. They include God, a man, a donkey, and a monkey. I really enjoyed this project.