Summer Painting Course Finished

Well, I'm officially on summer vacation now. Woohoo! I ended up finishing my painting/illustration today in class, and boy was it exciting to remove the tape! Sorry for the picture, but it shines in every direction except this one. I'll have a scan up within a week or so once it's dry.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, and thanks to everyone that gave me feedback on it. If I didn't take your advice, don't take it personally. I was looking more for what you didn't see rather than what you did. Oh, and it's oil on watercolor paper. I can't remember the exact size, but I'll measure it when I scan it in. Happy Summer Everyone!!

Summer Painting: Reclining Sleeper

So I've only got one day left for my summer painting class. It definitely flew by. Here's one that I finished today. I'd say it's about a four hour painting. I really wanted to basically throw colors onto the canvas to imply the structure of the composition, 18 x 24. I should have more updates either tomorrow or Saturday for the rest of my paintings.

Double Head WIP

Here's just a progress shot of my new painting. I've only got the underpainting and one layer of the skin down, but so far so good. The background is gonna be a medium-light olive at the top with a transition into a dark bottom. I haven't decided yet if I want the torso to be obviously detached from the legs or if I should fade it into the dark as well. That'll probably be the last thing part I work on. I'm hoping to get this finished midweek next week so I can fit more than one other painting in, but we'll see.

New Painting Comp: Advice Needed

So I'm starting this new painting in my summer class with Kortlander, and I'm starting to wonder a few things about it and could use some creative input. It's supposed to be along the lines of "which face to put on" (kinda cliche, I know, but you'll get over it). At this point, I want to hear if you see it as that or not. Also, if anyone feels like the background (which is gonna be darker) needs anything or if the composition itself needs something else for interest. Kortlander mentioned something that he saw in it, which I can't get out of my head, and wanna hear if that's the first thing you see too. Thanks!

Oh.. and I'm supposed to be starting this tomorrow in class, so any advice would be awesome sooner rather than later.

Also, here're a few sketches from in class. The one at the top was the initial sketch for the painting idea.

Last Portrait Painting & First Day of Summer Painting!

So the semester's finally over! BUT, I've still got summer class. Luckily, for anyone who cares, I'll be posting a lot of the work I do during my two week painting course. Today was the first day, and so far the class seems like it'll be pretty great. We're allowed to do pretty much whatever we want. The first half of class, I did an underpainting of a figure seated with a few extra chairs around him, just to get in the habit of painting early (class starts at 8am). After lunch, I tried thinking of what I'd do for an illustrative painting, couldn't think of anything, and eventually decided to just sketch the second model a bit and play with some acrylics in my fake moleskin sketchbook.

The first two images on this post are of the last painting from Jason Clary's portrait painting class. We ended up having one less day on it than originally pitched, and the main model in my shot didn't show up one day, so I didn't get quite as far into it as I'd hoped, but I still got it pretty close. The last image is the random sketching and painting I did in the last part of class.

Street Swimmers

Here's my final for illustration class. I wanted to do something semi-realistic with a bit of a surreal twist, and this is what I came up with; quintuplets swimming in a puddle from a fire hydrant.

The Hungry Artist

Here's a self-portrait I just finished for my portrait painting class (and yes, that is McDonald's food sitting on my easel). I decided to go very expressive (and chunky) with it. You can't really tell in the full sized picture that much (sorry for the low quality, it's still really shiny), but it's definitely obvious in the detail below. I've been slowly going into this expressive style in my fine arts classes lately. Last week I finished a portrait with two models that's got a bit of energy in it. I should have that one uploaded tomorrow if we get them back, if not it'll be Thursday. Hope everyone's not killing themselves over finals, and congrats to all that finished last week!

Finished Gatsby Cover and Ducks!

So here's my final book cover design for The Great Gatsby. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, happier than I've been on any of my other finals from black & white. The title on the spine is definitely hard to read, but ya' know, if they wanna see what book it is, they can just look really close... haha. I ended up finished it around 6am this morning, and still had some homework to work on, so I'm running on about 45min - 1hour of sleep right now. I had to sketch in intro to psych just to stay awake. I threw that sketch on here too. What was great was the teacher was talking about ADD when I was sketching it, and how people will draw during classes if they have ADD. I'm not sure if it was just a coincidence or if she was trying to get me to pay attention, but I didn't get all that far in my notes... oh well. And of course I had to throw the ol' Loch Ness Monster in too! Enjoy!