Food & Wine Poster

Well here's day three of the week o' finals. This was my entry for the 2010 Grand Tasting for the Columbus Food & Wine Affair. I wanted to do a simple illustration that was part hand drawn, part digital. The entire drawing was done in hatching, and then I digitized both the white background and the hatching to make the hatch marks less obvious. See ya all tomorrow with my ad and graph final!

Figure Drawing Wrap Up

So here's day two's post (although I may be a few hours late). It's pretty much the last stuff I did for figure drawing. It's strange to think that I'll never have another figure drawing class at CCAD. They were always my favorite classes to take. But anyway...

The first image was the final drawing I did for the class. I used my dad as a model and illustrated what typically happens when you text and drive; a crash. I originally was going to do a limited color palette drawing, but after putting down the first coat - call it laziness, call it a happy accident - I was happy with it. Looking at it now, I think I might go back into it and add a light, a dark, and one or two colored tones. I dunno... opinions? Mr. Kortlander said keep it the way it is, but it's my portfolio, and I think I could use another drawing that has a decent finish to it.

The rest of these images were just outta my sketchbook in class (or just for fun at home). I think you can tell the difference.

I should have another post up by the end of the day. Until then, goodnight!

And I'm Spent!

Year four, semester one is finally at an end, and I could not need a break more. These last two weeks have been the busiest of my life, so I apologize for the wait since the last post. I think what I'll do for my finals is upload one every day this week, so (since it is technically Monday as I'm typing this) today we'll start off the rotation with a bit of humor.

During our final week of senior advertising and graphic design, our professor decided to throw in one more project that would be due two days before our final. To summarize, we were all a little ticked, so what I decided to do was a project I knew I wouldn't use in my portfolio, but would just have a lot of fun playing around with random ideas. The assignment was to do some kind of an automotive ad.

I ended up choosing to take Chevy's Silverado and their tag line "An American Revolution" and make each add marketed toward "that guy". I changed the tag line to "A True American Revolution" and made the headlines into cinderblocks in the trunk pointing out a key feature that "guys" notice. After I was finished with it, I was surprised that I actually liked it since it was supposed to basically be a quick, blow off, last minute project. Anyway, I'm off to Buckeye Donuts with a few friends. I'll see you all again tomorrow!

The Website is Finished!

After months of editing and tweaking, my "brand" is finally finished. My website is up and running with fully functional galleries, my résumé, a bio, and more. I've still got a few things I want to upload into the galleries, but other than that its done! It's also the first place you'll be able to see my interactive work. The image I attached with this is my branding info, résumé, website screen shots, and business card (front and back). Let me know what ya think!

Also, I know it's been pretty dry on my blog for a little while, but that's about to change very soon. I have quite a few projects that have either just finished or are about to be finished. Over then next few days I should have many more updates for all!

Fortunate Son

Another day, another project. This latest illustration was a pretty fun one. We had to take a 60's song and illustrate it in some way, using influence from another artist or illustrator. Well, CCR is probably one of the biggest bands of the 60's, and I love Fortunate Son, so this was my first choice. I decided to take the song lyrics literally and do an illustration of a boy who's drumming with "silver spoon in hand." He's supposed to be one of the fortunate ones that's in a well brought up family, and playing the drum simply for fun rather than leading the troops (a bit of a throw back to the 19th century). I decided to use Edward Manet, one of my favorite painters, as my reference for the idea. I wanted to make it obvious that I was inspired by the Fifer for both subject matter and composition. When I was in Paris about three and a half years ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Orsay and seeing this painting. It's really breathtaking to see in person (image of it after the jump).

For the actual painting, I decided to go with oils since it's been a few months since I've used them. I unfortunately had to rush it a bit more than I would have liked, but overall I'm pretty satisfied with it. I did want it to be a bit more impressionist, but it'll do.

Reference: Edward Manet's The Fifer

IlluXCon 2009! - Part Two

Well, back again to bring you the rest of IlluXCon 2009 through my eyes. This demo was done by Dan Dos Santos. He seemed like a pretty down to earth kinda guy. He did this oil painting over a pencil value sketch, and I think the technique ended up looking amazing! I've gotta try it sometime. I snapped the image below when it was about 90% finished. He went back in afterward to add some highlights on the shoulder and in the hair to tie everything together, but I unfortunately didn't get a shot of it completed.

And finally, I can't even begin to explain how detailed these bigger-than-life figures by Tom Kuebler were. They were actually scary to get within a foot or so of, especially the transvestite figure below. I felt as though she was gonna spring to life and cut me.. no joke! These were, of course, finished pieces and not demo's done in two hours like the other images I uploaded.

Overall, the show was great! I ate some amazing food, got relatively lost with my friends in the hilly city of Altoona, and learned a helluva lot about painting. Some other great illustrators I didn't get any shots of that I met were Ian Miller, Justin Sweet, L.A. Williams, Volkan Baga, Dave Leri, and many more, including CCAD's own Joe Kovach and Eric Fortune. Check them all out, it'll be worth it! Now back to reality, where my in-progress works all look like crap compared to these pros!

*None of the work published in this post is my own. I merely took the pictures.

IlluXCon 2009! - Part One

So this weekend was really busy and tons of fun! Quite a few friends and I drove over to Altoon, PA for the 2009 IllXCon (an illustration convention with some of the biggest names in the business). I'm not typically drawn to too much fantasy illustration, but seeing all this work in person was just breathtaking. They also had some great demos, which all of the pictures in this post are part of. The one above was a collaborative demo by Jordu Schell and Tom Kuebler (pictured). They were both pretty interesting guys, and Jordu was hilarious! I've got some more pictures of Tom's work that I'll post in a second post. His stuff is just incredibly realistic.

This was a great oil painting demo done by Donato Giancola. I'd never known him by name before, but some of you might recognize his work, especially if you've seen the cover of Spectrum 13 (one of the best issues to date in my opinion). He had a model from the audience pose, and in the last five or ten minutes of his demo, he threw in the space-themed suit like it was nothing.

These two pieces were part of another collaborative demo, this time done by Michael Whelan and Christopher Moeller. Half way though, they switched boards and finished the other's work.

Here's Jordu at his both just working on a project he felt like making up. The demo at the top of this post that he and Tom worked on was actually his Face. Tom had a great picture of him grinning like crazy, and they decided to go with it. More info in the next post...

*None of the work published in this post is my own. I merely took the pictures.

Bike Mechanic Sketch

Here's another sketch from figure drawing class. I meant to throw it up here with the others last Wednesday, but guess I overlooked it. It was too big for the scanner, so I had to take a picture of it, so sorry for the bad quality. It's supposed to be pretty bright green. Just another day of playing with colors!

More Figures!

Lately I've been playing a lot with color in my figure drawing class. I bought this great 12x18 sketchbook over the summer that has five or six different toned pages throughout it, and I've been on a real "toned background" kick lately. Almost all of these were done in colored pencil (with the exception of the graphite one of James toward the bottom).

For each of these, I typically only picked up three colored pencils that I thought complimented the lighting and skin tone for the pose. The only "problem" was that I kept finishing these before class was over, so I'd grab a few more and chroma the hell out of it (can chroma be a verb? I'll say yes). So far, I've liked each sketch more once I revisit it with more color options, but I really should start limiting my palette a bit on at least some drawings.

More images after the jump!

CWS Brochure

This brochure came out of my advertising & graphic design class. We were to make a brochure for the law firm, Chester Willcox & Saxbe, and were given a few stipulations such as colors, logos, and body copy. The rest of the layout was up to us. I decided to showcase it as a very professional firm, while grabbing attention with both the shape of the brochure and the bold use of type on the photographs.

Antler Prejudice and New Layout!!

Well another week down, and a little more work done. This piece was my first real Photoshop painting. I've been wanting to do a painting where a person has antlers for a while, so this was a long time coming. I decided to have it be designed to go with a magazine article about different types of prejudices. I still need to tweak it a bit, probably by adding some reflecting yellows and blues in the actual characters rather than keeping them completely grayscale.

Next project for the class is to do an illustration to go along with a song from the 1960's. I'm fairly certain which I'm going to do, but the two that I've narrowed it down to are CCR's "Fortunate Son" and the Beatles' (and Joe Cocker's) "With a Little Help From My Friends."

Also, the big news is about the blog. I finally got my updated layout up. I'll still be doing some tweaking over the coming weeks, as well as adding a link to my new site, which will be up within the month. Let me know what you all think in the comments! Also, some details of familiar faces after the jump!

New Portrait Drawing

Sorry for the long gap in between my last post and this one. I've been busy working on a redesign for the blog. It'll be up and running fairly soon. My goal is by next Sunday night (Nov. 1). In the mean time, here's my latest drawing from Kortlander's class. I tried to go somewhere in between realism and illustrative proportions.

See you soon with a brand-spankin-new look!

Tattoo Reminder - Step By Step

So my first project in illustration class is finally finished. The main concept of the project was that a magazine was doing an article on the twenty most "American" jobs, and each person in the class was to do an illustration in their own style with their take on the job. I luckily got the tattoo artist, and decided to go semi-humorous. My final is of an artist taking a call from his wife/girl-friend and she's telling him to pick up the laundry for her, so he's giving himself a tattoo to remember. Here's my entire process:

First I have the line drawing. Then to make sure its got a good value structure, I did a colored pencil and acrylic sepia study overtop on coldpress illustration board. Finally, I did something a little different for me. I went into the computer and digitally added color, as well as overlaid certain parts of the original line drawing to give it a little oomph. I chose a complementary color scheme of blue-green and red-orange to highlight certain areas over others, and to play with both warm and cool lighting. We're still technically doing one more step where we place it in a magazine ad, and I'll post that next week once I finish it up.

Figurative Drawing Dump

I've gotten a couple decent drawings out of this semester's figure drawing class, and one of the nice things is that the class is so relaxed in composition, that I can focus on portraiture. Here's a collection of drawings I've done in the past week (and one from last year that reminded me of a drawing I did today). The top one is the only mildly illustrative one. It's a little hard to tell, but it's supposed to be a little humorous. I'm sure you'll all see it.

Gestures

Portrait from last year

Here's to the Crazy Ones..

Here's a project I recently finished that was a lot of fun to work on. It's a poster series I did for my advertising and graphic design class inspired by Apple's 'Think Different.' commercial. It's a very moving campaign that signified one of Apple's transitions. The first poster was simply for displaying the type. Printed out, it's very vivid and eye catching. The next three are a series I did with the original text (slightly edited for size). I really love the colors against the historical black and white photos. I chose Einstein, Picasso, and MLK Jr because I believe they were three of the most influential people that changed the way we see or do things. A lot of kerning and leading went into that text block to emphasize the most important lines and words, and overall, I'm really happy with it.

(Side note, the condensed text of 'Here's to the Crazy Ones' can be found in the Text Edit icon in OS X, take a look!)

Back in the Swing of Things

So school's back in session, and my break from posting is finally over! I think I needed a break from design and art for a few months, and I definitely took advantage of it. So far, the only class I've had that we've done something worth posting has been figure drawing, and we've only done two short poses. The first day was spent mostly on our instructor, Mr. Kortlander, telling us about the class and everything, and then a quick pose at the end of class which is located above. The drawing below I did in the first half of class today, then went to the Columbus Museum of Art to check out the George Tooker exhibition that's going on with everyone else. It was pretty amazing. I had no idea how detailed he actually gets with his egg tempera.

Anyhow, I'll have some actual illustration and design work posted in the coming weeks, and this year I'll definitely have more design than last. Package design was the only class I was taking last semester that was "design" oriented. This year, I'm taking both senior illustration and senior advertising and graphic design, so I've definitely got a work load ahead. I'm glad to be back up and posting, and hope you all enjoy!

Finished Summer Illustration #1

Well here's the scan I promised to put up. It's oil on paper, 11 x 18.5".

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!!