Skizzenblog

I kinda want to refine this into an illustration suitable for a t-shirt.

Finally remembered I was posting these prints on my blog. Here’s another one of the robot prints, a little less overloaded than a few of the others.

The halftone pattern was achieved by doing this weird trick with xeroxes. You rub gum arabic into a xerox, then get it wet and the ink only sticks where the toner is and you can print with it. I had a hell of a time making it work at first, turns out I wasn’t using enough easy-wipe with my ink. It’s still finicky and not really my favorite thing to do, but I think the results are really interesting. If I recall correctly, I made up these shapes from a different image I’d wanted to use, but had ripped to shreds in the process.

Miniwork for a Miniassignment.

We were assigned to make 6 small spot illustrations for an article about Twitter and Milwaukee. Specifically we were pretty much illustrating some tweets about Milwaukee.

Since I like drawing people above all else, I drew some people. 6 people (well, 5 and a statue) that you’re likely to find around Milwaukee. Ink and watercolor.

Hey, finally got around to posting another print from class.

This is probably one of my favorites. About half my prints have these little robot guys in them. The first one came from a picture of the Tin Man. I wanted to use it, but not just straight up cut out the Tin Man and stick it on my piece. So, I cut out his torso, but gave him skinny legs and a big ol’ square head. And it turned into a silly robot and I drew them approximately 800 more times.

This print started out as one of my favorites, and then I killed it. You can’t see any of what was there originally- I obliterated it with other colors and textures. I was totally lost, and then I realized- there’s white ink! And I can use it!

So I did, and it went back to being one of my favorites. I love how you can see the texture behind the white. And the simplicity kinda reminds me of petroglyphs.

This semester I’m taking this awesome class on the ukiyo-e prints of Edo Japan. It’s basically 70% prints of prostitutes or porn. But they really are beautiful, so there’s that.

We had an assignment to do a “modern interpretation” of an ukiyo-e print. One large genre of ukiyo-e is kabuki actor prints. They’re always shown in character, often shown making a dramatic expression and doing a particular pose at a key moment of the play. So, for my version I did a picture of my favorite actor, Hugh Laurie, doing a classic House pose. If you’ve never watched the show- well, first, shame on you. The first few seasons are amazing television. Anyway, whenever House is thinking about a case and about to solve the medical mystery, he sits in his office and plays with this oversize tennis ball. It’s kind of a perfect contemporary example of an actor striking a pose at a key moment.

I’ve always had a really hard time drawing Hugh Laurie, but I was so pleased with myself after I did the initial lineart for this. I nailed it on my first try! Only problem is that he looks a little young.

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Click the image for full size, answers after the jump!

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Oh blog, I’ve been bad. I’ve been busy, and lazy, and bad. But I do have LOTS of art to post!

This illustration is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. It was for a really cool school assignment. Ad agency Cramer-Krasselt does pro-bono work for a local charity, Penfield Children’s Center. Every year they hold a Croquet Ball, with proceeds going to Penfield. Part of this event involves auctioning off large printouts of posters. In the past they’ve just gone to established illustrators (I’ll post some at the bottom of the post, there are some big names!) but this year they decided to give our class at MIAD a crack, too!

It was really open. As one of my classmates said, “You can do whatever you want. As long as it’s perfect. And maybe has croquet in it.”

Anyway, my idea is pretty simple. The big cuddly monster is supposed to a) be adorable and b) represent how big of a help your donations/Penfield is to these children.

This is sort of the first time I’ve combined the drawing style I found most natural with the rendering style I find most natural (digital painting.) I’m thrilled and I’ll have more work in this vein incoming. (more…)

Emu Man Is Not Pleased, I guess?

I have a bunch of prints to post! But I’m going to draw them out over a while cuz I can.

I took a printmaking mini-elective in my foundations year and I enjoyed a lot of things about it. (At least, about plexi monotyping.) I’d been waiting to take another printmaking elective and this semester one came up called “Printmaking in the Digital Era.” As a geek, I thought that sounded awesome. And it is.

Our first assignment was to make 10 prints starting with found imagery or our own imagery printed out digitally, and then printed on using stencils, xerox transfers, etc.

This is one of my favorites. Really simple- I found an image of some dude in a magazine, cut it out and scanned it in. Then I took an old illustration and digitally manipulated it so it fit in .. more or less seamlessly. I printed that out on an inkjet printer, and then pretty much just put yellow stripes on it. I like yellow stripes.

It’s simple, but it makes me smile. The other prints went in some fairly different directions, so stay tuned and check ‘em out! (Especially if you like robots. Just trust me on that.)

Have a cute!

This was a quickie assignment from my illustration class. We just had to make a 2-color illustration that could be used on a shopping bag from a store of our choice, or a generic type of store. I picked a plushie store, since I had so much fun making one over Christmas. (Which I just realized I never posted! I will do that later.)

I know this looks like it has at least 3 colors, but weirdly enough it really is made from just 2 (and percentage tints thereof). The golden yellow and purple are what I used, and the red actually came from mixing the two. That’s how photoshop did it anyway, I’m somehow unconvinced that real ink would do that… but I’m interested in trying it sometime. I want to try screenprinting this onto tshirts or canvas bags. (Too bad I have almost no screenprinting experience, yay!)

I like drawing old ladies.

Quickie illustration and post!

We had a small assignment for book illustration to illustrate a poem for children and incorporate the type in some way.

I took the opportunity to noodle around further with the watercolor/digital technique I’ve been trying. Admittedly, this one is a lot more digital than my character studies- partially because I really lazed it up on the watercolor stuff.

For the type I was a little more experimental than I tend to be. I like my structure! I think it’s alright tho.

Got a little Captain in you?

Ahhh, painting. I have a real love/hate relationship with acrylic painting.

I learned to paint and color digitally long before really doing much with traditional painting at all. That said, nearly all of my work for high school art class was acrylic painting. (Because it had to be.)

Last semester I realized that  since starting college I’ve barely done any painting with acrylic at all. (Aside from using it watered down as a watercolor substitute.) I also knew that there was still a HUGE disconnect between what I could accomplish digitally and what I could accomplish in paint.. and I wanted to try to rectify that. So I took this painting class with a really terrifyingly skilled professor I’d had for drawing.

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