Ukiyo-e House, MD
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.
Map of Sitcom Locations: Test Your TV Knowledge!
Click the image for full size, answers after the jump!
Penfield Children’s Center Poster
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. Read Post »
Printmaking in the Digital Era
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.)
2 Color Illustration
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!)
