Sketchdump

So it's been a long time since I've updated this blog, and the reason has been plain old writer's block. I kept running into walls trying to come up with a new idea; I really wanted to do a couple of illustrations for this Cormac McCarthy book, Blood Meridian. It's a great book, full of these mythic, biblical passages about this group of Indian scalpers back in the Old West, but I've forgotten large parts of it, and I can't remember a lot of the more interesting details. While I've been rereading it, I've been doing a lot of sketching and trying to absorb ideas for compositions and environments and characters. Here's some of my sketches and some ideas I've been playing around with for future pieces.

Character Designs Pt. II

Some more character designs that I made over the last semester. They're both priest-like characters, so plenty of robes and big shapes.

Character Designs

These are a couple of my characters from my Character Design class in the Spring. After a couple of rough assignments, I found I had the most success in thinking first, what was it that I wanted the character to convey, and second, what arrangement of shapes and patterns would suggest this idea. The first character is a representation of the trait of selfishness, the second is a redesign of the character Arthur from the movie Quest for Camelot, and the third and fourth are characters I created as part of an overarching story I was thinking about. More will be posted as I clean up their designs.

Wintersession Work

I added some new work to the site, thought it might be nice to have the work up here along with some process shots. These two pieces are part of a series of narrative paintings I was doing as a personal project over the winter. The first is "A Date with the Frog King", and the second is "A Fishing Trip". They're both done in acrylic on watercolor paper.

A Date with the Frog King

Digital rough

Linework in pencil

Flat Colors

Almost finished...

Done!

A Fishing Trip

rough

Finished

Detail/ Initial Composition

Night Turtle

So over wintersession, I had a little free time to pursue my own projects. During Fall semester, I started this series about a girl who rides around on a giant turtle delivering mail. She's basically like the pony express, only much, much slower. I liked the story a lot, and felt it was a good excuse to continue exploring color in terms of lighting and mood. Just to show how I work on paintings now, I included my linework and process shot before my finish.

A Factory Man

Another comic I did for my Fall semester class. I was trying something new, working with simpler shapes and color. Normally I do a lot of prep work, sketching out ideas, roughing out pencils, cleaning them up, editing them digitally, but I jumped straight into acrylics after roughing out my basic layouts.

The Man in the Desert

This was a two page comic about a man who lived by himself in a vast desert. My original version of the comic in one page was this:

Unfortunately, this version was pretty unclear, in both what was going on panel to panel, and the overall story arc. After class and some helpful critique, I reworked it, spreading it out to two pages, and narrowed it down to this.

The difference is basic storytelling, which is about working with ideas of timing and delivery. In much the same way comedians tells stories, its all set-up to the big moment, where you deliver your punchline or twist. It's an interesting challenge to do nonverbally, as it requires you to really understand how much information to give, and when to give it.

Inking

I really enjoy inking, though I'm beginning to realize that I'm laboring a little too much to get the skinny lines that I really like. At some point I'll try out a nib pen and see how that fairs, though I haven't had much luck with that in the past. Here's a sample of some of the ink drawings I have done over the last year. The roosters were for a T-shirt design, and the other drawings were for a story I did about a ghost girl who ate her teacher. It's a macabre story, but it was fun to ink, and it gave me a reason to burn through three seasons of Doctor Who.

Color Studies

For my first post, it's a couple of still lifes of fruit from my fall class. It was my first real dive back into observational painting. I enjoyed the painting process much more after having not done it a while, and they feel more confident than my previous still lifes.