Background Work

Working on some background scenery. Not quite sure what this is.

Last pose- Life Drawing 2012

Here was the last piece I did, lasting about 2 hours and 20 minutes. The model was a very still and patient woman. I've been struggling with color for a long time, but I think this is by far my most successful try at it.

Life Drawing Final Pieces

Below are some of my final pieces for my life drawing class this semester. They're longer poses, ranging from 25 minutes to two and a half hours. Although I haven't had a chance to crop most of these pictures and adjust their brightness, I think they show a definite improvement. I love life drawing.

(here's a detail of one. I really enjoyed that model. He was a photographer.)

Life Drawing- September to October 2012

Here's a little sample of what I've been working on in life drawing. All are 18x24", and with the exception of the first and last pieces, all are graphite.

Poses range from 35 to 50 minutes.

Character Design- "Yellow"

So for my Life Drawing II class last week, we were assigned an 18x24 work with the theme "Yellow." Rather than just paint or draw something more traditional like I've been doing recently in that class, I opted to design two characters that embodied the theme. 

I chose to make them styled not for animation, but maybe more video-game or comic book centered. Basically these two are traveling companions, a young girl whose Sanxian (a chinese instrument) lets out a golden light, and a kangaroo-skull thing with a pipe whose tail is luminescent. 

I don't have names for these characters. Is it important to name characters like this? I'd like someone else's take on the matter, because I often forget to name them. I usually identify characters by traits, i.e. Smoke Light Being and Plucky Scarf Musician. 

... Maybe I'll just call 'em Smoky and Scarfy for short.

One of my favorite artists is illustrator and webcomic artist Der-Shing Helmer. She's been a big influence on my work since I was probably in middle school. I'm a big fan, and if you have the chance, check out her amazing webcomic The Meek.

Rough animation- Baby and Butterfly

Here is a very crude (I repeat: VERY crude) rough animation I've been working on. The basic premise is that it's a baby chasing a butterfly. Simple enough. I'm looking for an avenue to subvert it later, although I'll probably express that through storyboarding rather than animation. Well, maybe eventually.

Looking up reference material for this was fun. Just looking at videos of babies and butterflies. More to come later, particularly in finishing the action, and adding detail, expression, and of course the butterfly.
I'd like to ideally make this at least a 15 second animation.

I made this on a macbook app called AnimationDesk. It's pretty much a steal at $6.99 but some of the controls are weird and it crashed upwards of 6 times just tonight alone. It's nice because it's on the iPad, too, and it's pretty simple to use. But I'm just excited to install my Flash cs6 soon.

Here's a "model sheet" (I use quotations because honestly, I'm really just learning how to stay on-model) that I made for the baby character. Ideally, I'll get him to look something like this as I edit the animation. As far as character design goes, I think he's got some interesting shapes and a lot of potential for emotion, but I need to work a bit more on creating defining characteristics. Ah, well. It's my first time, I guess.

Also! I'm sorry my sketch photos are the absolute WORST quality. It's like 4 am, so I just grabbed the nearest paper and used my iphone as a camera. It was grainy and green-colored charcoal paper, so I didn't really think that one through.  It was that or lined paper, and you gotta make do when inspiration strikes!

PS I have an astronomy midterm tomorrow WHAT am I doing working on this at 4 AM. PRIORITIES.

Sketchbook Scans

Just scanning in some sketches of people I see. Mostly at baseball games over the summer.

There's something about baseball players and fans that is just so hilarious.

Bonus: Here's a guy that fell asleep on the airplane! Hence the detail.

Plein Air Painting- Elmwood Park

Well, it's Autumn in Omaha, and I wanted to take advantage of the brilliant colors of the trees in the park before the leaves start falling. So I hauled some oil paints to the park and just went at it.

Here are some fun plein air painting facts I learned.

One. BEES. Nobody told me about the bees. BEES EVERYWHERE.

Two. Bring paper towels. If you value your belongings, take paper towels with you. I forgot them in my rush to run down to the park and ended up smearing paint all over my car before I turned to using leaves as paper towels in my desperation.

Three. Composition is still everything in painting, even if it's a quick sketch from life. I spent about 40 minutes on my painting and I so wish I had used a more enticing composition. I had fun playing with colors but even the most vivid pallets can't save shoddy composition.

Four. Bring a suitable stand/easel. I forgot mine at home, but luckily I had a pine tabletop in my car that I had intended to paint. Probably won't be that lucky again, though.

Here's the end piece and my messy tabletop. I used a combination of oil and water-based oil.

Water-based is okay, but I feel there was a definite loss in luminosity. 

Cleanup was much easier though, so maybe it was worth it for experimentation.

Please excuse the very poor lighting! There's still SO MUCH I don't know about oil painting.

I have a lot to learn. I think I'll avoid water-based until I get the hang of it.

(Oh, and I had some time to kill, so I went and drew some kids (and one uninterested mom) at the playground.)