Illustration Friday: Trick or Treat

Trick or treat? It all depends on your point of view...

Illustration Friday: Grow

This is the last thing you'd want growing in your basement. One ate our cat once when I was little... Not really, but you could imagine...

More Landscapes

Still struggling to lay down the basic colors and values before getting bogged down in details, these are a few digital landscape paintings I did today. The top two are from Oliveira Street in LA, just across from Union Station. The third is another one from the LA Arboretum.

LA Arboretum

This is another line-tool painting I did of the LA Arboretum. I was going to say that I'm beginning to venture more into color, but then looking at this, I realized that there are basically two colors. Oh well, baby steps...

Illustration Friday: Extremes

On the planet Reginald, the Klyntaan Egg Relay is the fastest growing extreme sport among a race of thrill-seekers. The event requires relay teams to compete with one another, each stealing the Klyntaan's eggs and passing them via relay as far as they can until the angry Klyntaan catches up to them. Scoring is determined by complex calculations, factoring in the distance traveled with the egg and-- as the Klyntaan always eventually catches up-- the number of team members who survive the event before being caught and devoured.

Forest Lawn Memorial Park

This is a quick sketch I did of Glendale as seen from above, at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park. I'm experimenting with using the line tool in Photoshop to lay down basic shapes, mainly in order to prevent myself from getting bogged down in details too early. I'm pleased with the results so far, and certainly have room for improvement.

Illustration Friday: Open

I'm excited for Halloween, so here's a quick painting of an open casket in an open grave.

Cobb Estate, October 7, 2007

Here's another marker sketch I did from the same trail head yesterday, this time on toned paper. Again, I added the whites with gouache. My friend, Tim, and I found this nice peaceful spot for sketching and had just commented on how nice it was to get above the noisy city below when half a dozen riotous youth showed up with a boombox and the desire to party. In all fairness, they did offer us beers-- which we politely declined-- but it was still kinda lame that they chose the same shade that we did, when there were so many other spots. Tim pointed out in their defense, though, that we clearly chose their tree to set up our easels...

Cobb Estate Marker Sketch

Jean (my wife) and I finally checked out a local trail head the other day, and I came more prepared for sketching than for hiking. We just kinda hung around the clearing at the bottom, and I sketched as she read. This sketch was done with Copic markers, and I added the highlights with white gouache later.

Still Life, October 4, 2007

This is a still-life setup we painted in my Digital Life Painting class this week. My goal was to capture the effect of the light on the objects, and overall, I feel pleased with what success I had. Digital painting is really growing on me, and I'm finding it more and more fun to digitally draw and paint from life. This study was done using Photoshop CS2.

Carl's Final Stages and Completion!

Here are Tak (red hair), Jacob (beard), and I (white shirt) working on the landscaping of Carl's base. We had to work outside, as the foam particles would have made a mess of the rug. We also used a highly toxic and stinky resin to coat and seal the foam base.


Here he is after we've finished the terrain-building and minor landscaping elements. Carl slept outside for a few days before the stink wore off (at the request/orders of my odor-sensitive pregnant wife).


Here was the first picture of the fog test. I bought a whole bunch of dry ice, found out that the base was waterproof and worked fine, then spent the rest of the afternoon playing with the leftover dry ice.



Here's the finished Carl with painted background and display! Keeping the dry ice going for the class presentation was a bit of a challenge, because the water to which one adds the dry ice should be warm but tends to cool and even freeze upon the addition of the dry ice. I had to keep sucking up the cold water with a syringe to add more warm water. Fortunately, Jacob and Tak helped out as Carl wranglers for the final presentation.

Illustration Friday: The Blues

This family is known to their neighbors as the Blues, though their real last name is unpronounceable by the human tongue. They appear to be frowning, however to their race, a closed mouth is a display of contentment and good humor. Were they not to be posing for their portrait, their mouths would hang agape as they struggle to get what Nitrogen they can from Earth's inhospitable atmosphere.