Colorado Bridge

Here are a couple of sketches I did a little over a month ago at the Colorado Street Bridge with Aaron. I've just gotten around to scanning a big stack of images, so I figured I'd post these up.

Creature Design

I'm working on a collaborative project with some friends, developing a science fiction short story as if it were to be a live action film. This is one of my sketches for a creature that sucks the flesh off of its living victims. I gave it a venom sac behind the jaws. When it attacks, it sprays the flesh-melting venom on its victim, enabling it to suck off its liquified flesh. Yum!

Serious Play Conference

I had the opportunity over the last couple days to attend Art Center's bi-annual design conference, this year entitled "Serious Play." Sometimes it's nice to benefit from where my tuition money goes, but that's a discussion for another post... Anyway, I was helping out with the documentation efforts, and decided to do a couple of sketches of my own. The first one was from my point of view on the far left side of the conference hall, the stage to my left.



The sketch below is from Michael Curry's presentation. He is the one who developed the puppetry for the Broadway production of The Lion King and other shows. He talked about how puppeteers auditioning for his shows must be able to convey personality and emotion through a simple mask held in the hand. I liked the imagery of that, and here is my representation of it.

Welcome to the Gun Show

Sorry, ladies, not those guns...

Here are some sketches I've done over the break, practicing the sketching techniques I learned in Dynamic Sketching. It's pretty fun.

More Dynamic Sketching- Planes

These are some compiled pages from my final Dynamic Sketching sketchbook. If you hadn't guessed, we did planes that week.

Beowulf and Grendel Finals

Our second project for Character Design 1 was to redesign key characters from the story of Beowulf. We were supposed to base the designs on a particular historical culture, while modifying the motifs a little bit. I chose to base mine on the ancient Celts and worked that culture's ornamentation and design motifs into Beowulf's costume. I'm not sure if the resolution will be high enough to see, but the band across Beowulf's chest depicts various creatures and monsters he has defeated, among which is a Teletubby...

Tank Studies

A couple of weeks ago, our Dynamic Sketching class went to the Military Vehicle Museum in El Monte, CA. I had no idea something so cool was so close. Greg, the proprieter of the musem, does all sorts of military vehicle work for films, both as a driver and as a consultant, and many items in his collection have appeared in major motion pictures. We got to walk around the collection, taking photos and sketching. He even let us crawl around inside an M60 tank. It was pretty sweet. Here are some sketches I did on site, from photos, and from a book on tanks that I picked up at Borders a while back.

As is often the case, part of our Dynamic Sketching assignment was to do redesigns of what we had drawn from observation. I explored several designs that could be built over a 1940's farming tractor. The premise is that US munitions factories have been destroyed by invading Nazis, and the army is forced to fit anything and everything with armor to defend American soil from the invasion.

Speedpainting

I did this in about 15 minutes, mostly with the line tool in Photoshop. I added the atmospheric snow and some detail in the foreground with a brush. I've been studying tanks this week and wanted to get an image out of my head so I can get on with my homework. This one might be kinda fun to explore a bit more in depth someday.

Weekly Creature #002

Happy Easter! At some point I'll probably flesh this out a bit (yeah, right...), but I have other things to get to this evening.

Transform and Roll Out!

For those with whom I am not in regular contact, just thought I'd throw up an image of the work that's been consuming most of my time lately... Weston James Anderson is 3 weeks old today and looks to be a WIP for years to come.

So far, being a Dad seems a lot like being a POW in a foreign war... I am constantly awakened just as I fall asleep; I need to be alert and on my toes at all times; strange substances are always flung at me, making sure at least part of me is wet, damp, and uncomfortable at all times. But instead of relentless beatings, he is actually sweet some of the time, so I can't complain too much. Besides, if I've got the time to complain, I oughta just sleep instead...

Weekly Creature #001

Okay, so I've decided to do weekly themed drawings before (see the... um... 2 weekly robots I did... months ago...), but this time I really mean it! Well, by calling it "weekly," I feel like I'm at least making the commitment to do it regularly. Maybe you all can keep me on task and demand more creatures. Right now I'm not very good, but after a couple of months of weekly creatures, I should at least improve. Comments and crits welcome and encouraged!

As far as format, I kind of like the idea of doing them at a 3.5"x2" size, as that is a standard size for business cards. It might be kind of fun to print them off on business card sheets and trade 'em with friends. If anyone else is interested, let me know. We could trade them physically or just download 'em from each other's blogs and print 'em off ourselves. And why not throw vehicles/robotics/whatevers in there with it? Yeah, this could be kinda fun. Anyway, here's week #1:

Natural History Museum Sketches

We went to the Natural History Museum the other day and sketched some animals who were kind enough to stand very still for us for extended periods of time. Unfortunately, there are significant portions of the museum that are closed for renovation, but there is still enough to keep one busy for a while if pausing to sketch. They have a great collection of birds, and they wound up being some of my favorite animals to draw. They have such beautiful shapes and are quite stunning simply as objects of design.

Best. Homework. Ever.

Homework can be a real drag, especially when it piles up the way it tends to at Art Center. But once in a while, you get an assignment where the instructor tells you to do pages of sketches of dinosaurs. Technically, the assignment was to draw dinosaurs and other animals, but he had me at "dinosuar."

The first image here is a compilation of several pages of quick, 1-2 minute thumbnail sketches:
We were then asked to pick one animal that we briefly studied and do a couple pages of research sketches. I chose the T-Rex because... well, it's the T-Rex. As part of my T-Rex research, I also studied eyes and scale patterns of modern lizards to help envision what the T-Rex may have looked like:
I then drew the T-Rex from my imagination, referring to my studies: After I finished this assignment, I found this awesome article, closely related to this assignment. Two new dinosaurs! Pretty cool...

LA Arboretum Sketches

These are some observational sketches from the LA Arboretum. We went with the assignment to observe and document plants and animals from nature and then to redesign our own organisms based on our research. I was amazed by how strange and bizarre actual flora and fauna can be. Not so much the goose, but there are some weird plants out there.

For our redesign, we were assigned the topic of "A Children's Fantasy Garden." A lot of the plants we saw at the arboretum are kind of scary, with all sorts of spiky things protruding at eye level. So I just pushed that vague threat a little further into a more overt and even aggressive nature.

Sad Bald Guy

He's sad 'cause he's bald...

Quick Charicature

This started as a quick charicature study of ol' Clint, and then it kind of took on a life of its own, so I ran with it. Not quite Clint anymore, but still tough as nails.

Playing Catch-up, Episode II: Digital Landscape

Once more, I'm posting a bunch of images from this term's Digital Landscape Painting class. If you haven't already guessed, the term is now over, so I have time to post my stuff, and I've got a bit saved up. I hope you enjoy...

Playing Catch-up, Episode I: Digital Life Painting

Lately I haven't been taking the time to post regularly, so I've got a lot of stuff to put up. First off, here are some paintings I've done in my Digital Life Painting class, in no particular order, though you could safely construct the order under the assumption that I have been improving.

Illustration Friday: The Zoo

This is actually the topic from a few weeks ago, but I got a little bit behind...

Illustration Friday: Scale

This week's topic was really fun for me, as I've always been obsessed with things of great scale. The more I worked on this, the more I realized that I'd really like to do a very finished piece based on this painting. Because of that, I haven't finished all the details this piece demands, for I want to make sure that I devote the necessary time to doing it right. I envision the completed piece being much more overgrown and aged, but I plan on using this as a starting point.