Film study: Gold Rush

Film Study: The Princess Bride

Back to environments

Just practicing some single layer environment sketching.

I try to remind myself everyday what my goals are and I was happy to spend most of today working on some of them.

Deviant Art contest

This was a piece I created for a contest being judged by Tim Burton. There were a few lessons learned while doing this piece.

 For one, dont suck the life out of a painting by working on it for 80 hours.

 Second, just because the final piece cant be larger than 2500 pixels wide does mean you should paint it at exactly that size.

I need to start painting on much bigger canvases.

Sold my first painting!

31x31

oil & acrylic on canvass

Caricature painting

A caricature painting we were asked to do in Illustration class. I had a lot of fun putting this together; I might actually finish this one. 

Catching up

My daughter Lilyanne, intrigued by the lady in the portrait. 

I'll have to wait for a better photo of the portrait to show details on this oil painting.

oil on board

24x36

Painting resumes

Well, Fall term is underway. I just got my ticket to IlluxCon again and Im finishing up a new oil painting at school this week. I've been loosing loads of sleep lately and finding my coping skills dominating my day to day. The Artmentors project is underway and I have been scrambling to balance my school work load with time put in on the project. I have made some great headway with chipping away on the monumental task of organizing people. More to come on that later. For now I'll share the digital sketch I whipped up for my first oil painting task of the semester.

stuck on green

I still crash and burn when I paint without a plan. But these were a lot of fun to unwind on. I had caught up on all my work and still felt like drawing. These are what I came down with.

Recent studies

Image dump of work I havent posted yet.

Mixed in the assignments from intro to watercolor are some doodle experiments.

Incubation Fixation

Im working on a personal project that I guess I should mention now.

Ever since I realized just how many of my classmates were never going to become artists and I myself have a less than 30% chance of working as an artist someday, I have been thinking of ways to change that.

One sure fire way is to give students a better interface for learning their craft.
Another would be to raise awareness of obstacles. You cant get rid of the obstacles but you can be prepared to deal with them when you must face them.

There are a number of other ways I found before I decided to try and build something that can be a useful supplement to the way we learn art.

ArtMentors.tv

Before last semester this blog was that the extent of my experience with HTML. Then I took a special topics course at school called "web as art". The feeling I got making simple code do things was rewarding. However, the process of learning it was a nightmare. Loosing and hour of time while just to find out you have a simple syntax error is a blow torch on a short fuse.

If Im really going to take a shot at making this happen... Im gunna need help.


TO BE CONTINUED...

I figure im pretty lucky to have stumbbled right into a contest being held for some mural art.

This is the .pdf of the submission I sent in
I had about 3 days to whip up some work and its now showing at the Trumbul art gallery until the end of the month.
Submission Comps







I also did a portrait of Warren G Harding to show that I can match a likeness.




If your out in warren stop by and drop a vote. Heres a map if your not sure where the art gallery is. Voting ends April 29th!


View Larger Map

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world | Video on TED.com

Great talk about the productivity potential of the worlds gamers.

IlluXcon 2010

Just got settled in at home after going to IlluXcon. I asked the guys on WIPtv what would be a good show on the east coast to get too and sure enough they were right. I got to meet Donato Giancola. I was able to finally understand the problems I've been having using a technique he demoed in his dvd download. I saw a ton of students tags, some of whom were getting some feedback on folio's. The real treat of the day was walking up to an unattended table and seeing the most sad and homely troll you ever could imagine hanging there. I felt the adrenalin snap me back to reality when I realized this must be Jeff Laubensteins' table.

When I was right out of high school my friends got me into tabletop roleplaying. The drawings in those books are unbelievably good. Guys like Laubenstein and Ron Spencer were core drafters of their respective games. One of my priority goals is getting to do some work on these games as soon as im out of school. So, hats of to Jeff for being a great guy.

This show is going to be the subject of a paper we were given to write in painting class this semester. Ill probably post the pdf of that next week.

I want to be friends with Zbrush

These aren't very new but I need to remind myself to find more time on this incredible software.
If you haven't heard of Zbrush and you haven't googled the videos yet, then get to stepping.
I got the 30 day free trial and this is what I came up with.


Self portrait

Signs and why.

This is some of the work I did with my time in Florida. I had sign jobs before but this one had with it a designer with some really great concepts. He did things not many others would try and it worked. The attention he gave each clients needs was prudent and unique. Something I rarely see here in Youngstown and why I ultimately went for the degree.