illustration Friday-Focused

Last night I spent several hours breaking apart about 15 pictures. I wanted to understand how the professional artists set up their pictures in order to lead the viewers eye through their works. Utilizing what I learned I made this picture. ^_^

I utilized pictures, illustrations, and many other things to bring together my composition. I focused on a painterly quality and how light formed on figures. Originally I wanted to draw a girl I saw at the store wearing a soccer uniform...but the picture then required something more formal... ^_^ haha!

Anyway, this is all in preparation for a large project I am doing at school which will last three weeks. (mostly just a small test run on what I want to do large scale...)

Hayao Miyazaki in typeface

So for my first assignment in my Typography class, I had to make a portrait using 35 or less charactes from a specific typeface. I chose the font Helvetica, and actually did it in 39... :( yah, I know I really tried to cut it down, but the pic required it. ^_^ So if you can't guess who I did my picture of, then you don't know me. For those who don't...it is Hayao Miyazaki!!!! (Oh wait, my title gave it away.... geez. haha!)

Here is some fun side creatures I made. One is a sorry attempt at Totoro, and the other is my own character...I will call him 'Grumpy. I really like grumpy.'

Illustration Friday-Wilderness

Earlier this week my wife and I were at the local bookstore and I happened upon a Norman Rockwell book. While I was there, I thumbed through it again and again, but that wasn't enough; I ended up sitting down and pouring over all the pictures and information given in it. I learned something new and that is that Norman Rockwell (at least for the later part of his career) used photos and literally copied them. That boggled my mind! (course he was the one staging the characters and scenarios in the pictures...but that is beside the point.)

I thought to be an illustrator every single element of the human figure had to be either from a live model or memorized so that I could draw spontaneously...well I was wrong. Not only that, but the Illustration class I am taking is constantly pushing me towards "simplifying the creative process. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you get to the same end, and if that means cutting corners, than do it." Of course I am a die-hard and I think everything has to be chiseled into stone and sealed with blood. So doing this picture was a good activity for me.

I wanted the picture to be painterly while looking smooth and full of depth. I think I achieved my desires. (And notice I did not use heavy black outlines! ^_^ ) I used several pictures for reference (figure, colorscheme,etc) while of course taking alot of creative liberties on the way!

I don't know if anyone remembers this: http://monisawa.blogspot.com/2009/10/painting-study.html but consider this new picture as its followup! What a difference!!!

Pic #2 update

I completed this picture as a comission for http://www.jerbl.com/ . Jerbl.com is not only the hostsite for my website, but the guy who owns it is my brother! haha! This picture commemorates Jerbl.com's 3 year anniversary.

Pic #1 Update

Due to the busy holiday break and new school semester devouring my time I am only now getting to get this posted. This picture is what I did for the contest on Deviantart.com. I lost completely, though I am not too disapointed. I still love the picture and enjoy how it turned out!

I'm alive!

Just to show you that I am alive, I am putting the poster I made for MCC Longview's Acting class. I had alot of struggles, but I also learned alot while making this.