"Don't call it a comeback, I been here for years, Rockin my peers and puttin suckas in fear!"

So I had a one of those jobs for the past year that most of us have had at one point. A job that is so bad that you routinely rest your head on your car steering wheel every day and swear your tits off before you go in and wish you still had a raging hangover in order to dull the whole experience. Anyway, I had a lot of downtime during this where I wasn't allowed to do anything but look 'busy', so I managed to sneak in some sketching on the back of receipts when big brother wasn't watching. Took me back to my childhood and kinda got really it so I thought I'd share a few!

Whoaaa, thank god I quit that job...

Some older stuff:

*Edit: previous image deleted by request

I'm watching you..... :o

Environment

Travis the monkey is dead...

....and what? :P

No love in deez 'hard times'....

Determined

Just a small update. Been focusing a lot on anatomy studies as of late and will continue to do so as I feel that this is where I need to improve drastically first, before I start tackling other things. I want to have a much more intuitive understanding of the figure.

Good Morning!! ;) x

Appx. 2hrs max.

"The only time 'success' comes before 'work' is in the dictionary."
Really wanted to go to bed last night after work, but decided to get something done. It's usually not that difficult to know what we should be doing and it's not really a matter of forcing yourself to do it. It's more about coming up with a good enough excuse to want to do it. Lying down in a big comfy bed when you're tired seems to have immediate payoffs, whereas a blank canvas or sheet of paper can look uncertain or even scary. But often, we're just getting ahead of ourselves.

I'm definitely one who has had to struggle with fear and laziness. As students, I think some of us, like myself, get caught up in this sort of 'end goal' or vision of success that we want to see for ourselves. It's of course smart to have goals, but sometimes I find myself dwelling on it.
Thinking to yourself things like "ugh, look at my stuff, I have such a long way to go" or "It'll take me years to get that good! My work is so crappy right now" ....and I could go on and on. You get the idea. Thoughts like that can hinder you from even starting something.

Endurance is key, but thinking of all this 'becoming an artist' stuff as a race implies that your trying to get somewhere, or that there is a final result. There is no final result or point. You can keep learning until the day your 100 years old. The process that your going through at the present moment while you work on each new piece is what is important. The past and future don't even exist. Learning to savor each moment and not thinking about all your fear of the future, whether it's:
"Will this piece be any good?"
or
"How old will I be before I become a professional?", I believe these thoughts will only slow you down in the end. Instead, if we were more mindful of the present and turned these into:
"How can I make this better?"
or
"If I do another illustration right now, I'll get better right now." ...well then we'd be keeping that snowball effect going and we would keep getting better and learning more (and faster).

Anyways, this is what I'm going to try and keep mindful of in 2009.

Happy New Year to everyone!

12 - 20 -08

I have a blog?

Self portrait in oils I did over Thanksgiving weekend. I have a LONG way to go but I'm really encouraged by how far I've come already from my portrait attempts at the Academy. What John English was trying to show me is finally starting to make some sense.
Anyways, yeah. It's been a while. Things have been a little tough lately, but like most struggles, if you manage to come out of them on top (and w/a clean pair of underwear) you'll usually end up better for it in the end. That's what I plan on doing. Already, things that once seemed bad have turned out to be blessings in disguise. Along with all that, I'll be getting back to regular postings. Another portrait is in the works. It may very well be of you! :O
...no, not really.

Dangermouse

Yeah, I know I've taken forever to post something new. Been dealing with a few things, one of them being me trying to find a day job while having no car (aarggh!!). The above image is the last thing I completed while at the Illustration Academy. We were to do a portrait of a music artist according to a random letter that we were given. I got the letter 'D', so I did an illustration of Dangermouse (one of the guys from Gnarls Barkley). The pieced together records that he's playing was the main concept as he is well known for his 'mash-ups' of different artists such as taking The Beatles 'White Album' and mixing it with Jay-Zs 'Black Album' to make the famous Grey Album, which went on to be the most illegally downloaded album of all time, which has now made me write one of the worst run-on sentences of all time. Anyways, there's definitely more that could be done to this illustration to make it better, but I'm pretty happy with how much I've improved in such a short time. I can't imagine ever having the initiative of taking something this far when I was still a student at VCU.


This is a quick oil painting that George Pratt did for a demo during the Academy. I was lucky enough to end up winning this piece at the art give-away on the last day of the Academy. The photo of course doesn't do it justice. It was really amazing to see this guy just play with the paint.
I went on a five day trip to Chicago the first week that I got back from Florida so not much has gotten done yet. The above picture sums it up pretty well. I plan on unpacking all the art stuff this weekend. Hopefully I won't go mad living at home for the next few months. I can't wait till I get back to good old Richmond.

Enough about me for a second tho. I've been meaning to post something about this for a while now: A couple of weeks ago, I was deeply saddened to learn that comic book artist/creator Michael Turner had recently passed away. Quite a few years back, I was lucky enough to get to meet Michael at Wizard World Philly, and it's true when they say how nice of a guy he was. I remember enjoying his early work on Witchblade, right around the time when I was discovering stuff outside of Marvel. Here's more info.

:*(
R.I.P.

WIPs

This is an in-progress under drawing for this weeks assignment. Going to start adding color washes into it (and I may very well destroy it if I'm not careful). I was having too much fun rendering it was hard to stop. Hopefully some people will recognize who modeled as the cop when I took the reference, heh... :


Color study for last weeks assignment that I actually liked as much if not better than the final:

Illustration Academy; 4 weeks in

First of all, everyone seen the new James Jean stuff? Yeeah.... O_0 <- ? And that's all I can really say about that, lol.

The Academy is frikin amazing, of course. Definitely one of the wisest decisions I ever made. As far as learning goes, it has already been like 2 years of VCU compacted into 4 weeks, probably more (not to rag on vcu). It's also been pretty intimidating at times since there are a TON of talented students here. Florida humidity really sucks!
Here's Barron Storey talking to students after a demonstration. He's the best there is at what he does. And what he does is absolutely insane. As informative as he is entertaining:
Jon Foster painting Tesla during pink shirt wednesday. Definitely one of my heroes and also just a really good guy:

Mark English demo with instructors Doug Chayka, John English and Brent Watkinson in the background. We've been learning so much from these guys that it occasionally makes your head hurt:
Gary Kelley doing a monotype (and it looks like Brent is throwing up in a trash can):

First assignment. Everyone was limited to flat shapes and color with no rendering. This was so we would focus on assembling an image with the focus on the 'design' of the piece, as to not try and cover a shitty composition with nice drawing and or other 'tricks' (not that that would work anyway). It's simple, but it was actually pretty difficult. We're given the assignment on monday and its due the following monday morning where it is critiqued by the new guest artist and faculty. After all the process work, most of us don't start on the final until friday or saturday. Done in acrylic and about 95% done:
Pratt gave an impromptu painting demo today and it was awesome. Sargent study I was doing this week during lecture week:

The assignments start up again tomorrow with Chris Payne. Ta ta for now.

"if THIS was SPARTA!!!"

If this was Sparta, I would cast this crying baby at work into the Spartan pit of death.

Alas, I may have only two shifts left(hooray!), but hearing-loss lasts forever. :(

Update: *I'm done. :O

Some exam stuff, or at least what I feel like showing. The first two are from the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Used gouache, acrylic, oils and some digital. Had fun experimenting:


Concept sketch about the Boston priest who was recently in court for stalking Conan O'Brien. Didn't quite nail the likeness. The final had his hair much more exaggerated but overall it didn't really turn out well.

Photos from Senior Studio taught by Sterling Hundley. The class was about marketing yourself and how to actually put together your own 'unique' portfolio. Lots of good stuff was learned and even if I'm not ready to make that jump yet, it will all come in handy later. Some of my older work is featured in them:
And then this, just because it's cool: