Smorgasbord!

~Please be aware that this blog post includes some drawings that display artistic nudity. The last section of the post includes drawings from a Life Drawing Class.~

Update time! Finally! I know it's been such a long time since my last update. I was actually hoping to have this done before Christmas, but I got very sick the week just before vacation and was out of commission for about 10 days.
The good news is, because it's been so long, the number of drawing and random doodles that I have to share has really piled up so prepare for lots of new pictures!

I'm going to start with the best, a disney-ish illustration that I've almost finished. The style is very, very different for me, but I think that's part of what made it fun. It really started as an exploratory sketch that turned into a sort of self-challenge to see if I could actually pull it off. It's one thing to do this as a line drawing, but I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to actually coloring my drawings-which is why I've been trying to practice it.

 Overall I'm considering it a huge success, although I would like to adjust how the blanket is being held up because it doesn't really make sense for how she is gripping it. I'll probably put this one in my portfolio, since a lot of companies like to see that you can draw and in multiple styles. Like I've said it's so different from my usual style, so I think it will really stand out as a good representation of how versatile I can be.

And now for something completely different...
I've been taking a glass class this quarter, and these were my first attempts at sculptural beads (sorry for the less than great photo, I was in a hurry to take it before I left for vacation).

 I'm very proud of them. They aren't master pieces, but for my first try I think they turned out pretty good. From Left to right: Navi from Legend of Zelda, a Guinea Pig, some angry birds, a fish, and some yoshi eggs.

I have a lot of doodles and quick drawings that have accumulated over the past several weeks.  All of these were done for the sake of doing art and just taking some time to relax from all my crazy thesis work.

 The other day I felt like I really needed to just set my mind free. The image of some one with wings on their head is definitely lacking originality on my part, but for a quick drawing I really love the way the wings came out. Plus, when something's for fun, who cares if it's original? I had a lot of fun with this drawing and that's what matters.

 Not much to say about this one other than that the first thing I did was scribble on the page and then decided the scribble looked like and eye- which led to me creating the rest of the picture.

 I did this in about 5 minutes, but I absolutely love it. I kind of wish it was an actual water color and not a digital piece.

Again not much to say. I like it, I wish the perspective on the elbow coming forward had turned out right. I managed to do an okay job of faking it, but it stands out enough to bother me every time I look at it.

This one was supposed to be in my last post, but I couldn't find the file at the time.

Again, just trying something different for the sake of it. I really like this style and I want to keep playing around with it when I get some more time.

Alright, all that's left are the photos I took of some of my drawings from the Life Drawing class I took last semester.

Marker and Conte Crayon. I loved trying out different materials, and more specifically mixing different ones together. The photo/computer doesn't give a good sense of it, but I really loved the texture I got from putting the white conte crayon over the marker.

I found I enjoy drawing muscular people best, for some reason I have a much easier time re-interpreting what I see on to paper when they are. However, I really think this one turned out nice, even though I had a hard time getting the right shapes at first.

I need to re-photograph this one. This is one of my favorites because unlike most of my drawings I actually kept my pencil strokes nice and neat and it turned really great because of that.

In my defense, the reason I end up getting messy is because I have tendonitus in my hand/wrist/elbow/shoulder, and it's usually hard for me to control the pencil for small/fine details. I found that accepting the messiness and learning how to use it to my advantage tends to work better than trying to fight it.

I have the same feelings about this one. It needs to be rephotographed and I love the pencil strokes I used to shade it. I did my best to clean it up well enough to share now since I have no idea when I'll get around to photographing it again.

Whew, that was a really long update! I'm done for now, and hopefully it won't be so long before I'm back for the next post. As always, please feel free to leave feedback, ask questions, or anything else along those lines.

Surreal for Breakfast

Before I get into posting new work, I have some very exciting news to share. I found out this week that I am a semi-finalist for the scholarship I mentioned in my post, Spring Is Here!. My art/essays passed the first test and now I'm up against roughly 40 other semifinalists for the grand prize. I am extremely excited and honored to have made it this far and I will be sure to share any updates as they occur.

And now on to the art!

First off, I finished the doctor and I have a quick turn table of him to share.


I am very happy with how he turned out. I only wish I had enough time to make a scene to go with him. That's something to save for later though as I already moved on and finished the next rendering project.

The only project requirements were that we use displacements in our scene. I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to do for this assignment but for whatever reason I started thinking of a dry desert with cracked earth. Then that somehow led to me looking at surrealism which eventually led to me  putting together this quick concept of what I wanted to do.

I only had a week to do the assignment, so it's not that crazy or out there in terms of surrealism. I made several changes in the composition though once I actually started making it in 3D. 

It's definitely not a portfolio peice or anything I'm too proud of. I wanted to put a lot more time into it than I was actually able to so it ended up falling short of my expectations. I'm glad I changed those awful arches that where in the original concept I made in photoshop. I never really liked them but they at least gave me a sense of what I wanted to do.

I really wanted to be able to get the metal texture that is on the front hand in the concept, and I had a texture that I was going to use. But for whatever reason the shadows just weren't working right on it and I didn't have enough time to investigate so I ended up just changing the texture all together.

I feel like trying to make something be surreal in 3D is cheating because it's so easy to get that look to it. Even more so since I could add things in in post and play around in photoshop. The weird part is despite all that I still didn't really get it to be what I wanted.

That's all for school work at the momment, but I do have a little something I did last night on the side.

I was done with work for the day and decided to do a quick self portrait in photoshop based on a photo I had. Nothing too fancy but I thought I'd share anyways.

That's all for now!