Figure Block Christmas Gift

My wife gave me the cool idea of making some blocks for my son and nephew. I settled on 6 different figures with interchangeable legs, torsos, and heads on douglas cubes. The process took much longer than anticipated, and it took me a while to gain a good technique with acrylics. I'm just not used to painting. I also put 2 coats of varnish on them, which bubbled in some spots. Ugh!

Here is the sequence:

The Eagles are Coming!

EAGLE STUDY

Character Sketch

Here's a character from a story I've been working on lately.

Junglescape

G.W. (The Original)

I sketched this as I was reading 1776. It's young version of George Washington.

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Rhino's Breakfast

I haven't updated this blog in a long while, so here's a quick sketch I entered for an art contest depicting "Animals doing human things." Used my Wacom, took about 20 minutes. I won the contest, but the only glory was internet points. 

Judah Doodles

Just some doodle inspired by my son playing around today.

Starbucks People

       Just some sketches from my iPad of random people at Starbucks.

Characters for Judah's party

This last Sunday was my son's birthday party. My wife planned it all out as a safari theme based on the Maasai Mara she went to on her trip to Africa. She put me in charge of drawing the animals and Maasai boy.

African Elephant

Maasai Boy

Giraffe before the spots

Lion

Zebra (pre-stripes), or as I called it, the redonkyu-donkey

Giraffe post-spots

Zebra post stripes

A Panda for Kaitlin

Here's a cartoony panda I drew tonight for my cousin Kaitlin.

Challenge 5- Best Friend

For #5, I had to draw a picture of my best friend. Of course that is my wife. Today is our 4 year anniversary and so I thought that I would challenge myself to draw a picture of her FROM MEMORY. This is going to embarrass her like crazy (heheheheeee), but I think this is pretty accurate. Isn't she cute!? Her favorite color is green hence the background. By the way, she doesn't normally stand like this.

Doodlestravaganza

Here's a page of random figures and heads from over the past couple days. I just wanted to practice different expressions, angles, and poses. Tell me which ones are your faves and why. Click on it for more detail.

Challenge 4- Favorite Place

This is a sketch of one of my favorite places. Can you guess where it is?

It is the Columbia River Gorge on I-84. This is a beautiful drive and is the corridor of transition for almost every major chapter in my life.

Tablet Scare

I thought my Wacom tablet was broken. All of the sudden it stopped working. I plugged it in and the light wouldn't come on, nor would the pen work. I was scared. I got ahold of Wacom customer service and fortunately my tablet is still under warranty. They said I could send it in and get it repaired free of charge. Sweet.

I went up into the attic to find the original box, and I emptied the contents to make it lighter for shipping. In doing so I pulled out an extra USB cable for the tablet. I thought to myself, "Hmm. It's worth a shot." So I plugged it in and BAM it's working again. Looks like the problem was the cable, and I won't have to lose the tablet for weeks. Bonus!

2 Minute Landscapes

I decided to challenge myself personally by doing a sequence of landscapes limited to 2 minutes each. This challenge was mainly to practice gesture drawing, for I never have done a gesture sequence of landscapes. These are all straight out of the noggin...or straight out of the pen. As you can see, some are better than others, and I think the better ones are those that have a stronger balance between black and white. Also, I adjusted pen settings about half way through, which made a huge difference. Tell me what you think.

The two minutes did not include cropping.

Challenge Day 3~ Favorite Food

Doing the challenge each day is literally impossible for me with school and a baby.

One of my favorite foods are haystacks. If you don't know what a haystack is, it's like this: taco salad x amazing= haystack. This was a fun one to build, as I piled each thing on in a separate layer. Fritos, beans, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, taco sauce, and ranch.

Animation Trial

Yesterday I did some tinkering around with iMovie and decided to see if I could make a short animation. I have never animated before, so this was a new venture. I just went with a simple face and adjusted it little by little until it was smiling. After I put it all together in iMovie, I did one take on the sound to match the expression. I think the results are pretty hilarious. My wife thinks I am a nerd. Check it out.

Challenge Day 2~Favorite Animal–Narwhal

I don't know that I have a favorite animal, because I really like all animals. Well, mainly mammals. The first one that came to my mind as one of my favorites, is a narwhal. So here is my drawing of a narwhal. Did you know that is a tusk, attached to the left side of it's mouth?

Challenge Day 1~ Self-portrait

I stumbled upon a 30 day drawing challenge that I am going to take on. I really want to develop as an artist, but I am probably the least disciplined person in the world. Especially when it comes to drawing while I am a full time student.

The first challenge is to do a self-portrait. This ended up taking way more time that I thought it would, so I will share with you my process. I'm not to thrilled about the final product as I got a bit frustrated and settled for what came of it all. Here's my process:

Step 1: Establish perspective, axis, and mild contour. Notice the lines across the face which establish eye, nose, ear, and mouth positions.

Step 2: Further develop contour and overall shapes.

Step 3: Establish major features.

Step 4: Details!

Step 5: Drop opacity on all layers and do more solid line work.

Step 6: Finish basic line work.

This is where I ended up settling due to frustration, and I turned all layers back on.

I've discovered that maybe inking is just not for me. I really like the results of Step 4, but then it went sort of downhill. Oh well.

We'll see what happens tomorrow! 

Warm Ups

Since I rarely do full projects, I am going to start posting some of my warm up sketches. 'Warm ups' would be the equivalent of stretching before exercise. They get the artistic blood pumping. Or you could just call them doodles. Here is one from today.