some more heads

I was having fun drawing bald guys this day, it seems. I also think I subconsciously drew Albert Einstein on the right. I'm visiting my family in Arizona, but I'll still have archive updates until I get back next week.

First comic of 2010!

My friend Raina came over last week and I ended up doing a journal comic of my day.

(Click to make larger if you can't read it)









I'm going to take a moment to plug her book while I'm at it. "Smile" is Raina's autobiographical graphic novel detailing dental drama disturbingly similar to my own. It comes out January 31st and you can check out the first 8 pages online! She's also having a book release party at the awesome comic shop Rocketship in Brooklyn February 13th.

I am the Walrus

I had some out of town guests last weekend and we went to the Museum of Natural History. I was able to get some sketching in, despite the dim lighting of the marine mammal hall.

Doodles

A bunch of heads I drew last week. Gettin' back into the drawing groove.

paper dolls

I made a paper doll and some outfits as a Christmas gift for my niece. Here's a few of the outfits I designed.

Behind the scenes

Here's my desk setup for when I work in watercolors. Lately I've been penciling my final sketch onto a sheet of computer paper, taping it to my lightbox and then putting the watercolor paper on top. I paint directly over the sketch without having to pencil it onto the watercolor paper. I start with the lights and use liquid mask/frisket in the areas that I want to stay white. Once all the painting is done, I peel off the frisket and do the final lines with black India ink and a brush.



Here's a nifty movie I made with photos I took during the process. It's a bit choppy because I only decided to do it this way right now and my camera angles weren't quite all the same.

10 year art review

I'm not big on making resolutions at any specific point in the year, but I was feeling reflective. A few memes have been going around where artists are posting old art from the past 10 years.

From 2005 onward, most of these are from blog posts. Pre-2004 I didn't have a computer so to save the time of scanning stuff from old sketchbooks, most of it is from my early website. 2000-2001 was mainly from my portfolio and is relatively formal and art-schooly. If I had an intern, I'd have them scan more interesting stuff from my sketchbooks, but my cats haven't learned how to use the scanner yet.

Click the image to see it larger.


Some general observations on my progress and technique:

2000-mainly pencil sketchbook
-core art classes=giant charcoal hands
-sketchbook art was anime influenced

2001-sketching from life
-life drawing class

2002-graduated from SVA
-made first watercolor Christmas cards
-into faeries and medieval art

2003-animation centric
-back to life drawing class
-blue pencil and microns
-playing with photoshop color

2004-first website/ online reel
-plein air watercolors
-Christmas cards sold in AZ
-learned Flash
-I'd say I started to see marked improvement between 2004-05,
mainly due to the volume of drawing I was doing.

2005-rediscovered comics
-started drawing in Flash
-bought a computer and a used cintiq
-started lj to keep up with comic friends
-sketchcrawls
-mainly ink drawings in sketchbook

2006-work frustration drawings
-started blog
-sketchcrawls
-illustration Friday

2007-discovered sketchbook pro
-comic anthology submissions
-brush pens!
-more digital paintings

2008-more simplified-shape driven
-life drawing improvements
-pen and wash sketch techniques

2009-cleaner watercolor technique
-working more on illustration/portrait style
-Walt Stanchfield influence on life drawing

Mrs. Fox

I finally saw "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and was inspired to paint something foxy. The story was strong and the design simply amazing. I applaud all the artists who worked their tails off on this film. A little homage that I enjoyed was the love song from the 1970s animated Disney film "Robin Hood" playing in the background during one scene. It was one of my favorite movies growing up and also featured foxes.

If you're in NYC, a number of the puppets and sets are on display in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman's across from FAO Schwartz.