Project 1 Complete, More Portrait Updating

Here's Project 1 completed (From Editorial Illustration). The piece is based on the dilemma in Chile, where miners are trapped very deep underground. They must send everything down a shaft to them; food, letters, etc. The miners are expected to remain there until the end of the year while a method of extraction is put into action.

A little more progress made today with the 2nd portrait for Digital Illustration. Painting opaquely is coming a little bit more naturally. It's a little strange to be able to just cover up anything that isn't working. Yet this is also very liberating as I can experiment with lots of colors and glazing/etc.

I will post up some sketches and color studies for the next Editorial piece soon.

Portrait #2

Here it is, very early on, just started today. Will be using both Photoshop and Corel Painter 11. I'm approaching this like a traditional oil painting. I'll post the steps later on. Having a great time painting this one.

Portraits in Progress

3 portraits are in the works. Pencils are done for all 3; 2 were done traditionally in pencil and the last was drawn in Photoshop. All will be painted in Photoshop using different methods/brushes/palettes. Here is a little preview of one...

First Digital Piece

Here is a concept for a character for a project I'll be working on; probably for the whole year. It's a very rough visualization to try to touch on some character attributes. Drawn and colored in photoshop. I approached this more like a quick marker comp than any kind of comprehensive study. More in depth drawings will come.

There will probably be 2 or 3 more for this character, in alternate clothes, hairstyle, gesture, etc. Along with that will be other characters, palette studies, environments, bars, police stations, etc. Pretty excited to work on this.

It's been a long time my dear

Yes, it's been quite a while since my last update. Here are a few things:

This is a current piece for Editorial Illustration - Pencils and a color study (the scanner at school was not functioning so I had to rely some bad lighting for pictures).

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This is a logo design for my digital illustration class. It's my first real attempt at doing anything in Illustrator, so bare with me.

I like otters, so here you go!

Not too much to talk about here, started with a pencil sketch, then pen tool overlay, then live paint.

Current Project Glimpse

This is a lightpost poster design for C2E2 for an Art Direction class. It will be paired with a piece from another student. We both render/finish our own pieces and also our partners. It should be a good piece

These are my final pencils as well as my color study.

My painting will be placed on the right hand side and my partner's on the left. Mine consists of the "real" superheroes, and alongside them will be the regular joes who dress up as them for conventions. I'm attempting to do more superhero work in the hopes of getting a booth at comic conventions this/next year.

AAART Planner Cover Competition

So here's an update with a cover I painted for the American Academy of Art's Planner for the 2010-2011 school year. The focus of the competition is to represent the school (and Chicago if desirable) in pretty much any way you want. Based on the traditional approach of the school and it's legacy, I thought a more realistic approach would be suitable. *Realism is all relative though because a little painted man has popped out of his painting and complained about his role. This is a painting of a man painting a painting, of a man painting a painting.

I enjoyed the story of this piece and I believe the fact that it kind of breaks the 4th wall for the viewer is an interesting aspect. One of my goals for this painting was to continue to use my own photo reference, but only to use them as a guide, not a bible. Things like opacity, variation of color in skin and achieving some correct looking darks were some of my guiding principles for this piece.

There is a variant of the school logo, I thought both worked pretty well, portraying different characteristics of the school and the medium.

I've continued to touch up this piece since it was scanned, and hope to enter it into the Illustration department show at school.

Gouache/Watercolor on Illustration Board (10.5" x 15.5")