Winter Cabin Trip Sketches

Went on a Winter mountain trip up to a friend's cabin. My favorite sketches from the trip.

 

 

Ode to a Silverfish

Anyone else have this problem?

Glaring Feline

Dejo is not amused...

Red Purse

I wonder what she has in there...

Checkers

Never knew a man or creature could ever turn down a solid game of checkers.

Starblaster Studios Header

New blog header! The old one just didn't work anymore. Might color it with that old faded comic-color look, but it looks kinda nice in simple black and white.

It's cool how much more interesting and effective simplicity can be. Sometimes when I look at older pieces, it strikes me as odd how much harder I was trying to make things look complex and overworked as opposed to now. It's great to see how much of my style has changed in such a short amount of time.

Buddhist Hog

This one might require an explanation. In Buddhism, the pig represents greed, anger, ignorance, selfishness, and just overall the qualities that make up a bad person. It occurred to me though that redemption or forgiveness (for anything, it doesn't have to be spiritual) should be an option to anyone willing to accept it. A pig should be permitted to follow a path of forgiveness if they so choose to, even by the practices of people that have denigrated its stature in the world.

Brian Portrait Ink Drawing

Found this neat old drawing in my sketchbook. I was staying the night at my friend Brian's place in Berkley. Thought I might share. I'm gonna start uploading ink drawings more often, they're a lot of fun.

Plant Shears

Just finished this one, yay! I am going to be at Long Beach Comic-con with a group of artists called Pixeldrip, so I'm trying to prepare some prints to sell. This will indeed be one of them, though I am somewhat unsure of the quantities I should prepare.

There's something fun to me about this image, it feels like I could read the story behind it lots of different ways and I'm curious as to what other people might interpret. Below is the pen drawing. What tends to upset me when coloring line art is that you lose some intangible quality that the line art alone had. Some minimalistic feeling of simplicity that simply drifts away as you render it. Oh well, I like each version as they both are here and present to this world...

One Theriocephaly Morning

"One Therianthropy Morning" would also have been an acceptable title....

Watercolor Life Drawing

I finally got around to scanning some older watercolor/ink drawings.

Would really like to do some more of these, they were a lot of fun.

 

 

Ballpoint pen and sharpie. Wanted to see how many quick poses I could fit on the same page.
Somewhere around 30 I think..... I dunno, you count them!

Space Station Hallway - Five Point Perspective (Rough)

Started this in a perspective class with pencils on a looong sheet of animation paper. It got so complex though that it made more sense just to continue it digitally (hence the different types of lines here and there). I also started an ink version, but decided it didn't quite look the way I wanted it to. Still, I overlayed it into this image to hone in some details. Still in the rough stages, but I'm going to eventually paint this out and use it for a brief animation.

For those who don't know, five point perspective is used to emulate a point of view turning 180 degrees. You see only part of the image as it pans across to the other side, making it seem like the camera has turned in place. In other words, the two ends of the hallway you see are actually opposite ends of the same straight-line hallway. Also called "banana pans," they are used sometimes in 2D animation (and even in 3D or matte painting on occasion).

Erika Quick Sketch

Quick sharpie sketch of Erika. She looks a little mad,
but if you turn the image upside down, she just looks kinda sleepy...

Fun with Markers!

Just messin' around with markers....and paint...and photoshop.

Fedoras are cool...

Thank you Erika for standing still for the initial sketch. Marker, colored pencil, and a big layering of photoshop. There's just something inherently cool about old gangster attire (or anything from the 1920s, really).

"The Seagull and the Octopus"

A freehand pen drawing that I started on one day at Titmouse when they didn't have much for me to do that day. I've always had this image in my head of a bird perching on the head of an octopus, so henceforth the prior image. A seagull seemed only natural as the type of bird to utilize.

I do wonder about this bird's safety, I myself wouldn't be quite so calm in this scenario.
Unaltered pen drawing below:

Comic-con!

Comic con 2011 was oh so much fun. I met lots of the usuals, and discovered many new usuals! Above is a 45 minute sketch I worked on at the Corel Painter booth. They posted everyone's work on their facebook page. It was cool to see people trying out the program, I'd never used it before myself. Might have to switch it up between Painter and Photoshop now.

"Well I found it first..."

Really trying to get down lighting to make environments and scenes feel more atmospheric. I have a feeling that these characters are from a story I'm working on, but we'll see won't we.... Thanks to Steve Brown for creating this assignment for the class, I'm just sorry it took so long to actually finish :P

Visual Development, Illustration, & Sculpture.

Alright, here goes a crazy catch-up of all the stuff I haven't posted in a long time. Above is a 3-point perspective painting I finished for one of my classes a little while back.

Just did these two digital paintings a couple days ago for a Tally Hall music video collaboration. The song titled "&," needed numerous images and interpretations of ampersands to be flashing by. Top one is a little Tim Burton inspired. (Going to go see the LACMA exhibit here in LA soon, very excited!). I'll be sure to add a link when I get to see the finished video. Tally Hall's Facebook page, "&" Song on Youtube.

"Barnacles, would you join me for a cup of tea?"

Bone fanart, done for celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bone in the comic-con 2011 souvenir book. Bone and all characters are copyright of Jeff Smith.

More sculptures:

 

 

    

 More character designs....

And a few more older illustrations...

Well I think that caught up almost everything. My posts won't usually be this long (I promise)