Painting a DUNGEON

Here's another painting assignment. With this one I stuck to traditional materials all they way and gave my tablet a rest. Thought I'd post some planning stuff to, so you folks can see my thought proccess. First I start with a quick thumbnail, in this case I used markers to rough in some tones. Then I did a color rough with the actual guache paint, testing color schemes out, seeing what worked and what didnt. The big one on top is the end result!

CLASSES ARE OVER THIS WEEK! VEGAS, HERE I COME!

Dry Dry Desert

Here's some photoshop color studies of my next background painting. Hopefully I can actually manipulate real paint at least half as good as I can push pixels around. Cross yer fangers.

Animal frenzy!

Yesterday I went to the Royal Winter Fair! Its like this sorta hayseed version of a convention in Vegas, only people are presenting their cows, sheep and butter sculptures instead of porn DVDs and such. It was fun! LOTS of big smelly animals everywhere and farm folk and kids running around. Great opportunity to see these animals up close. It was all indoors too, which made it nice because it started to snow outside that morning! Had fun drawing all these animals, I heard there was a ban on chickens and all fowl because of the whole "bird flu" scare. I would imagine you are more likely to cath the flu from one of those runny nosed kids dripping on you, but oh well.

Purdy Colors...

I likes 'em PURDEEE!! Here are some cloud studies, done in thin washes of guache.

Starting to get the hang of this Photoshop...

I didn't draw the design, but I did color it. This was an assignment for my digital tools class.

My first "A+"!

Put this one on the fridge, ma! Nobody can storyboard a scene of ultimate holiday destruction like yours truly! The assignment was to draw a room in the first panel, something happening to that room in the second panel, and then the result in the 3rd panel.

I don't even remember the last time I got an A+. Second grade maybe? Defintely not in a college environment. But hell, this is Canada. Maybe they hand 'em out like kettle corn. Oh and another thing, the actual grade on it was a 93%, but I guess thats an A+ according to the proffessor. Ihzzhn't Zhat Vheerd?!

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving, America!

Eat some turkey and watch some Canadian rules football! Here's some drawings of my Fred Flintstone feet and sausage fingers to enjoy.

Four Paintings

These were made for my layout (background) painting class. The assignment was to come up with a simple, surreal design for a landscape. Then we had to paint it 4 ways: First, just simple flat black and white with no blending or shading (second from top). Second, we need to add gradients (3rd from top). This one probbaly gave me the most trouble. I kept striving for perfectly blended, subtle gradients that I could make in 3 seconds in photoshop, but what I ended up with was clunky, patchy gradients that look like they were made with my foot. I'm new at this! Third we had to make the same design, but now make it more 3D (bottom). This one to me came easier, basically when in doubt just add a highlight or a shadow and POOF! Ya got 3D! Finally, we had to choose our favorite of the 3 and re-paint it in a monochomatic (using only one color) fashion. So yes, I did pick the fastest and easiest one to re-paint. BUT, I happen to really like flat, simple designs like this. Reminds me of my printmaking days. It conveys everything the more rendered ones do, but its much more succinct and to the point. I like that. Plus its 5am and these are due in a few hours!

Drawing Kate Moss's Ass...

Hey everybody! Finally got around to scanning some stuff tonight. For our life drawing class, we have to prepare a portfolio full of skeletal studies of the pelvis, ribcage, skull, vertebrae, etc. My group got to take home the pelvis for this week, so that means 4 or 5 of us get together and sit around a big plastic pelvis and draw it from every angle imaginable. Sounds fun right? WRONG! The idea is the more we know the skeletal system, and once we can draw these forms accurately, and quickly, then our real life drawings from the model (and furthermore, our cartoons) will be all the more easy to do, because the "roadmap" of the skeleton is already etched in your brain. Hope so! I recently found out that after Christmas they give us an art test where we must be able to draw the entire human skeleton FROM MEMORY. From a front, side, and rear views!! Just thinking about that makes my head hurt...

Oh! And here's an art tip from me to you: The human pelvis when drawn from a top-down perspective looks surprisingly like the Batman signal!

Storytime!

One of our first assignments was in my animation principals class. The teacher wants us each to sort of storyboard why we got into animation, to kinda get some background info on us. Its not even graded, just for fun but I thought I'd post it in case anybody hasn't heard my tale yet. 100% true!

The Star Spangled Maple Leaf...

Well, here I am in Canada! The school is amazing. So many talented artists here! All the professors here are people I can google search or pull up on IMDB.com and see their resume/industry history. I had Life Drawing class today. I'd be posting one of my figures from that but they all sucked! I did roughly 40-50 sketches and it just wasnt my day. I've been out of practice and it shows! Starting next week however, the school offers free extra life drawing class every single night. I'd be stupid not to go, so hopefully with practice I'll get back in the swing of things. In the meantime, I drew some of my classmates durring a notetaking session, here are the whimsical results!

Kick it off with some boobies...

Since my favorite thing in the world is my Tablet PC, I thought I'd share some of my life drawings I've done recently with it. I still know I'm pretty slow with getting detail down. The tablet is partly to blame, your hand just isnt quite as adept when pushing a plastic stylus across a plastic screen surface as it is with charcoal on newsprint. You can use your whole arm for each stroke when drawing on a big paper pad, and here I'm using my wrist a lot more. But enough excuses. I just need more practice, plain and simple. Plus I could go on for hours about how utterly kick-ass and irriplaceble the tablet PC will be to so many artists in the next few years, but I'll save that banter for later...

Word Up, my homies?

Hey there! Everybody and their moms all have Blogs now. So I figured I'd give it a shot. To people who don't know me, I'm from Las Vegas, NV (born and raised!) and am currently about halfway through a cross-country trek to Canada. Amazingly, I have been accepted to Sheridan Institute's freakin INSANE animation program. This fall I start a 4-year degree in what I've always dreamed of doing, and I plan on posting my progress here on this site. This is mostly so mom and dad and everyone else can see that all the money and support I've gotten hasn't gone out the window. But I'll also be commenting on my struggle to adjust to the rigors of Canadian life, how much I'm jealous of my classmates, and so on and so forth. Its gonna be a trip!