A lot of new things have happened, from finding more money art jobs and finishing newer personal work, and finally got to collaborate with one of my talented music friends Andrew Hink with a new piece that I really enjoyed working on (and just the mood for nostalgia)…expect to see another portrait coming onto my website for one of my clients, and I’m also working on a children’s book as well. Don’t want to say too much but the story is about a bug’s spiritual adventure into its adulthood.
My money jobs are primarily portraits and tattoo’s right now, these tattoo’s I sold to a client relatively recently -

I drew them traditionally in a short amount of time, and presented them in two different ways constructed with Photoshop for a couple of options.  Quicker than my usual work but my client liked them a lot.  It was also a good learning experience as well since tattoo’s don’t have an extreme amount of detail, the artist who inked them said they had a tremendous amount of detail.

I just have to finish it up by doing my digital color work. Overall I’m very very pleased where this is turning out, since my backgrounds in my previous illustrations were not nearly as complex.  For consistency reasons from the last Aesop, I was looking for a tale with similar creatures used, and ended up finding this one where there was a rabbit and dogs again, but with more going on in the story.  “One who has many friends, has no friends”.

I also thought it was a good idea to provide a passage from the stories that I have been illustrating to make it clearer than it is.

Taking a look at what’s going on in the world of stories orientated towards kids, Through The Looking Glass is a universally known story, so I thought I should give my own interpretation, and ended reading the original story by C.S. Lewis several times and watched at least six versions of the story. Quite possibly the most interesting interpretation by Jan Svankmajer, using surreal stop-motion techniques in “Alice”, capturing the chaos of the story to a tea, and a 90′s made for television movie that was interpreted by Hallmark.  Though some of the effects seem a little dated, it’s ridiculous and has beautiful colors, and has a great mad hatter that inspired a lot towards my version of the hatter.  As described in previous entries, I sometimes go through my process, so I might as well show you how I go through finishing a piece:

The first step is making the drawing fully in pencil, so I get to finishing that first, and get it scanned in and cleaned up a bit digitally. So it’s time to get ready to coloring the piece. Since I want to make this a lively and energetic color scheme, I choose not to use blacks or grays. So the next thing I do is choose what the dominant color that the drawing is going to be using, and that is an antique brown since this is in the Victorian era, and I do this by duo-toning the piece. This is also going to determine what kind of color scheme the piece will be.

Ping! Not too much changes but now it’s ready for coloring!  So I block in the basic color into the piece and keep about three related colors consistent but still change their intensities.  So I chose to use the scheme, Orange, Yellow, Green, Orange coming from the Antique brown. Makes sense because: warm color, warm color, cool color.

Looking good! But it still lacks pop, and my style works best when color pops.  So since there is lighting in the piece I next go into using the inversion of my commonly used color (which is my antique brown) for shadows and lights, and add a little more subtle light effects.

Nice! Sometimes in the last step, I choose to add some subtle textures, but in this piece, there was already a lot of texture to my pencil work so I chose not to use anymore textures and let the pencil sing. But that sums up how my mental process goes through finishing a piece.

So lately, two of my new pieces are related to the Wizard of Oz stories, and I’ve been heavily involved with the story for a long amount of time, so I couldn’t pass up to do another for fun, it started in my sketchbook and I was playing around with pens and pencil and making some neat textures digitally.

Well it’s not portfolio material but I still had fun making it after working a part time shift. From recent inspirations as Calvin & Hobbes, I think it’s quite funny to see Toto with a similar Hobbes’ face.

The poster is about 14×17, whilst the postcards are 4×6, and the business card is 2×4. Overall they came out great! Can’t wait.

“Cynic”

It was a project done when I was attending the University of the Arts. It was for a figurative class where we had to illustrate a quote, and since I can be one at times, I chose the quote, “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin” written by H.L. Menckham. At least I can admit it.

The color scheme was dead on for the quote but as far as when I look upon it now there’s a lot of anatomy problems in the hand, and I love drawing hands! I can say I keep getting better when I do something new, especially when you get excited about doing it.

But since it is an update, I thought I might as well show you some of my process for the heck of it, so, here we go.  These were done when I was still attending the University of the Arts, and I am still improving my process from piece to piece.

Initially this was an idea for a logo for my website, and could have been a portfolio piece for the cover page, but decided to take it out when portfolio day was coming up since I designed a better one. It’s little more loose than I usually sketch but it’s enough of an idea that gives myself where I’m going to go towards the finish, and from there on, I go to a final sketch, and then the finished artwork.  There’s still small things that change from the sketch to the finish from logic and creativity but it’s all about brainstorming.

In recent work, I’ve merged my traditional techniques with my digital techniques, since my target market (children’s books) is interested in mixed media. So my interests of drawing consists of linework, tone variation to make the image pop (as well as lighting if there is a light source), filling up a page with details, and interesting textures. So how do you get that sort of traditional look in the digital realm? If you have a scanner, then you’re set!  I spend the same amount of time with my drawing skills traditionally as I do digitally, so the drawing is done with Wasserlack or Faber Castell pencils, and then the color and effects are done digitally, similar to how comic-book and graphic novel artists approach their work.

Peter Pan – Finished Drawing, Some Clean Up Using Digital Techniques

Tinkerbell – Finished Drawing, Some Clean Up Using Digital Techniques