Pyle never had it this good...

So I was tediously using Adobe Illustrator to draw a vectored perspective drawing in the computer labs when suddenly....a booming voice from the heavens said onto me: 

"use Google Sketch Up!"

Okay, so it was really my friend and fellow Ringlinger Tyler Schatz, but his voice did startle me and he really was a godsend.  The program is a very quick, user-friendly way to make geometric models of anything from a room to a city. It's easy to use from the getgo. I built a sloppy model of what I needed - nothing special - but I'll make good use of it in my Visual Development projects.  

I owe ya' for this one Tyler! 

The Things I Saw

I'd like to say these are all new but I've been neglecting my sketchbook hardcore this half of the semester. I'm currently struggling with using oil for illustrations (as opposed to open acrylics)...let's call it a "learning curve" I haven't surpassed just yet...

In heinsight, I should have sanded this (gessoed) canvas down. The canvas was originally a still life painting from sophomore year. The texture becomes distracting in the wrong light, and worst of all the mouth is situated right over what used to be the rim of a cup used to be. I'm sorry if my blog feels like it turned into a portrait blog, I swear I'm an illustrator!! I'm just sitting on a bunch of things before I send them off through the blogosphere. So coming up, I'll be posting model sheets of original characters, traditional + digital illustrations, plus one or two animatics. Bear with me!

30 Portraits << i n >> 30 Days

I'm right in the midst of Pratt's epic 30 Portraits in 30 Days (in 30 different Medias!) assignment! I have a few that are "done" but I wanna keep working on them. Here is:

Distorted Self-Portrait, graphite and charcoal

F.E.W.S. Model, Crayola crayons (plus last-minute key scratching)

Sci-Fi Sanchez, Color Pencils, Gouache & Acrylic

Joey, Charcoal and Ink

Scrooge, Tape

Candy Curtis, Scratchboard and Crayola Markers

Shabiba's, Watercolor

2 Day Pose / Limited Palette

Portrait Night...in 6B!

I hosted to back-to-back Portrait Nights this week because of pure necessity to fill sketchbook pages; I think I might just keep it up since I feel weekday Portrait Nights are more practical than weekend Portrait Nights. I didn't like my Sunday drawings much, but since I started using a 6B pencil and a stub, I feel like I can get the effects of charcoal but with the control of graphite. These were all 15 minute poses.

Fear of Commitment

Our first Illustration assignment sophomore year was a black & white Phobia piece. It turned into an epic fail the first time around; but looking back, it was the concept/composition I was most proud of. So...I got proactive and finished it digitally because the canvas was too big to take home. I kept it in b&w because I wanted to really practice values and not get distracted by color. 

Conceptually, I broke-down the Fear of Commitment into two fears: (1) the fear of loosing one's freedom, and (2) the fear of not really knowing your partner. The perspective is distorted because I was trying to compress/collapse space for psychological effect - for the most part I try to create believable space but for this one I wanted it to be a surreal/nightmarish environment. 

I'm diving head first into my traditional media projects; don't wanna touch a Wacom pen for a good while hahaha 

Moleskin Chronicles

Been flipping back and forth through sketchbook pages, there's a lot more coming soon...

I want to point out that sandpapering your sketchbook is the shit! I tried it out because I had to smoothen the texture of an hour's worth of acrylic smudging. I liked the chaotic element of it and - if you change your mind a lot about colors like me - you also get a lot of different colors showing through. So click left and you'll the page right after it's sandpapered and click right to see me taking it nowhere after that. I came to terms with the head being bigger than the body.

Aside from sketchbooking, I got a digital illustration that shoooouuld be finished by this weekend, but don't count it against me if I slack off. Ringling is fast approaching so now is when the adrenaline of the fear of Pratt kicks in (it's like the fear of God, only praying doesn't help). I hope you are having a sweet ass summah vaca.

Jerry Portrait

No, it's not Jesus or Tarzan... This was supposed to be done for my friend Jerry's birthday last year, so it's either a really late present or I'm getting a heads up on his upcoming birthday. Anyways, I worked on it over Christmas break and on-and-off this summer. 

I used Golden Open Acrylics the whole way, learned a lot. Now that I'm done with this, I want to do a series of very diverse portrait subjects (in terms of age and race.) Other stuff on my to-do list is an illustration for Illest. I started a landscape painting in El Morro; by now I've realized that landscape painting always attracts spectators, but in this big tourist spot it turns into a freakin' performance art! Last time there were about 20 people just 10 feet behind me scrutinizing my feeble attempts at starting a landscape. The little kids would just run up to me and start talking, which made me really miss working with kids. Anyways, I'll keep you guys updated on it and I'll try to make some sketchbook pages worth showing!! 

Thanks for visiting. 

The Duke of Splitz

All the (sadly) Unfinished Ladies

Figure painting is one of the few things I am willing to wake-up at 8am for. the one below was done in Figure class, the one above was done in Painting class. I had a lot of fun drawing these ladies, I just wish I had more time with them. The top one was a 3-day pose, so my teacher encouraged us not to crop much of the form. The bottom one was a a 1-day pose. I (and my instructors) would have like to have seen then completely finished BUT there is a little part of my that like some qualities in half-finished paintings hahaha I can't put my finger on it but there is something very beautiful about the preliminary deconstruction of the form and color. I guess it's like my painting teacher, Robin Cody, says: it's economical. At least that's how I think she says it. Anywho, I'm gonna paint a lot of portraits and maybe some whole figures, it's up to my friend's back home...it takes a lot of  time and patience to sit for a painting. 

Sketchbook

I'm happy to say I've been keeping a sketchbook this semester. It was required for Illustration and I am so glad it was because it pushed me to find new ways to approach a blank page. I messed around a lot with media and tested what works for me and what doesn't. Most of it is not "blogworthy", but I believe one of the major functions of a sketchbook is to do trial-and-error stuff, to fearlessly experiment and not play it safe. Anyways, here is some stuff I did from my the top of my head (as apposed to the bottom): 

Here's some quick stuff I did from photo reference,  

And these are master copying of the great Montgomery Flagg's  linework: 

More Figure

We went out to go landscape downtown and I fell in love with this alley. I'll tweak it some more if I get the time this semester. 

Figure class goes by a LOT faster now that I'm painting vs. drawing the model. These are my first in-class figure paintings; I didn't want to bite of more than I could chew so I did them monochromatically (I heart Burnt Umber).  Next class I plan to do full color and if it's not an epic fail - I'll post it. 

Branding!

             Business card are hard to do. They're small, so they have to be simple; but they also have to represent you as an artist. I need my card to be a kind of "teaser" that will make employers want see this humble blog.  So here it is in all its vectored splendor, my first business card: 

Also as part of this branding project, we had to make custom envelopes, in case we ever needed to go old school and send a business  It's all about sparking curiosity and people wanting to see more of your style. Finally, we had to make a letterhead with all our contact info. 

Homework Figure Painting

   Our Figure assignment was two have to figures interacting. We could use any media so I used Open Acrylics; I'm trying to get used to painting figures rather than drawing them. Trying to get a head start on next year when we take our first official figure painting course. 

A big thanks to Ziv and Jordan for taking the time to pose for me - you guys rock.

Usually in figure, we get a different model/pose every class. To mix it up, we've had a 3-day pose for the last week and a half. It's sweet to have more time; now I wanna get fast enough were I can get this much done in one class. 

Sketchbook

Master Copies

Last semester, we have to do two weekly master copies in our sketchbooks for Robin Cody's painting class. I got into them and out-of-them, it all depended on how hectic the week went. Here are the one's I deemed blogworthy.

Me and my friends named this sketchbook The Littlest Sketchbook because it's the smallest sized moleskin at the campus store. When closed, it's as smaller than your hand (well my man-hand anyways.) I enjoyed working in such a small skethbook because it didn't need a lot of paint to have a painterly feel and because I could do spreads easily. I normally don't like to work on just one page of a sketchbook, I prefer working the two pages together as a spread because it feels more like a canvas. 

Experimental Perspective

Our Painting class was part of an exchange program with a school from Antwerp. The teacher (Tilda) wanted us to paint a room from our living space on campus. The twist was that you could not use linear/classical perspective - instead we had to be more expressive with our work while still conveying the idea of space.  

The piece is about how different my roommate's workspace is from my own, accentuated by the change in temperature. I had a lot of fun with this and actually discovered some ways of handling paint that work for me - I'm also very happy with the colors. If you were wondering, my side is the right side with the huge Puerto Rican flag.  

At Ringling, illustration students have to take a Intro to Graphic Design class so that we can be well-rounded freelance artists. For our first project we had to do fake buisness cards for famous people.  

Force-fitting (and other concept exercises)

Concept 1 is a lot of fun. We've been generating character using exercises that stimulate our imaginations. This one was the product of Force Fitting (uniting two unrelated things), everyone had to fuse together an animal with a vehicle. I was assigned a killer whale and a hearse; below are the preliminary thumbnails and the final. 

These bunch of characters where from our Texture exercise, we had to take photos of textures like bark, rocks, grass, walls, clouds etc.  and find characters in them. It was hard to do them all in a week but I'm happy with how they turned out. 

Figure, Spring '09