Happy New Year!

I don't know how many times this year I have heard the phrase "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" As if life is some toddler following you and picking up lemons off the ground and handing them to you, again, and again, and again. Whenever someone tells me to make lemonade from some unfortunate circumstance, I imagine the lemon comes from some annoying, malicious imp like this. I'm definitely looking forward to 2011 with great hopes that this year will be less......citrusy. Too much lemonade can give you gout, you know :P
Happy New Year everybody!

Merry Christmas!

I can't ever sleep on Christmas eve...so I did some painting! Just spending some good times with family on vacation :) I feel blessed to also have the kinds of friends who share their different and interesting ways of celebrating all the holidays at this time of year with me, and I wish happy funtimes to you all as we close in on 2011! And yes, he is a little crosseyed, but you would be too if you saw a cookie that big. :P

Character study for Bunny

Here it is...me finally getting my behind in gear and moving beyond the pencil-doodle stage with ideas for a short film, tentatively called "Overturned." This is bunny. I hope you can tell from this character study that he is pure, concentrated, unadulterated, calculated evil. Oh, he is indeed.

Jellybean, the inbred unicorn

So the topic was a strange one this time... "inbred unicorn."  I tried *so* hard to make it look like he's got one nostril and one eye, in addition to the one leg,  but when I walk away and come back for another look it reads like a side view no mater what I do, AGH! . Darn the human brain and its uncanny ability to resolve unfamiliar shapes into something that makes sense. As for the name...well, if someone asks you to "taste the rainbow" in this case....you should say no.

Dreams About Flying

 This sketch group round is especially exciting because all the entries will be looked over by James Robertson of Pixar! The topic this time is "flight." I've always wondered if birds fly in their dreams when they're asleep in their cages. I'd like to think they do. The main expression I was going for on the bird was a serene longing. It's a wonderful skill to be happy wherever you are, and having dreams can be big part of that.

Camoflage

Camouflage was the topic of this round. Hide rat hiiiide! I think I'd like to try simplifying the tones on this one to get  a stronger focal point.

Things that go bump in the night!

The sketch topic was "bump" and I just had a mental image of bumpercars, and this mismatch-showdown. I really tried to paint the little girl's expression to evoke that "I'm having fun" sort of bliss, with a splendid lack of self-consciousness. Ah, I wish I could bottle that!  The giant monster seems to be good-natured and taking it all in stride. :) I did run out of time on this one, I'd like to take the rendering on the monster and the bumpercars further.

Her royal Diggness

Topic was "digger." Because I am nothing if not mature, this was the first thing that came to mind. Inspired by the famous photo of the royal spelunker.

Bookworm

The topic for sketchgroup was glasses, this was the first thing that came to mind. Kind of an annelid Velma. I forgot to add a title to the book. "Worm and Peace" hehe.

Awooooo!

Pensive werewolf. Perhaps he is contemplating the moon, or which tree to mark next?

Frank-ette

I doodled this for a sketchgroup whose topic was "afro" Guess I have all things Frankenstein on the brain. It sort of looks like a "Garbage Pail Kid" though, LOL.  I was forced to cut this one short due to house-flooding shenanigans. All's high and dry now, says the insurance inspector :-) If I had more time, I think I'd re-visit the left arm, so that the pose isn't so flat.

Franky

In case you were wondering whatever happened to my ABC's project, I'm currently pokin' around with the ole Zbrush, so that's where all my time is going! Wanted to do something for Halloween :) Usually I begin with a Maya base file, but zspheres have gotten interesting since v4 so this is a Zbrush sculpt from the ground up! He's going to have a bug on his sleeve, that's what he's gonna be looking at. Trying to decide between a ladybug or a spider. I think a ladybug would be funnier but a spider would be fitting huh? He doesn't have any teeth yet, but he can still gum you to death, lol.

Rosey Colored Glasses

I gots 'em.

Today's sketch: Marie's ship?

Not really her main ship, more like a little runabout she takes down to the planet's surface, or a fighter craft. I wanted it to sort of echo some elements from a carriage so I put nautilus like "spokes" in the intakes and little steps down the back. I suppose it's a bit conspicuous for a bandit, might have to re-think that, LOL.
Sorry about the photo, I haven't yet joined the super awesome phone club, so you get this blurry cam pic.

Marie Antoinette: Spaaaace Captaiiiin!

I found this really neat auto-generator thing that takes historical figures and pairs them with random titles. When I saw the words "Marie Antoinette: Space Captain" I really wanted to draw that! I'm thinking she robs from the rich and gives to the poor like Robin Hood, to make up for the whole "let them eat cake" thing in her past life. Considering her past, she's a little paranoid and is sporting an iron collar, and she keeps the key on a chain in her pocket. You know, you can never be too careful, even if there are no such thing as guillotines in space, what with there being no gravity and all :P
I think I might re-draw this one with some anatomy reference in front of me. I posted this 'un cause I'm thinking it's time for me to just start getting stuff out of my head onto paper. You never know if something is a sucky idea or not until you actually try to realize it. A lot of the time I am guilty of coddling ideas like a spoiled poodle. I just sit it on a pillow and idealize it. Gotta take that hound for a walk or it's going to get demanding and yappy!

Girana!

Was talking with my friend Jeff about the stupidest pitch for a "syfy" channel monster movie. I say Girhana should be thier next feature. Think about it. Jaws of a piranha, with the reach of a giraffe? SCARY!

Here's D!

I suppose it's obvious it had to be a dragon, heh. I tried to deviate from the dragon clutching a tresurechest thing...I thought about it for a bit and imagined a pudgy little accountant greedily counting his treasure. Donno why he's pink ...just seemed to fit :D

Squishy Little Dictator

I think this may qualify for the weirdest thing I have ever painted! A lot of what you see here is the result of a really odd dream. As I was painting and pondering the dream, (I'll skip over the potentially embarrassing Freudian interpretations:) I decided to sketch this little beastie as "the heart." It's like a squishy little dictator...or a delicate monarch who unquestionably wins the fight vs common sense. How can our strongest part also be our weakest?

Cleese-ey?

Finally got that new wireless Wacom, it's dreamy!

Here's something I did to take the tablet for a spin this weekend. I recently decided to sit down and watch the color theory DVD's a friend of mine gave me a long time ago. I don't know why it took me so long, after watching them, I can clearly see a lot of mistakes I was making in my "underpainting" technique that I was stumbling through by trial and error. I'm still not at the spot where I automagically know the perfect colors to use, but I think I'm taking steps to get closer. Practice practice practice!
In case you can't tell, it's supposed to be a caricature of John Cleese. In looking up reference I found that he's really, really serious in almost all his photos...thus the puppy-dog sadface. Maybe I should just tell everyone it's Poe. :P
Likeness and proportions. Tricky stuff. I suppose that is next on my list, LOL.

C!

And the alphabet continues! Her is my painting for "C." I'm branching out from fairytales to include fables...mostly just because I really wanted to draw a chicken :) This evolved from a sketch I did on one of my lunchtime walks. I'm practicing the same technique as with the beanstalk. I started with a sketch, then painted greyscale, then colored over it. It's amazing how satisfying it is to finally put that little white dot on the eye. PING! haha...:)

B!

Well, I nailed my butt down to the digital drawing board and did it! Here's B! Feels good to be going forward with this project, thanks for the encouragement guys :)

 For B, I knew I wanted to do a beanstalk, and I wanted the beanstalk itself to be a kind of character, I toyed with putting faces on each bean in the pod, but it read too tiny, so I changed the peas into eyeballs, thorougly creeping myself out, lol. Hopefully the white teeth read ok, I was worried I had put too many of them and it obscured the mouth too much.
Lettering is kinda like torture to me...I kinda punked out on this one.The snippets are written in a photoshop font called palomino, but the big letters are hand drawn. Maybe when I'm finished with the entire alphabet, I'll revisit the lettering.
The biggest struggle for me right now with photoshop and digital art in general is that I use dodge/burn wayy too much, I'm trying to beef up my color theory so that I can pick the right colors and highlights in the first place without going through 20 minutes of playing with the hue slider:)

Onnn to C!

Alphabet Drawerings!

Here's a piece that I did to kick off a project that promptly landed before it  got to the end of the runway! An old friend and I were going to do fairytale ABC's and this was my take on "A." For whatever reasons, this was as far as it went. I'm throwing down the gauntlet 2010...this is going to be the year of "doing things" and I am going forward in many ways, and it starts with "B"

Zbrush Shenanigans

Weird Snail Thing

Erm, this is a lady snail, I kind of picture her as a kind of 18th century aristocrat, very uppity. In the concept she doesn't have arms, but I fell in love with the idea of her having some of those glasses-on-a-stick that she can peer incredulously out of in her constant state of disbelief at any and all perceived hooliganism, so I had to give her arms, LOL.

"Thistle"

I've got a long-standing fascination with weeds. I question the notion that some flowers are pests based purely on the fact that they don't require your constant hovering with a mister bottle. Every time I see a dandelion growing in a crack in the sidewalk, I think, "heck yeah."

Here goes!

Well, I've finally done it...I've set up a blog. Cross off # 1,074 from my 'things to do' list! Mostly I plan on using this space to upload art bits I've been working on here 'n there at home, and maybe eventually even some stuff I've done in the past.