My Brouhaha

More Practice

2012-01-11T22:57:00.000-07:00

Here are some sketches done over the last few days.

Trees and flower all done with pen.

After messing around that scene started to form, no idea what any of it is.

Pencil drawing.

2012-01-07T17:31:00.002-07:00

Things have become much busier at work, as a result the drawing time has diminished greatly. Anyway, with everything going on here are some sketches I have been able to do over the last week and a half. The flowers were another Dodson exercise the idea was to focus your energy on certain parts of the still life. Some of the areas were to be more developed than others. I am not pleased with my results, but hopefully I was able to learn some things through the exercise.

The next sketches were me just messing around. I received a really interesting book for Christmas, " The Art and Making of Star Wars the Old Republic." Based on the new MMO game that has come out. I tried drawing one of the lightsabers in the book....not sure it turned out so well, but it was fun! The second was just another portrait photo taken from shutterstock.com.

More Exercises from "Keys to Drawing"

2011-12-27T19:17:00.002-07:00

Well, first of all I hope that anyone is reading this had a Happy and Merry Christmas! I wish you a Happy New Year as well! With the holidays in full swing and family visiting I haven't been able to draw every day, but I still been able to do some drawing. Here is a sample of some of the projects from my book I have been able to do.

The first one is an attempt to use "masters" techniques. First to copy an original and then to emulate what a master has done in ones own art. I used a self portrait by Kathe Kollowitz done in charcoal. I think I chose this piece simply because it was done in charcoal. I have never really used this medium before and found it a quite enjoyable. Here is an image of the original followed by my copy:

The next image is the piece where I had to emulate this style in a piece of art done on my own. I did use a photo image from shutterstock.com for the model. Here is the outcome:

These last few pieces are just some of the additional projects from this same book. There are some short gesture drawings and then some studies in shading or tone. The last piece was a photo found in the book. The idea was to redraw it matching the tones found in the original photo with the recreated piece done in pencil.

Original

My Re-creation

BLAHHHHH!!!!

2011-12-19T21:17:00.001-07:00

It's times like this I wish I could erase or better yet, tear out pages from my skecthbook....=/

Still Life

2011-12-19T19:29:00.001-07:00

I attempted to work on some still life drawings last Friday. Trying to incorporate what I have been learning lately.

Peppers!

2011-12-15T20:35:00.001-07:00

Worked on this exercise from my book today. The first pepper was drawn from memory, second I used a reference. Again, I did no erasing, used restating and some blind drawing. Let me know what you think.

2011-12-14T20:24:00.001-07:00

Just some random sketches from earlier this month.

I have a new book!

2011-12-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

I went and bought myself the book, "Keys to Drawing," by Bert Dodson, even after I said I would till after Christmas. However, I couldn't wait. I wanted to get started on these techniques ASAP! Things were a bit slower at work today and so I tried to draw my hands....didn't work out so well. Tonight I tried drawing my feet, things don't look so great.

In this book the author talks about restating your lines and drawing blind, both of which I tried to do in each of these sketches. All I have to say, is it's a lot harder that it would seem. I am definitely going to need some time to get use to these techniques and make sure I am asking myself the right questions as I draw.

Here are the sketches, let me know what you think:

Digital Painting

2011-12-11T22:08:00.001-07:00

Here is a WIP, something I started working on this weekend. Comments always appreciated. Again just trying to learn how to paint using my tablet. The original was taken from here.

Heading Back to School

2011-12-08T18:33:00.001-07:00

I went and talked with an academic advisor at UVU last Friday. Exploring the possibility of going back to school to study Illustration! I have to admit I was about to cancel my appointment due to my lack of self confidence when it comes to art. However, I have to say I was sooooo glad I went. My questions were all answered and then in addition to meeting with an advisor I got to meet with Don Seegmiller (you can find a link to his website here on my blog, see below). Don is an amazing Illustrator and I have always been amazed by his work, my goal is to be that good one day.

I found out a couple of years ago he actually lives in Utah and he teaches at UVU! I ddin't think I would really ever take any classes with him, let alone meet him! Can't describe how excited and scared I was when I got to talk to him. That was quite the experience...especially when he asked to look at my most sketchbook. It was amazing. He gave me some compliments and some tips to get better.

First thing he told me to do was to never erase. Second thing never tear pages out of my sketchbook. Third keep drawing everyday. He even told me I should invest in this book and use it religiously, "Keys to Drawing." I think I will wait to buy it until after Christmas....maybe Santa will bring it to me, if I am good that is!

I will have to get some more images scanned and posted on the web site. Drawing at work is proving to be a challenge, things are getting really busy. I need to spend more time doing this at night while I am home anyway if I don't get another post about between now and the year end, Merry Christmas!

Textures...and another portrait.

2011-11-22T22:22:00.001-07:00

Always wanted to be able to draw the cool little boxes full of different textures I have seen on other people's blogs...so this was my attempt. The portrait I did was started yesterday, finished it up today. I think I need to work on the shading some more. The scan doesn't quite do it justice and as always comments always appreciated!

2011-11-20T22:10:00.001-07:00

Just some random stuff I tried drawing the other day....was having a hard time trying to figure out what to draw. Half way through the fish ( I was at work and didn't have my colored pencils) I decided to just do it all in graphite....well I didn't like the way that worked and then tried to go over it in colored pencils....yeah, made it look even worse. Oh well, just another thing to add to the list of things not to do!

Also tried working on my tree again, not looking any better in my opinion.

Becoming a better artist.

2011-11-16T00:15:00.001-07:00

I wanted to make a post about becoming a better artist as a reference for myself. I have a long way to go before I can even begin giving advice about art. However, I read this article the other day on Deviantart.com and wanted to post it to my blog as a way to remember where I read this article. I find great stuff on the internet all the time at work, but never write it down. Then when I want to go back and reference it I can never find it again...anyhow, if this helps someone else along the way, even better!

Mas Cabezas!!

2011-11-16T00:04:00.001-07:00

I tried another portrait based of a real photo with some dynamic shading. After the success I feel I had on Friday, I decided to make another attempt. This time I tried working at angle slightly to the side. I also wanted to draw a man's face. I don't think this one turned out quite as good as the last drawing I did, but I am happy with the way it turned out. As I begin shading these sketches I start to get nervous...afraid I am really going to mess something up. Anyway let me know what you think!

Oh yeah, here's the link for the reference.

Before I forget here are some Loomis heads I worked on today as well. Wish I hadn't tried to add shading to the one, can't stand it.

Star Wars

2011-11-14T20:47:00.001-07:00

I did a sketch last night based on a tutorial for Ian McCain from the Star Wars edition of Imagine FX. It was a tutorial on how to paint Darth Maul from Episode I. While I didn't do the painting I did make an attempt at recreating the character with colored pencil. The other two unfinished faces are sketches I was trying to do at work today, again based on the book by Andrew Loomis. Cheers!

2011-11-11T19:47:00.001-07:00

I worked on trying to replicate some heads done in the book by Jack Hamm. Those didn't turn out so well. I then tried to draw a portrait of some lady, photo taken from ShutterStock. I know it doesn't match up perfectly with the reference photo, but I was so pleased with the result. As usual though the scanner seems to mess my drawings up a bit. All done with a ballpoint pen.

Perspective

2011-11-11T19:45:00.001-07:00

I decided to change things up again, starting reading Andrew Loomis' book on drawing. Had a lot of good information surrounding perspective. Some sketches done while reading his book.

Rocks and a chain

2011-11-04T20:25:00.001-06:00

Top from today, bottom from yesterday. Really enjoying using a pen. The last week or so, everything has been done using a regular ball point pen, it's a lot of fun. Of course making mistakes are harder to get rid of...=D

2011-11-02T18:57:00.002-06:00

Drawings worked on over the last few days. I spent most of the weekend trying to paint up some jack-o-lanterns I drew, but I have been having a hard time figuring out how to "render" a picture in Photoshop. I may post up what I was able to do at a later time, in the mean time here is the latest.

New Post

2011-10-26T23:38:00.003-06:00

I have to admit, unfortunately, I didn't do any drawing last week. My schedule changed at work all last week and for some other reason I was feeling quite frustrated and down with everything, not just drawing (maybe it's the fact that we have to fork over several thousand dollars to fix our roof.)

Gratefully my schedule is back to normal and I have been able to do some drawing and sketching at work the last couple of days. Here are some things I have done. I am still trying to get better at drawing the figures and specifically the head at the moment. I feel like I am getting better at drawing the face from straight on as well as portraits from the side. But when I start trying to draw from any other angles it just gets messy.

Ohhh sooooo flufffyyyy!!!

2011-10-14T23:28:00.002-06:00

Got tired of drawing heads, thought I would try something else. Used photos from National Geographic. Worked with pen on these and used some colored pencils on the King Penguin. I had a lot of fun working on these little guys.

New Studies

2011-10-14T08:49:00.001-06:00

Here is what I have done over the last couple of days. Tried doing some more portrait drawings, still not looking any better and getting really frustrated with drawing portraits.

Ears

2011-10-09T22:21:00.002-06:00

Fridays work, too tired to say anything more.

The Nose

2011-10-06T17:45:00.000-06:00

I bought another figure drawing book, by Jack Hamm. "Drawing The Head and Figure," so far I really like this book. The author has some different methods than Andrew Loomis, but I don't have any complaints with either artist/author. I hope, that by going through both books I continue to hone my skills. Now I just need to find a book about drawing and sketching in general. My line work really needs some help. Anyway, here are the noses I have been working on..smell ya later homes! =)

Self Portrait

2011-10-04T20:25:00.000-06:00

Here's the latest on this piece. I am sooo frustrated with this, still looks so amateurish to me. Can't stand it. It's interesting thought because I read something online today at another web site that says blending graphite tends to look amateurish, cross hatching is a better approach. Perhaps I will try and redo this using that technique.

Update on WIP

2011-10-02T23:47:00.000-06:00

Here's where the tree is now. Think I spent about another 1.5 hours on this. The more I look at this I realize how bad the composition is. I didn't block the tree in very good on my paper and just decided to go with this anyway. As a result it looks a bit scrunched up...

WIPs

2011-10-02T19:38:00.001-06:00

Here are the two WIPs (works in progress) I have currently going on. I haven't really been "sketching" in the literal term, but I have been working on both of these pieces. Both are done with pencil. Trying to develop tighter lines and smoother shading, especially on the self portrait. I am frustrated with the self portrait, because I am having a hard time with the nose. The other thing that still frustrates me is it still looks so amateurish.

I guess I just have to keep pushing myself, maybe one day everything will just click into place.

Digital Painting, It's an Apple!

2011-09-27T20:48:00.002-06:00

Second time trying a digital painting, still working in gray scale for the time being.

New Stuff.

2011-09-27T19:57:00.001-06:00

Well the kids got me sick, had a rough time last week. Didn't do much drawing but I have scanned in everything I worked on the week before and last nights stuff. I really need to figure out how to make my line work more clean and neat.

Kids are sick...gross!

2011-09-17T00:40:00.002-06:00

So I did quite a bit of drawing at work...well at least as much as I could in between phone calls. I then came home and spent a nice evening with my kids and wife. Kids finally fell asleep, my wife and I had just fallen asleep only to be awakened by my son who puked all over himself. Needless to say, I am still up after doing a lot of cleaning. I'll try to get some more drawings posted tomorrow, err I guess it will be later today.

More Loomis Work

2011-09-14T21:12:00.001-06:00

No comment, really frustrated with these heads, especially where the heads are tilted upwards or downwards. Mr. Loomis doesn't really explain how to draw heads in this matter, having to just try and figure it out myself. This has all been done over the last few days. I have also been doing some gesture drawings, but there are too many to scan in tonight. Too tired.

Sorry some of these are really light, forgot to make the adjustments when I scanned this all in.

So Excited

2011-09-08T21:37:00.000-06:00

So, I just fully installed my new Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. (Thanks to my father-in-law!) I had been trying to test it out in Photoshop with no luck in getting the pressure sensitivity to work. Found out it was because I had not drivers installed. It's working great now. As a result here is a little doodle I did. I am calling it "The Rock." Hehe

Still Working

2011-09-07T20:07:00.001-06:00

Here's the latest, but not the greatest. Worked on female proportions last night and then on the head figures today during work. I am going to try and work on some stuff tonight, but not sure if I'll get it posted.

Frustrated...........>:-(

2011-09-04T22:45:00.001-06:00

I started reading the book, "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth," by Andrew Loomis. He starts out going through the proportions for both male and females....here's where I am so far. Not my best work. I can't mention how many times I wanted to rip this up and start over. Oh well, practice makes perfect, right????

Inspired

2011-09-02T22:39:00.001-06:00

At work today I was reading the forums I now frequent on a regular basis and found the link to an individual who set out from having no art experience at all to become a professional artist. I went viewed through the individuals work on this web site, conceptart.org. I am amazed at the changes this individual went through. So, if he could do it, I can to. Here is a sketch I did this evening, I spent about an hour on this one. I am going to try and do a simple digital painting now that I have my Wacom Tablet. Thanks to my father-in-law! I am so excited to use this thing. Anyway, enough rambling MOAR ART!!!!!

Overcoming my Fears!

2011-09-01T09:25:00.000-06:00

I have heard it said the only way to overcome your fear is by facing it head on. Well, I have always shied away from drawing anything relating to human anatomy, because for one I feel like I am horrible at drawing humans and two for some reason I just fear doing it. As a result I have been trying to draw more human faces and eventually I want to do lots and lots of figure drawing...one thing at a time though. An artist I really admire, has done a huge collection of about 400 users of the art community site, Deviant Art. I have been going through and trying to redraw each of these portraits to improve my own abilities. Here are the results:

Here is another portrait I did, this was done using a stock photo:

From working on these portraits I feel like mouths and lips seem to cause some frustration for me, so the last couple of days I have been drawing just lips....

Let me know what you think. Positive and constructive criticism is always welcome! Enjoy!

I am still here!

2011-08-25T08:07:00.000-06:00

It's been awhile. I haven't posted any new art for sometime but it doesn't mean I have stopped drawing, just been busy with life. However, I will be posting some sketch work I have done recently. Lately I have been trying to draw more and just practice, practice, practice. So....don't fret! There will be more posts coming!

Something New!!! For Real???

2009-08-16T20:59:00.002-06:00

Here are just a couple of sketches I did. Neither are my original work. In an attempt to practice new things I have been copy some of the masters. Upper right is a piece done by Bobby Chiu and the lower left is based on a painting done by Aaron Jasinski. These were done with pencil.

Digital Painting....My First Attempt

2009-07-24T22:33:00.003-06:00

Here is my first attempt at digital painting. I know there are many white spots, but since this was for my class and it was a practice session, I feel pretty good about it. This is not an original, it's some concept art from Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, check out the original here. Comments and critiques are always welcome.

Just a Couple Of Things

2009-07-05T18:51:00.003-06:00

Ok, so in an attempt to get better at art I am going to be drawing more and this blog is going to be dedicated solely to my art; besides my wife does an excellent job at keeping our friends and family informed of our going-ons via her blog. Since this is going to be an art blog, I need a new name for my blog. I have come up with some ideas, please check out the poll on this here blog, and give me a vote for which one you like best. If you don't like any of them please feel free to comment and give me some new ideas.

The second thing I want to mention here is a really cool tool that I came across. A member of my church was telling about his brother-in-law who is an artist and works for a division of Ubisoft. This artists name is Andrew Bosley I encourage you to check out his blog as he is another amazing artist. Andrew has also come up with an awesome tool. It's called the Brainstormer, and as the name suggests this is a great tool to get the creative juices flowing. Great tool, check it out here.

What to do...????

2009-07-02T21:15:00.003-06:00

Yes, I haven't posted for a few months. Part of that has been lack of motivation, but really it just comes down to pure procrastination. My last class at school had nothing to do with art, ethics..bleh; soon I will be starting a class on typography (whatever that is). I have been trying to do some soul searching to figure out what it is I really want to do. Being a graphic design major and not enjoying it, I originally enrolled at the Art Institute Online to do game art and design. However, the more I think about it and the more I read about what this consists of, the more I am thinking this is not what I want to do either.

Over the last couple of months, things have been slow at work...enter extreme boredom. So, I turn to the good ol' Internet and over the last couple of weeks have found some amazing blogs by a group of artists based out of Utah. Most of them work for a company called Avalanche which designs the video games for Disney. Looking at these individuals art work I realize how far I have to go and the style of these many talented individuals is the style I would really like to have. With that said, I have added a few blogs. Take a look as these guys are all really, really good. While I have had a good time at the Art Institute Online, wish me luck as I am going to try to enroll at UVU and enter the Illustration program there. Hopefully some life changing events go smoothly towards the end of this year, love you Em, thanks for the constant support and encouragement.

Later....

Lolipop, Lolipop!!!

2009-04-12T23:06:00.003-06:00

It's been awhile, but I shot this picture (the camera used was my soon to be sister-in-laws, awesome, awesome camera...=) of my daughter yesterday at a family Easter Egg hunt, I thought it was a cool picture and tried to add some cool effects to it with Photoshop. Let me know what you think.

Shooter

2009-03-21T00:43:00.008-06:00

The wonderful New Year's resolutions, I love how a whole bunch of goals are set at the beginning of each year...and if anyone is like me, you're lucky to keep up with one of those goals. Here it is March and I am just barely getting around to working on one such goal, to create more artwork.

Well I haven't been very succesful up until now. You are probably wondering what the reason is for the sudden increase in artwork and postings here on my blog, well, let's just say I have lot's more time on my hand and instead of wasting that time I have been trying to better my Photoshop skillz. Hopefully, then I will be able to show off my future awesomeness...until then please feel free to send me any feedback and comments on what I post. I may not comment on what you post, but it is read and considered while working on these pieces =)!!!

This latest project is a little darker. I found a tutorial on how to create this broken glass look from a fired gun and thought it would be fun to see if I could duplicate the effect (you English majors, don't judge me too harshly, I can't remember if it's effect or affect). While I had to find my own photos to use, which I found using Google Images, I wanted to make this a little bit darker and more sinister. I guess the actuall photo of the shooter wasn't the best angle to use, but I didn't want to use the exact same photos as the tuturoial. Anyway, let me know what you think.

Second thing I want to mention is this cool animated video that explains the whole credit crisis. It's short, about 10 mins, and it's entertaining. I guess the person who put this together did it all with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects, pretty cool in my opinion. Anyway if you have a some time, or you're just bored, visit this website and watch this video, again it is informative and very well put together.

Em?!?!?!?!

2009-03-17T00:38:00.003-06:00

Here's the latest project I just completed. This one was just for fun. I found a tutorial at Planet Photoshop, which teaches this simple method of creating comic styled photos. I was working on doing this with Adobe Illustrator, but this tutorial is a lot quicker. It doesn't look quite as smooth as a vector image would, but hey I still think it looks good. Again, insight and feedback is always welcome.

Invitation

2009-03-10T17:15:00.004-06:00

My latest class assignment involves us creating a collage of images combined to illustrate a short poem, quote or verse from a song. While trying to determine what to do I turned to my favorite book of poems, "Where the Sidewalk Ends," by Shel Silverstein. I found a poem I really like, titled "Invitation." The poem reads:

If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...

If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire

For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!

I thought this was a great poem considering the classes I am taking. Here is the image I have come up with so far. All of the images, except the stone dooryway come from Getty Images, a site we use for our classes. The stone door is an image I found at tunari.tripod.com/id6.html .

Hope you like this image, it was creating using Photoshop CS3. Let me know if there are any suggestions. I love feedback.

Ohhhh...that's hot!!!!

2009-02-22T08:33:00.004-07:00

So I finally finished my English class and am now back into an actual art class. My current class is Digital Manipulation II which is a class dedicated to learning Adobe Photoshop. I am in the first week of the class and am actually pretty excited with what we are doing so far.

Last night I had a bunch of assignments due and after two and half hours of working on the one I am quite pleased with what I was able to accomplish. We were given a photo of a jalapeno pepper and then required to use some layer masking to change the color of the pepper and then the color of the shading. I think this is probably pretty basic for most versed in Photoshop manipulation, but for me it was the first time working with layer masks. Once I figured out this technique I had a blast working on the assignment.

Digital Scrapbooking?!?!?!?

2009-02-15T22:19:00.003-07:00

The other day I came home and my wife was working on our computer and for some reason she was very excited with whatever it was she was doing. She immediately wanted me to come and take a look at her newest project. As I looked closer to what she was doing I was blown away by what I saw. She had some how changed her desktop background to the coolest looking scrap book page. I asked her if it was a new page she had created, thinking she scanned it in. Nope, I was wrong, she explained the scrap booking page was based off of some material she downloaded, it's called digital scrapbooking?!?!? (Didn't know scapbooking could be digital, maybe it should be scrapblogging.....) Anyway, I guess there are a number of sites out there dedicated to the newest and modern form of scrapbooking, don't ask me what they are, that's my wife's department =)!

While I am not much in to scrapbooking myself...ok I am not in to scrapbooking at all, I do think it was absoletly amazing what my wife was able to do. She used Photoshop to put it all together and lately she has been learning a lot of cool applications that she has been teaching me as well. So, being bored with my background, I decided to create my own background from scratch. In trying to learn more about Photoshop I have learned alot from free online tutorials, some of my favorites are ones that use a "grunge" look to create websites and blogs. I surfed around the internet looking for some images I could use for my new desktop, downloaded some free brushes for use in Photoshop, and some new fonts. The end result....I must say I was pretty proud of myself for the first "grunge look" attempt. I just hope this doesn't mean I am turning into a digital scrapbooker.....=-) ?!?!?!?!?

My wife is turning me into a Blog Nerd!!!!

2009-01-11T22:18:00.003-07:00

So, my wife has been blogging for about 6 months now, everyday in fact. She has to check her blog at least 5 times a day...and keeps telling me I need to start a blog of my own. However, being a person of few words I have often declined, until now. I never even read my wife's blog until two weeks ago, let alone have any desire to create my own.

Here I am though, I have recently been doing a lot of "blog surfing" looking at a lot of individuals connected to the wonderful world of art and illustration. I am currently attending classes through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh's online division and am having a hard time choosing between Game Art and Design or Animation.

Finding a lot of enjoyment from playing games, video games especially, I have always thought it would be extremely exciting and just a lot of pure AWESOMENESS to work on the artistic and creative side of developing the games themselves. However, animation also looks to be just as rewarding and perhaps allowing for greater flexibility with a career. Alas, I have come to the fork in the road not sure of which path to follow. So after reading my long windedness, if anyone knows of anyone working in either fields or has any advice PLEASSEEEEE, do share!