The Rat King.

Picture Courtesy of Grant Richardson.

This is a Design for Illustration assignment. I chose rats cause I thought it would be fun. Took about 4 hours to do, but that time is a bit off, since I was also watching No Country for Old Men at the same time. It's black ink applied with brush over acrylics, on canvasboard. Colors are a bit off, but I think all real paintings are never done justice when photographed. 

Fable Part 1

In electronic Illustration we had a fables assignment. Before you judge me as a murdering psychopath, let me explain. We had to choose a fable to give two illustrations and work in painter. I was browsing for some russian folktales when I found this Romanian vampire tale. It's a rather bloody and grim tale, but after hearing about everyone's disney-esque  choices for subject matter I had to go with. Also... vampires are awesome illustration material. In the story the vampire takes his victims and stacks their heads in the window. I wasn't going to do this, I thought it may be a bit spooky, but my teacher talked me into it. Well, suggested and I jumped at his approval. So I did my best to keep this tasteful.  In the story he rips off their lips to make it look like they are smiling, one of the more grotesque details in a rather unspecific tale. 

Here's a link to the tale. In the next illustration I'm kind of combining all the elements I like from all three, but I used number two primarily. 

http://www.draculas.info/vampires/romania/vampire_stories_from_botosani/

Here's a few bonus sketches.

  

Crazy, and a Pirate.

An assignment for Illustration Methods. We had to do a full-size face with an emphasis on "expression". I still have no idea if that means whether the subject is expressive... or the mark is expressive. Oh well. The acrylics worked out, so I'm happy. It photographed with that light gradient... I kept it as you can see. Nice happy little accident. 

This guy was for another blog (sparetimedesign.blogspot.com). It's all CCAD illustration majors, and every two weeks there will be a new theme. This weeks theme was "pirate", so I took it in my own little direction since I figured everyone was gonna do overcoats and pirate hats, and missing limbs and all that. The story behind this pirate is he's the type that goes into active battlezones while war rages, and he loots and steals till his little hearts content. I want to take this concept further, since I rather like it.