15xThirteen

15xThirteen is something I am really excited about...

The very talented Coey Kuhn and Shy Custis have put together this book of 15 different artists, each with a few pieces and some info about them. It's a good size, full color assortment of a lot of great work, no back door bragging intended here, they got some talented artists from all over the globe in on this.

Here's the thing, there aren't that many of these. Only 250 are going to be printed, then it's done forever. And I assure you that they will start to disappear, especially once Coey and Shy go to sell them at a con. They are the cool popular kids on the indie artist block. So if you want one, grab one now, because once they are gone... no more art book.

Heck, if you do buy one, send me the book, I'll do a sketch for you in the front. A nice one. It will involve ink, and pencil, and whatever else I can use without ruining your nice new book. And I'll send it back to you. No extra charge. If you are interested, just shoot me an e-mail about it and I'll tell you where to send it. No shenanigans please.

Here's the stats of the book:

-Only 250 being printed!

-55 pages

-8.5"x11"

-$40 USD each

-$5 shipping US and Canada, $9 worldwide

The Contributors (in no particular order):

Shy Custis/Coey Kuhn/Rachel Britton/Renee Britton/P.Gaither/Lois van Baarle/

/Ms. Rosek/Kelly Bastow/Mike Puncekar/Kaite Ryan/Ash Evans/Kai-ou 'msh' Tang

/Agnes/Andreia Parreira/Hamlet Machine

And remember my sketch offer. Shipping is all that it would cost. If you wanted something in particular, just write it on the inside cover.

Click Here to Buy

Some Finals

Here are two finals done from start to finish on the same day. Luckily I had all the parts I needed going in, but halfway through I feel asleep from exhaustion and almost didn't get a good enough finish on ahab here. Haven't sketched a whole bunch since being back home, but I'm looking to get an activity going during my month off. I'm getting antsy without any type of real assignment.

Moby Dick

Tour De France 1923

Portrait of a Mobster

Apologies for the lack of posting as of late. It's finals week though. Here's a quickie from tonight that I had to do for a homework figure drawing class assignment. I just sort of pulled this one all from my head so it has some issues, but it's also doubled as a bit of a skin tone experiment for an upcoming moby dick illustration I have due friday.

Here's everything due this week:

-One Exam

-4 four corner illustrations for monkey project

-25 11"x17"concept boards based on the monkey tale and present

-2 out of class figure drawing assignments, second one is going to be a painting. Over-gesso'd the canvas, though. Still drying. Need to Start!

-2 Editorial illustrations, one based on the tour de france, one on moby dick

-one artist paper

-and some other odds and ends like a contact list of companies, portfolio reviews, and a artist compendium.

In other news: Last week I had my website due. And now you can go there and look through my work without stumbling through this blog here. A lot of really dated work on there, but hopefully I can really start overhauling my portfolio soon, because in my opinion it's pretty weak right now haha.

Anyhoo: Check out the new website, hmm?

Some characters from a story.

Meet some of the cast, of "The Lifeless Bones of Edmund Barret".

This has been a long project in the making, that up until this point I've been calling the monkey project. I really haven't been posting as much as I'd like (everyday...) so I threw together this portrait of sorts off of the character boards I have thus far. I have such a long way to go on this before the deadline roughly two weeks from now. Not really sure how it's going to happen. Hopefully it will see a decent finish though, because it's certainly been fun up until this point. Alas, I have so much other stuff due, I'm afraid to write it all down.

But here is Agatha, Edmund, and Hanuman.

Bad Moon Rising

This one is the culmination of alot of research, alot of drawing, and then about two hours of quick inking. We had to illustrate a song from the 60s for a class assignment, and I chose Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival. It had some type crammed on it, but when I shrunk it down from print res it got all wonky so I ditched it.

I have to ink more stuff. I really love doing it.

Sketch-a-day 98

I colored a study i did for an upcoming piece because this place was itching for an update.

Lots of stuff has been going on lately, and I'll go into it more when i post up some finishes later in the week.

Sketch-a-day 92 93 94 95 96 97

I've been promising at least a small catch-up for awhile now. I'm still sketching just as much really, just not posting it all. I finally started to use a moleskine I bought 3 or so years ago. The very first few drawings I did in it were absolutely terrible and I deemed it cursed, but I cut out those pages and have now converted it to my official pen sketchbook. It does take cheapie bic pens really nicely.

Bic Pen in Moleskine Sketchbook 10"x 8" (x6)

Happy Halloween!/Sketch-a-day 91

The Tell-Tale Heart WIP

So this was part 2 of the two day all nighter. I slept pretty good last night but I'm still all sorts of groggy. But after classes I did go to barnes and nobles, as tired as I was, and picked up this book called France 360. Totally awesome. Just plain amazing reference material. The pages open up into like 3 foot long panoramics. For the price it's so worth it. Here's a link to it. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/France-360/Jean-Taverne/e/9781435104730/

Back on track, here. I had to do an illustration on the Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell-tale Heart". Really fun assignment but I had a lot of issues getting it off of the back burner and working on it. It's kind of like the mongol piece, I had to edit it quite a bit to meet the deadline, can't miss those, and did the best I could, but this one in particular could use a few more hours, and I cropped off the bottom that sounded good until I drew it. So I'm declaring this a work in progress until i get around and fix a lot of the issues with it. Till then I gotta start cranking away on my Monkey tale I've touched on a few times, and get moving on a Tour de France illustration.

The Mongols.

So, it has indeed been awhile since I've updated. This is mostly due to craziness of my current schedule and not wasting a single scrap of free time I can scrounge up. This is part one of a two part all-nighter. Tomorrow calls for another complete finish. And maybe I'll be able to post it before I fall asleep.

Started this one about 6 p.m. with just a blue line drawing. About 10 hours of work here, and a lot of waiting time as the amount of layers in the file tried to murder my computer. I can't say I'm not pleased with how it turned out in the end, especially for something with such a last minute, nervous kind of deadline over my head. There's a lot I'd like to still do to it, but all of my other assignments are urging me onward. I over heard a senior my freshman year talking about how easy senior year is. I would like to punch him in the face.

Really, really hard.

Anyways, this one is about a battle that the mongols and the french templar knights had oh so long ago. The Templar knights were the only ones who really put up a good fight against the mongols. Plus, Templars are o.k. guys.

Photoshop over Blue Line Drawing 9"x18"

Sketch-a-day 89 90/ 1 Hour Time Limit

Hope blogger doesn't shrink these down.

What we have here are two quick characters from tonight. Technically it's only one sketch-a-day, but I'm so far behind it's embarrassing. Anyways, I challenged a friend online to a photoshop character battle of sorts pretty randomly. Rules were you had one hour to do each character, and then you had to show what you had at one hour. I'm pretty rusty on digital painting I feel like, so I chose greyscale to go a little easier on myself. So here are two "Timed Photoshop Battles". Really hope to do a lot more of these with friends. Just so much fun to do.

Categories are as listed next to the character. I included details, because, I like it when other bloggers post details.

Sketch-a-day 88

Before I get into all my work tonight I decided to fix up this sketch I doodled out in classes today. A potential boxer project is coming up and I was just having some fun with it.

Another weird thing today, I finished up registering for my last semester at CCAD. Feels good. Here's hoping to at least some mild success in the illustration world.

"Wet" "Willy"

So this was a really fun, quick assignment. Goal was to pump out an illustration based on two words, mine were "wet" and "willy". This one started off really scary. The previous night I skipped, what I assumed to be a work day, due to being up for over 24 hours. I took a nap, that turned into impossible to get off of couch disaster. I went into sleep coma, and didn't even get the text from a buddy telling me to get to class and get my words.

It was a great sleep.

So the next day I go into class, a six hour studio class with C.F. Payne. I took everything I could carry, supply wise, as I had no idea what were words were gonna be. Everyone else was given their words and allowed to do research, take reference, along with any and all preliminary work short of working on it once it was down on board. I get to class. No Payne. Panic sets in as everyone else is working, and I really start to feel antsy. It wasn't until an hour later that I had my words. To compound my problems I settled on acrylic and color pencil, a combination I have never truly worked in, and I was utilizing a 2 year old piece of cold press illustration board I had sitting in my closet.

How I pulled this out of my butt, and why it went so smoothly I'll never know, but if I had to guess it would probably have been that nap. It's not perfect but it was done from start to finish in under 5 hours.

Acrylic and Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board 8"x8"

Type Treatment and Layout for The Undertaker.

This is the second part of the assignment for the "Professions" piece. I was on a crazy deadline for this, and as a result this was done during a completely sleepless time, therefore making me like it even more. I had to do a bunch of self branding due at 8:00 in the morning and this was due at 12:30. So I stayed up all night and did this directly over the text I drew out, just pushing and pulling at it until I got this kind of barely readable but fun thing happening. I wanted something pretty different, rooty, and dirty for it.

Also finished a mini piece I'll post later tonight for the word's "Wet" and "Willy". See ya then.

The Hyena General

This is what happens when I have a short amount of time to do an assignment, and it comes up suddenly on the horizon. Does feel good to have the urge to do a Hyena out of my system.

Mixed Media on Wood Board, Digital 8"x 6"

Sketch-a-day 86 87

Two sketch-a-days from two pages I really like at the moment. First half is a quick life drawing from my Professional Practices class. Maybe 10 minutes of quick drawing or so. Then for the second half of that page instead of doing more life drawing like I should have done, I drew those pirates in some sort of a hostage situation with some sketchy pirate language.

After I ate a bit in class I started the second page after I again asked Alex Lyon for an idea of what to draw and he said: "Titanic Mechanic" which boiled down to guy wit a wrench after I realized I knew nothing about Titanic's mechanics. And lastly, some quick studies for an upcoming Tell-Tale Heart Illustration.

The Undertaker: Is Ready to Under Take

Wrapped up on "The Undertaker" art today. The story here is that he's leading a parade of the dead. I have more textures in this thing than I have ever used on anything else before it. I'm sure you can tell. Definitely a fun one.

Next big assignment is to illustrate an edgar allan poe story. Still flip flopping on what exact story to do but that should be a fun one.

In other news I'm embarking upon an older movies marathon of sorts. Whenever I can, I'm gonna squeeze in my favorites. I just finished "The Great Escape" and I think I'm feeling like "Jeremiah Johnson" to usher in the cold whether. The majority is totally going to turn out to be Steve McQueen movies, but the dude is awesome.

Edit: Toned down the blacks into something more manageable and easier on the eyes.

Lincoln's Secret Letters: Complete

Abe is finally all wrapped up. A lot of time, and a tiny bit of actual work went into this. All around a smooth project though. I included some detail shots since the scan of the oils was pretty immaculate. I knew I was gonna lose a lot of the textures while getting it to book size, but in photoshop, it's a beautiful thing to behold at 100%.

So glad to be done. Every time I had to haul the thing to school it rained. Thing was cursed.

I'm alive! But sick.

Just popping my head in to tell you I'm still here. But I got some sort of sickness that involves my head feeling like it's about to pop. Sinus medicine seems to really be helping though. But the fact that my brain is punching it's way out of my head means updates on here aren't my first priority, but I'll try to get something up on here really soon since I know it gets boring fast without me updating and coloring sketches.

I'm off to get some ibuprofen and sudafed now.

Sketch-a-day 85

Another quick sketch, this time done during a slow day of class, as I ended up ahead of the other students because I messed up the deadline. Early is better than later, I guess.

Abe isn't dry yet for a scan due to a last minute fix, so he may not get posted until monday possibly. Depends on me getting back to the school to scan.

Sketch-a-day 84

After my Professional Practices class I sat down in the illustration office and painted this out once I had found my tablet stylus. I just wanted to do something spontaneous, so I asked my friend Alex Lyon for a type of soldier, and he said "a merc". So here he is. Maybe an hour or so long speedie once I cut all the talk breaks out and stuff.

Abe painting will be ready for scanning tommorrow hopefully, so expect that.

Monkey Business - Hanuman Liar Speedies

I whipped up these two little mood/setting digital paintings last night for my Illustrative drawing class. For the class I've written an outline pulling from my own story and images, hindi religion, and elements of russian folklore all into this real bastard of a tale. They are really made to set a tone and mood than anything so far.

In other news, Mr. Abe Lincoln is just about done and should be completely done before I go to bed.

In other other news, I realize this is my third post without a sketch-a-day and I'm sorry. If I do post them, which I have all the intention to, It may have to wait until the weekend because it will be quite a large chunk of time scanning, resizing, and saving for web with so many pages of stuff. Till then expect Abe to be posted once I get it all post processed, if I can ever get a decent picture/scan of it.

Lincoln's Secret Letters Underpainting

Oils have slowly become my favorite medium. They scare the heck out of me, but as far as traditional media, gotta love this stuff. The process, especially the underpainting is so much fun. I like to just throw down my base color and just straight to picking up instead of painting really, just wrapping a paper towel or rag around my finger and using that. Adult finger painting if you will. Today, on top of the finger painting, the freakishly talented C.F. Payne (if you aren't from CCAD google him, then be super jealous of me (seriously.)) suggested simply that I use a fan brush to soften some edges. For whatever reason I never tried it. It had such a great impact and ease of use... I think I owe him somehow even though I am paying outrageous amounts of cash to take his class in the first place. Because it helped a stupid amount.

Just did this today in class. Struggled a bit with the hand positioning and pose for a long while before settling on this particular composition (Yea, the thumb is a bit stinky). So far it's 20 something inches tall and in oils. Final color scheme is going to be blue with grey skin tone with redish purple fleshtone hot spots. Like subtle purple on the nose, lips and fingertips. A very cool color toned image image.

In the end it will be a book cover with the text running right across the chest. Really want to do hand drawn text, but I'm a big chicken. A big, can't draw type, chicken. Again, I'll be posting a sketch dump soon, so I'm going to leave this post without a sketch-a-day. Sorry to those who are following my sporadic updates. And also thanks to anyone checking in, it's very much appreciated and makes me keep pushing a bit harder, because I really don't want to post junk and lose you few valued people.

The Undertaker Value/Color Study

Could you imagine my luck, for me to get undertaker as an assignment to illustrate for Professional Practices? Although I almost ended up with Florist. Did this tonight for approval from Groff, and I'm pretty happy with it so far. The major problems can all be fixed once I actually get down into the drawing portion of the final.

I was taking screengrabs as I went along, so I made a strip out of them for your viewing pleasure, for all those extra curious ones out there.

This is still really early on in this process, so now is the time to make suggestions if you have any.

The Runner

Just finished this sucker up about 10 minutes ago, once it got printed. This is that assignment I mentioned in the last post that I sort of forgot about. So I got a piece of bristol and started to sketch, which slowly but surely turned into this over the course of 5-6 ish hours. Definitely a rush job, but that doesn't keep me from liking it, and it prints off reeeaaaaal nice.

I would have posted my sketch-a-day with this, but I'm pooped and i have to be up in under 4 hours.

Tomorrow (today now) is going to be the crazy day of. If I stop posting forever just assume I've gone into mental coma and have stolen a helicopter and zipped off to some remote island without civilization and homework, where I'll draw pictures in the sand with a stick and turn ordinary random objects into best friends.

Sketch-a-day 83

I just had one of those "good" drawing sessions. More pen sketches this time around, but this is one of my favorite figure drawings from life yet. I included the gestures from the session as well, just for the heck of it.

Also, good news, I finally managed to hook my scanner up and get it working. Brand new scanner finally. After 8 years, it's odd to retire my older one. This this one is definitely faster, stronger, better. So I filled a sketchbook, have lots of progress shots coming, and a whole slew of sketch-a-days. Just haven't had the chance to scan them in. This week is going to be crazy work wise, lots of writing on top of drawing, and a surprise final I didn't know about until yesterday. Cool beans, yea?

So check back, because I got a lot of sketches coming barring I don't lose my mind first.

Sketch-a-day 82

In figure drawing today (in class posting this) we headed over to the Cintiq Lab. Gotta say, if I had 2 grand to blow... I'd blow it on a Cintiq. Everything is so fast.

Also interesting to sketch right on it, holding the tablet like a pad. Just pretty damn cool.

Expect lots of drawings soon. Just filled my first sketchbook, but I haven't got my new scanner up and working yet, keep getting distracting by True Blood.

Sketch-a-day 81

So, yesterday ended up traveling up to Dick Blick to pick up some acrylic inks to gain more of a color spectrum. All I had before was some red that I could cut with black indian ink. This sketch was the result thus far, painted in an old moleskine I don't really like. I think I still don't care for those book, but I won't knock it until the day I get my hands on a watercolor one for a proper paintbook.

They also had refillable brush pens there, so I can try the Gurney way of on site sketching. Going to try it out at the zoo tuesday. One with ink, and one with water. So after I can upload even more monkey sketches onto this blog. I do one monkey project coincidentally every year... this one... is gonna be big.

Edit: Screenshot the picture with the selection marquee around the text. All fixed.

Sketch-a-day 79 80

In hopes of not jinxing it, I think I'm back on the sketch-a-day bandwagon. Here's today's sketch, and yesterdays. The boat one is random with no real story behind it. Just another pen sketch with me trying to shove more environments in.

The second is part of a set of studies for me Illustration Seminar class with C.F. Payne. Have to do a straight forward illustration of a president, leaning towards lincoln because his deep set features fit my style of oils quite nicely, and he is weird looking. Although I keep asking myself why I got something so straight forward. Bit jealous of some of the other assignments given out. Need to work on likenesses anyway.

Bit of a rant here though, this isn't complaining for the teachers that read this, but I think it's sort of ridiculous that I have three classes requiring sketchbooks to turn in. As a senior illustration major, I hate being baby-sitted this way. I mean, at this point it's a no brainer to keep a sketchbook, but being graded on it seems a bit ridiculous. In total I have to keep four sketchbooks this semester including sketch-a-days with different requirements for each. I'm all up for sketching, but all it does is force you to back off on portfolio building which I SHOULD be doing this year, making all these new assignments impeccable. Instead I'll be shaving hours off of each one because I have to go do life studies. It's the silliest requirement I've ever heard. If others don't think they have to keep a sketchbook, they can regret it later, instead of making me do all of this now.

Sketch-a-day 78

For now, until it's most likely filled with work hours soon, I have a nice chunk of 3 hours between classes, so I doodled this out while watching two episodes of House. Gotta love how just coming back to Columbus has entirely reinvigorated my will to draw.

Also been doing a lot of research for my Illustrative drawing class, and I've chosen Cambodian temples to be my setting for the story we write in there.. But if you look at my illustrations, I don't do much vegetation, mostly because it seems boring to do. But I gotta do it sooner or later so why not now. The strange woman on the pole was inspired by a chinese monkey god, whom supposedly had a staff that could change sizes and connect the heavens and earth. So I drew the staff.

And I decided to put a naked demon girl on it. What else?

Sketch-a-day 76 77

Been a bit but I'm all settled back in and school has started again. These are pen sketches from the first two sessions of figure drawing. 2-3 minute gestures, then a hour or two long set of poses. Really love doing these in bic pen, bit scary when working small, and the pen begins to blot a tiny bit when the ink builds on the tip of the pen, but the permanence and the inability to erase makes the mistakes part of the process, and then makes it part of the picture.

Good start to the year so far, pretty excited.

Sketch-a-day 75

Wanted to name this guy, but I couldn't think of anything. Either way it was an awkwardly long speedpaint, with far too many layers and confusion. No real back story on this one. Just wanted to doodle and nothing would come out of the head.

Sketch-a-day 74

So I started to watch Band of Brothers randomly, and after I had gone through the series and watched all the extras, this sketch was the result.

Just installed CS4. Man! It is great. Photoshop has stopped crashing on me randomly, and will most likely stop me from not finishing everything I feed into it. Nothing like being set back 4 hours on a piece without a deadline, because at that point... you really don't want to redo everything you just did. I've lost so many things to that problem.

Just wanted to post up something. Once I'm back in school here come Monday, senior year woo, things should resume back to when this sketch-a-day thing started. Becuase I've realized, when I am home, I don't do anything, and no matter how hard I push myself... I still don't do anything. Can't wait to be back in Columbus, around the artsy folks, and in my much more productive happy place.

I was going to ramble about jets in this post, but it didn't seem fitting with a sketch of a soldier.

Thunder Over the Valley 09

I tend not to make really personal based posts on here. I try to keep it art stuff only, with my ramblings tacked on, and half related to what I drew, but I just have to include these photos. This won't be a day I soon forget.

Thanks to my girlfriend, Rachel, and her father, Dave (mostly him as he got the very scarce tickets), I got to attend the "Thunder Over the Valley" Air Show held in Vienna, OH. Seriously, wow. This show was in my opinion incredibutacular. I made up that word, but it was, this is no time for proper grammar. After waltzing onto this particular air force base, the place is just cluttered with aircraft old and new for people to grope and stare at; all the while with planes flying over head pulling off grandiose stunts and feats of impressive military strength. Throughout the day I used my iphone to snag photos and mostly videos, and I've compiled some of the few photos I had taken. I ended up with way more videos, but you need the sound to accompany the ones flying. The feeling of an f-16 flying over you at a speed faster than sound... well, a cell phone picture doesn't begin to cut it.

Really lucked out, as this was my first Air Show, that the U.S.A.F. Thunderbirds returned to the base in 20 something years. I used to think jets were ok, run of the mill. When it came to flying contraptions I really loved the theatrical qualities of old bi-planes, and WWII fliers. There was just something about them that just seemed more worthy. The thunderbirds have changed that. They do things in jets that I never knew was possible. To be honest, those pilots have to be a bit off to do what they do (pretty much playing chicken at 1000 mph) but man do they make an impression and a good one at that. I still love the old machines, but wow, are the new ones intimidating.

Special mention to the jet car, whom thankfully raced a flying plane far enough away not to be scary as all heck. Cause in my mind, not too many good things can come of an jet engine, a seat, and four wheels. Well, except unmitigated joy.

Special, Special mention to the b17 bomber I managed to crack my face on. Coolest way I've hit myself in the nose yet. Sadly, it left no mark, and I can't tell people my cool scar was from getting hit in the face with a plane.

Anyways, excuse the quality, it's a phone camera, but I just wanted to share a bit of the show. I barely touched on anything here it feels like. Be ready for me to gush about planes in the next post too, because they are just so nonsensical I have to.

EDIT: Blogger made the pictures really, really small. I'll split it up and post it in two parts. But it will have to wait till tomorrow, photoshop just crashed, and I'm going to bed.