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.