Final Illustration

Sketchbook assignment illustration. I decided for this one to do my sketch of opposites, those of which being freedom and security. The eagle is our nations bird that represents freedom and all of its goodness, and the background is JFK airport, since security in airports and in our nation has gone up tenfold since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I thought it was perfect.
I caught a little slack for deterring from oils or some other form of media and doing this digitally because that is my major and my "comfort zone" however I did not look at it as a cop-out but more so as a further development in my skills. I have only taken one computer graphics class, and that was also this semester, so in no way shape or form am I a pro at digital media. I simply saw this as in opportunity to work on it even further, and in a way, on completing this project, it helped me cement why I chose my major in the first place. I really enjoy the graphic arts, and cannot wait to move forward in it. I found my niche, and this project helped me fully come to that conclusion, so I have no regrets in doing it.

Themed Illustration; Comp

For those reading this I regret to inform you that I cannot locate my themed illustration comp at this time, totally my bad, I got so swamped with other things going on I must have misplaced it, its probably located in the backseat of the hot mess I call my car, but I have yet to discover it. I did however have it on the day it was due and everyone got to see it in all of its glory, unfortunately I do not have it to put on here. :(

Resilience Final

Finished product with paint. At first I really really did not like the way it turned out. I believe this had something to do with starring at it for hours on end and feeling frustrated. But after moving on and starting other sketches, after I came back to it its not so bad. I got some bad rap about how the pine trees weren't much of pine trees anymore, and I thought about changing them, but then I realized ya know what, when you look at the mountain side your eye doesn't see every little point of ever single pine tree. You see the cluster of green pointy trees and immediately your brain clicks and says, "oh hey look, pine trees." So I left it. I painted what I saw, and quite frankly, I'm very happy with my results.

Resilience Comp

Comprehensive for my mountainside. Overall I believe it turned out quite well, and the nice part about putting it onto tracing paper was that I was able to make the bunches of pine trees from my original sketches more prevalent across the entire mountainside as oppose to just having a few small clusters here and there... now its time for paint.

Sketchbook Assignment; Wildcard

Oh the end of the semester rolls on through, and as expectations continue to be high, moral falls. Wildcard, could mean any sort of thing, but in my mind it only meant one. Personified cards, acting a hot mess. So here it is, as you can see we have the lovely 4 of diamonds, whom had a few too many drinks, but she doesn't care she just wants to have fun and dance! Poor thing regrets to realize that her skirt isn't long enough, and her diamond is totally showing. Not very lady like #4, but we've all been there, right ladies? In the background to make this a little more compositionally sound, we have #4's lovely looking friend the 2 of diamonds, watching her friend be a hot mess and covering her eyes cause she cannot take it anymore. And of course the male in this picture the 3 of hearts, doing what any good male friend would do... Takes out his Iphone to take pictures and remember this crazy crazy night. Wildcard baby, nailed it.

Sketchbook Assignment; Opposites

When coming up with ideas for this sketch, I wanted to make sure that I did something that was outside of the obvious box of opposites... "black and white" "big and small" "up and down" yeah yeah, those may have completed the assignment, but in my eyes that wasn't much of a challenge. So I went to the interwebs, when in doubt, the internet will solve all your problems, right? I looked up lists of different types of opposites and found a pair that I thought would be nice and challenging. Freedom vs. Security.

First thing that came to my mind for freedom was the bald eagle. Our country's universal sign of freedom is that magnificent creature souring across the sky. Perfect. Now for security. Airports. Our country's highest threat of security since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. How perfect. One of my ideas was to have the eagle actually flying through the inside of an airport, maybe through the security terminal or something, but that became to unrealistic in my mind. So then I googled pictures of JFK (the airport, not the president)  and thought to myself how it would make the perfect sketch. A bald eagle flying over JFK airport. Freedom and security.

Themed Illustraion; Final

I was so happy with the way this piece turned out. I feel my painting skills have done nothing but improved since the first illustration, and I really feel it shows. I added an orange "Aura" around my alien cause I figure, no one knows what aliens look like, well shit, mine has a nice glow to it, and considering orange and green are complements, I figured it would work out quite nicely. And if I could go back... I wouldn't change it. This is one of my favorite pieces of this semester, and to be honest I think one of my favorite things about it is the planet in the upper right hand corner. Something about the way I painted that really just makes me smile every time I look at it. Arguably it may be placed too close to the edges of the page, but that's just something to consider and keep in mind for next time.

Themed Illustration; Thumbnails

So immediately for this assignment I was drawn to only a couple of the offered themes; Hair, Fake, and Aliens Eating Babies. And to be honest, AEB was the last on my list of high interest. I found to be slightly tacky and quite a turn off. Anyways, a few ideas were bouncing around in my head, of course my sadistic ass, first thing that comes to mind, "lets see how many people I can piss off by drawing Jesus again and calling him Fake" Man I am one messed up dude. Anyways! That idea passed cause I didn't want to be repetitive so I went to work on hair. I liked that concept, cause throughout my youth I have had some crazy hair styles so to illustrate them would be a nice stroll down memory lane; couple mowhawks here, emo hair in the face, long curly and bushy, I was all over the map.
Afterwards I drew out a couple aliens just to see where things would go, and my ONE sketch of actual AEB's, was a landslide group favorite and that became the idea for my illustration.

Sketchbook Assignment; Distill an article or passage from a book into a primary and secondary visual concept

"How sad, this is what your life has been reduced to: a single room apartment containing no more than a mattress. How sad but the strings have been removed from the blinds and all the outlets have been painted over. and the television screen is streaked with blood and smeared from your knuckles as you were trying to punch it out but you underestimated your strength, or maybe you just weren't trying hard enough. Startled by a knock at the door you rise for the first time in two days to answer, but you can only greet the visitor with one short statement.
Hello my first name is distance and I really don't care if I never wake up again. Hello my name is distance and I really don't care if I never wake up again. And I really don't care if I never wake up again. And I really don't care if I never wake up again."

Now, I am not going to say I cheated when doing this, cause cheating is a stupid word, but i did bend the rules slightly, and instead of using a passage from a book, I took a passage from a song, which in turn isn't really a song at all, but more so a monologue that just happens to be written by a band.
I believe I nailed this one one hundred percent, the shading works, the concept of the piece gets across, and compositionally it works. I am very satisfied with this sketch.

Sketchbook Assignment; Something Mechanical

Remember when you were a kid and the coolest thing in every grocery store was a machine similar to the one pictured on your left with the neat purple stuffed animal in it, or that hit backstreet boys cd, and for only 50 cents you could control a giant mechanical arm and try to grab it and win. what a freaking HOAX! Anyways, something mechanical yes the claw machine, located in every grocery store, bowling alley and movie theater this side of the Mississippi! I feel I had a strong idea with the drawing, was able to compel what I wanted to show with the machine. Composition could be better, maybe have something in the background along side the claw machine, however majority of the time these things are just pushed up against a wall somewhere, maybe i could have added a poster or something.

Resilience Sketches Advance

 Okay, so plans changed slightly. The theme of resilience wasn't coming off strongly with my other sketch ideas, so we changed some stuff around, threw a little curve ball if you will. This time instead of a row of pine trees, the pines are scattered in clusters across a dead mountainside. The idea for this came from many a long hours sitting in my car on campus and starring off into the distance. I would notice that everything on the mountains were dead, except for the clusters of pine trees. Resilience you ask? JACKPOT!

Resilience Sketches

 Here are a series of thumbnail sketches for the resilience assignment. From the beginning the first thing that came into my mind when I thought of resilience were pine trees (or evergreen trees whatever you want to call them.) They are great, they are trees, so they live for freaking ever, and not only that but they manage to last through all four seasons without ever "dying" in tree terms, cause it seems that all other trees die, but then suddenly come back to life a few months later. (Thats cause just the leaves die off Eric, come on now), once again I'm distracting myself... So along side my tree sketches I had a few other ideas, a couple fictional characters that it my mind showed resilience but to my group they were just foreign objects cause no body in this world watches the Venture brothers, and trying to explain the character was just a headache all around so instead I stuck with my original idea of Pine trees.




The original thought was to have the pine trees coming toward the viewer in a row and then to illustrate the 4 seasons with the background  showing different items dying then coming back as the seasons change.

Sketchbook Assignment; Inorganic Object

The definition of an inorganic object is an object that carries
neither organic life nor the products of organic life. OR

b. Not composed of organic matter.

 

To this day I could not tell you what I was going for here, it was simply my imagination put to the test then put down onto a piece of sketchbook paper.

 

Still though, I feel it ended up resembling to much of a molecule of some sort under heavy magnification, and unfortunately that would be an organic object, not an inorganic one. But that wasn't at all what I was going for in my sketch, it just happened to turn out that way. Unfortunate, I know. 

Sketchbook Assignment; Organic Object

 So for this sketchbook assignment I drew out two separate sketches, cause honestly I couldn't decide which picture I wanted to do. The first image is a sketch of a white rose. I think I nailed the anatomy of it, with each layer of individual petals being obvious, however it could use more shading to help further bring the image to life.

Second I have a sketch of an orange cut in half. Once again I think i nailed the anatomy of the orange, and this time was successfully able to complete the shading of the orange, the only thing it lacks is solid composition, its just kinda an orange floating on a page.

Sketchbook Assignment; Tom Cruise as a Cowboy

Okay, so here I struggled a little bit, because not only am I not a strong fan of portraits, but I'm not a strong fan of Tom Cruise either, I dunno he just doesn't do it for me... but I'm getting off track here.

I should have put a little more time into the piece itself and worked more on the shading and definition of the character in general, overall I feel I could have done a better job, and at this later stage in the semester, probably would have.

Back in the day Final

Back in the day; Jesus rode dinosaurs.

Overall I was quite happy with the way this piece turned out, considering it was the first time I had ever worked with oil paints, and the only time I had worked with paint before that was never too serious. Some room for improvement always, looking back at it still, I feel as though my paint strokes may have been too heavy in some spots. For example I feel the heavy application of paint on the sky leaves the Pterodactyl in the background looking flat, so lets apply the 80/20 rule.

Back in the day cont..

 The hardest part of sketching these out for me was getting the proportions correct on the dinosaur, but also getting Jesus to actually look as if he is riding the dinosaur, not just kind of melted into the dinosaur and had the two combined to make some sort of weird mutant Jesus dinosaur freak.

Back in the day

 I did not have a whole arsenal of ideas for my back in the day' theme, I had a few rough thumbnails mainly consisting of jesus, or dinosaurs, but separately. As a whole the class decided that I should do something with jesus riding a dinosaur, and thus the planning began.