The Queen's After Party

And finally, here is the last of the pastel drawings from my class this past Fall semester. These are of the model as a queen at a party... drunken Queen FTW! Very fun to draw... I mean, who doesn't like a sloppy, drunk Queen spilling wine all over herself?

There are some drawings which I was going to develop and finish, but have decided not to for some reason or another. I'll be posting the lineart for these rejects soon, should anyone convince me otherwise to rescue them from the eternally unfinished bin.

Snow Bunny (w/o snow)

Happy New Year, everyone! Here's to working toward 2011 being a productive, creative, and fun year!

But first, one last post from my past semester. This was my final for a Head Drawing class at AAU. Enjoy!

The assignment was to draw from a chosen reference pool of our fellow classmates. Since my camera sucks, most of the time I have to base my decision more on which photo isn't blurry, but luckily this particular shot came out well. How could I resist a bunny hat?

There's something I like about the simple, flat shapes in this beginning stage.

Acetone splatter!

And here was the final I turned in for class. After some critique from my instructor, and my own realization once it was up on the wall and I was feet away, there needed to be some changes made. The brightness of the hat was too stark and drew away from my desired focal point of the face (namely eyes and nose). Throw that sucker back up on the drawing board!

Here it is with corrections. I lightened up the face and darkened some areas more to enhance the contrast, hopefully negating some of that surging bright power of the white bunny hat. I'm satisfied with the drawing overall, and have come to appreciate charcoal more after this class. Of course, once I found out about splatter textures my relationship with charcoal deepened that much more. You will never take my acetone!!!

Color! Oh, Color!

The best thing I gained from my Figurative Concepts class this Fall semester was an experimentation with color via pastels. See, color was an elusive she-beast to me and is only now starting to come around. Previously, I worked mostly in a limited color palette, usually even purely monochromatic. This isn't to say that I'm necessarily going to vastly change my color appreciation and I'm still a hardcore sucker for monochromatic illustrations... but the explosion of color I experienced was a nice diversion from my norm.

We each placed our five best drawings on the floor of the classroom the last day and the scope of it all was pretty cool.

Pastels are actually pretty awesome and fun to use. They provide bold, vibrant color and are a relatively flexible medium--at least more so than my usual inks. Here are a few selections of my work with pastels these past months. In the future, I'll be adding some of these to my Etsy shop so if anything strikes your fancy, keep an eye out.

Ah, pastels. How you have worked your way into my heart... and my hand.

Merry Winter's Solstice, everyone!!

Enjoy your holiday festivus winter celebrations!

A Master's Copy and Awesome Portrait

FALL SEMESTER VANQUISHED!!!

Now there's nothing but time to post some artwork from the semester, photograph work, and draw, draw, draw in this month and a half I have off until Spring starts! So, without further ado.....

This was a Master Copy assignment from my Head Drawing class. We had to copy one of a Master's drawings (from a selection provided). I tried my best and think it turned out alright in the end... definitely the revisions I made from my instructor's critique furthered it much more. Also, drawing a child?! Whaaat....

Here you can see the real essence and evil soul emanating from those dead eyes... or it could be that the drawing's just been started...

This was how I first turned it in. Definitely not as finished as I would have liked it but I thought it was a good start. My instructor, though, was clearly able to see what I had missed and give me some pointers.

And there's the final, final version! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out... at the very least he looks like a human child minus physical deformities. Below is a closer look at the drawing followed by the original reference. I don't know who the Master artist was since it wasn't listed in the file... if anyone recognizes it let me know who it is!

For the final in my Head Drawing class, we had to draw from photo references of our classmates taken with a primary and secondary light source. There are still some revisions I want to make to my final, so I'll post that in a couple of days, weeks or so... but a fellow classmate, Katy Fox, happened to have drawn me for the final. At the end of class she asked me if I wanted the portrait... do I want an awesome, multi-colored, textural drawing of myself?

HELLS YEAH!!! So thanks a lot, Katy--not that you read this blog--but her style is quite awesome and she did a great job. Check it out and be inspired by mah face.

(via some light Googling, I believe I found her website too. For more of Katy's work, check it out here. )

Late November Doodles

Where has the month gone?

Man, that went by fast (and yes, I know there's a couple days left in the month but still... dayum). I have about three weeks left in my semester and a healthy helping of drawing lying in wait ahead. I'll be going over some of my classwork and posting drawings in the next couple of days or so. Until then, sketches ahoy!

Thunder Thighs in Pleasures of the FLESH!!!

Very fun commission for a friend Sergio of his original character "Thunder Thighs". She's a superhero with awesome pheromone powers and the ability to explode any and all who do the nasty with her. Awesome superhero, hands down. In this scene, she has been taken hostage by the evil Dr. Colossus and multiple superheros have tried to save Thunder Thighs but find their ends in a burst of pleasure. Next is the idiotic, entranced former president George W. Bush. Will Thunder Thighs ever escape?!

Head Drawing Midterm

There's something about the initial sketch's looseness that I like which, unfortunately, gets a little bit lost in the final version.

This was neither the first nor last of the reconstructive surgery her lovely face underwent.

Final! Not the best, but I definitely feel that my drawing skills are getting somewhere a little further down the road... and charcoal is no longer my enemy.