Long Live the New Flesh

Movie have played an important role in my life.  Being able to create something new based off that passion is a rush that drives me to hone my craft only that much more.  So, when CCAD's Illustrative senior-level class (Advanced Styles and Concepts) handed the reins over to me, movie posters were the first thing on my list.
One restriction was provided for a set of 3 illustrations- we were to create a series of 3 ads/posters/announcements about an event or character or who-knows-what.  I looked into upcoming film anniversaries and compiled a short list which I posted on my tumblr.  I received a good chunk of feedback on what people would like to see and David Cronenberg's Videodrome was chosen.
For the first teaser poster, I knocked together several thumbnails, four of which I refined:

Two were chosen by the teacher and myself, which I cleaned up more:

And in the end, we have our first final!

Now the tricky part- creating two more original concepts to see this series tied together nicely.  

A session in landscape.

Ok, I know I post about this class a lot on here but I felt it would be nice to give a run down of why I'm particularly fond of it and how it affects how I work.  

Now, being an illustration major, the majority of my classes are, well, based in illustration.  Which is fine but it gets to be particularly frustrating when you realize you're just as behind in composing original images as you are in painting the final product.  Last year I took landscape painting not knowing what to expect.  What I got out of it was an invaluable opportunity to play with paint.  It wound up building not only my ability to compose competent environments, but also my style.  

When you're put on location for (at most) 3 hours to create a painting that is compelling and could be considered finished...you're not quite sure where to begin.  It only takes some practice to get in the swing of things and this painting class pushed my skills on my illustration projects so much farther than if I'd been left alone. 

Needless to say I signed up again.   When starting, I kept with my habits- earth tone palette and underpainting, "fuzzing" painted areas to draw the viewers attention to where I wanted, etc.  Then something important happened (at least, I'm assuming it's important).  I was told to (a)- not blur areas unless completely necessary, and even then reconsider. (b)- break my comfort zone with earth tones and play with color.  I agreed, acknowledging my weak points and lo and behold, there was color.

Intimidation.  Pure highlighter green and simple.

Ok, I've chosen my view, have my borders mapped off, some quick pencil work to indicate where things should be.

Quick underpainting consisting of cobalt blue/paynes grey.

Laying in colors.  Ugly?  Yes.  Expected?  Yes.  Moving on.

And right around here that start-off color is throwing me.  By being so bright, anything I put down appears in comparison to be nothing more than vaguely differentiated hues of mud.  This is not good.

Still pushing forward you can tell how mad I'm getting at a painting by how much I've scratched guidelines into it with the opposite end of my brush.  Questioning what made me think I could paint.

It's going downhill.  Rage quit foreseeable future.

Colors and brushstrokes in general have been softened, adding a bit more warmth and consistency.  (apologies about the difference in photo color- adjusted my lighting settings and forgot to change them back)

Looks like the nasty has come to an end, with some sky popping up and more work in the foreground.

And where she lies now.  Still need to go back and fiddle with the sky (ran out of time in class).

In the end, I need to continue with this "color" thing.  It's taking me to unexpected places and I'm curious to see how it pops into my illustrations this year.

Dragon

So, the past month or so has been tumultuous to say the least. Unsurprisingly my work ethic has suffered a good deal but it's also forced a lot of odd inspiration and raw emotion to be pulled back into what work I was doing. School projects of late have been rather mediocre and very draining so a few weeks back I wound up starting a personal project and only recently completed it. Unsurprisingly it was very refreshing to do something that was 100% for me, and I'd like to keep the trend going here in my spare time.

However as fun as it was it wasn't without any kinks as it went along. Either way, I did take a couple of pictures here and there of what actually went into this guy (had meant to take many more wip shots but obviously forgot to do so)
But thumbnails were the first thing to accomplish here, and my goal/subject was simple. A dragon. King of the beasts as far as fantasy is concerned and I knew I wanted to draw on a lot more of the sleazy hoarder legends than the really cool monster idea.

I know my thumbnails typically border on illegible, but being a personal project I continued on from this point with a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish.
I chose one of my thumbs, blew it up digitally, finagled with it's design and line work before printing out a copy that I could transfer via the opaque projector on campus (that machine is magical).
After that I was in high spirits when I got home so I started out painting right away on a sheet of gessoed crescent board I happened to have. My first mistake here was to leap in without an under-painting. With no value established on the board I can see from the pictures I had taken that I was really just making more work for myself in the end. But I never got that far.
In my giddy impatience I began baking (carefully, mind you) said painting in order to continue work on it asap. Now, I've baked several pieces this year (mostly for class when I don't have time to let the poor things dry) and each time everything's gone fine. I consider it a small miracle that for all my class work I'd been working on Bainbridge illustration board. I'm presuming that the Crescent board led to the result of a rather nasty bubbling effect that took place under the gesso.


I was too busy trying to save the painting at that point to get pictures but I assure you the bubble was fantastic in its own right. I'll be holding more tests on illustration board scraps I have lying around to confirm/deny that the fact that it was crescent board led to it's early demise.

In the end though, things worked out for the best. The next round I did an under-painting (no pictures again, I'm terrible at this).


And on a whole the painting progressed fairly fast.


I only just finished it a few days ago and I'm going to have to get some scans of it, but in the meantime have a not too shabby picture via my camera.

Fairy Tales

Ouch, it's been a while since my last update- spring break messed with my internet time and to be honest I was kept pretty busy anyway. Mostly on electronic illustration. Our presentations were today and I got the green light to get going on finals! (huzzah!)
Anywho, everything that was expected from us today was a description of what we were doing, what our media application was going to be, thumbnails and sketches, reference and inspiration, and final line drawings. We have to do two illustrations. Being a glutton for punishment, I'm doing four.
First up, thumbs:

Hedley Kow

Hedley Kow

Hedley Kow
Glass CoffinGlass Coffin

Ram

They certainly aren't the prettiest things and quite honestly they're hard to read unless you've inhabited my brain. It helped that I had a very strong mental image of where I wanted these pieces to go but thumbnails should be legible. As such they're something I'll be spending a good bit of time on this summer.

Onwards however...reference photos! I have a problem with being addicted to digging around the internet looking for gems of reference photos. It's not exactly a problem I guess but I spend a lot of time doing it. When it came to setting up the presentation boards for class I had to exclude about half the reference photos I had printed (and I didn't print all the ones I had found either). I'll only post a scattering here but trust me, I have a LOT more.









Would also like to note that none of these images belong to me, I used them for reference and inspiration only.

We were also expected to gather sources of inspiration which I enjoy even more than digging up reference photos. I won't post the images I printed out but here's links to everyone (definitely worth a look through -winkwinknudgenudge-):

-John Howe
-Jean-Baptiste Monge
-Petar Meseldzija
-Alexander McQueen (actually not many great images on the site as far as I could find but if you search for them elsewhere there's some fantastic work)
Then a couple of classics that obviously don't have websites:
-EA Abbey (love, Love, LOVE, LOVE) and
-Herbert James Draper.
Both are fantastic artists and absolutely awe inspiring work.

Then there's the finals:

The Hedley Kow:

The Ram:
The Glass Coffin:

All of them (with the exception of The Hedley Kow chapter title- also the font there is mostly Serpentis Black: http://www.dafont.com/serpentis-black.font) will be painted in corel. The title will be done up in Illustrator (we have to use Illustrator and the pen tool, so yeah...will also probably just lay in the font and manipulate it as needed). All in all I'm actually pretty pleased with how they turned out. Hopefully the painting process will nudge them up a few more notches. (oh, and those white boxes are where font will be going from the stories).

And there you have a vague-ish kind of sort of Klang process.

No blogging during break equals a long post I suppose.
Oh! And to end this on an even happier note, Wacom is going to be replacing my lost Tablet buddy! I was so surprised when they called and told me today. My year has been made. They were wonderful to deal with (UPS however....grumblegrumble) and this really topped it all off. They're definitely going to get a very nice thank you card.