Bye Week Makes Me Sad :(

This past Sunday the Packers had a bye so in lieu of football watchin' I thought I'd do a painting of Clay Matthews. It just so happens that Dexter (a show that had me hooked after the very first episode) is on Sundays. It was clear to me that I must conflate the two.

Coming to Term, a Mini Comic

Here's a little project I just finished up. I had the intention of drawing a multipanel editorial cartoon, but as I started two write down gags and a "script," I quickly had a bit that was 700 words long. Perhaps I should have just cut a lot of the text out. That would have been the smart thing to do, but I figured I'd just make a mini comic out of it.

Election Day Life Drawing

I spent the day live sketching the election day, something I've never done before. It was a lot of fun. While the campaigns provided a plethora of material to keep me drawing all day, I surprised myself that I did in fact draw cartoons all day (I'll post those tomorrow). But about the time that the polls were closing here in Wisconsin, I wandered down to the open life drawing on campus for a little r & r. I took my wacom and did some digital painting and sketching.

And by the time I got home, I had enough time to check the election results and of course Obama came out on top.

Burnin' Brats an' Effigies

Well I started this painting yesterday before I heard about the resolution to the NFL Ref lockout. But I don't care, and I think this illustration still holds up.

With regards to this Monday's Packer game, it was an unspeakably crappy call that lost the game for the Packers. However, I hate the fact that the game was close enough that it came down to a hail mary pass. The replacement refs served as a distraction from what was a terrible game to begin with.

Illustration Friday: Crooked

Wouter "Gotye" De Backer is, in my opinion, a good looking man. That being said, the first time I saw his "Somebody That I Used to Know" music video, all I could think about what his jacked up mouth. Huge, crooked, teeth are always fun to draw.

Netan-YAHOO!

Finally I've gotten around to putting together a new mailing list, and I discovered that I had several Judaism oriented magazines on it. So I decided I ought to work up a Netanyahu caricature that could be used both as a mailer and a portfolio piece.

Awesomeness That Will Melt Your Face Off

I woke up early this morning, and felt motivated to start an Aaron Rogers caricature. I did a quick sketch and didn't know where I was going to take it. I got an idea to do a series of football card type illustrations (which I may do in the near future). Instead of doing that, I thought adding some slick photoshop effects in the background would suffice for the moment.

Illustration Friday: Imagination

Paul Ryan caught day dreaming about middle class, blue collar folk.

This isn't 100% finished, but I thought I would post it while I took a break. I still have to throw something a little more dynamic in the background.

Paul Ryan WIP

I drew up a couple Paul Ryan sketches last week during the RNC Convention. I had a bunch of ideas for editorial cartoons, mostly featuring empty chairs, but none of them would translate very well into a painting. As I wanted to do a few illustrations before school really got underway, I figured I'd just start painting Ryan and see where it would take me. This one is a couple hours of work, after blocking everything in and starting finer rendering. I'll make it into something a little more compelling over the next couple days.

My ValleyFair Respite and Subsequent Reflection

The summer has come to a close for me, and because I have been so bad at updating this blog, I will throw gratuitous amounts of drawings at you over the next couple days. I didn't take many photos of my drawings this summer partly because some of them were uninspired, cutsey, tween drawings and also because I didn't think of taking photos at the time.

But without further ado, below are some of the pics I did snap while out at Valleyfair.

The Vikings Clean House

I Could Go For A Slice

Not much to say about this cartoon. It isn't especially ideological or poignant, but I felt compelled to draw it none the less.

New Illustrations

I recently got a somewhat large illustration gig- at least large for me. It was going to be 17 paintings in two weeks which didn't sound terrible at the time. But after all the sketching, revisions, and rigmarole, I really only had a few days to complete all of them. Yes there were several all nighters involved. Enough with the pity party, below are a few of the watercolors that I liked.

Illustration Friday (Suspense)

Here's this weeks submission to IF. I think Mr. Hitchcock fit this weeks topic of "suspense." I've been trying to work on speeding up my digital painting process so I tried to keep this loose and finish in about an hour.

Trojan Man

After doing that last sketch, I had pictured it as a digital painting, though I really wanted to do it in watercolors. But, I didn't have a good sized piece of watercolor paper lying around and I didn't want to go buy any so I just did it in photoshop. The painting did provide some challenges such as creating the translucent feel of a condom. I feel satisfied with it now, but there were many revisions.

Detail.

Illustration Friday (forward)

I didn't get a chance to paint this one for IF, but I thought the sketch will do for now. I'm debating whether to paint this in photoshop or watercolors. Your thoughts?

Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge

Here's the finished(?) illustration from my last post. I'm a little hesitant to call it totally finished because I'll probably revisit it in a few days and completely change it.

As you can see, I switched Mittens around a little bit. I thought it would be a little more affective. Let me know if it was a bad idea!

Detail

Revisiting Rush

I started this digital painting of Rush Limbaugh a couple years ago and at the time I felt satisfied with it as a warm up/semi-finished caricature. The other day I was looking through some old files and came across it and I couldn't believe I just left it.

So I tried to turn it into something useable.

I didn't change anything with the caricature or drawing minus a handful of small adjustments. Anyway, I think I improved it a little bit. Let me know what ya think.

Rush detail

Between Two Ferns

I thought I would bust out my acrylics for this Zach Galifianakis caricature. It was fun, but I might go back to watercolors for a little while. We'll see.

Black Snake Mooooaaan!

I had to take a break from watercolors for a little bit, and yesterday I got the urge to do a caricature of Christina Ricci for some reason. I'm glad I did because apparently the digital media gods were in my corner on this one. I think this is the first time I've been at all happy with the local colors in a digital painting. Something just clicked I think. Anyway, I hope ya'll can dig a scrawny Christina Ricci tied up in chains.

Face Detail