Red-Winged Blackbird

I was back at it with another bird video today.





This is the finished painting. Going dark with watercolors has always been tricky for me. I think this turned out pretty well, though. At the very least, it was a confidence booster to go bold and dark in the future.

Royal Albatross

Welp, this long neglected blog is about to get... less neglected. I'll try my darndest to post a little more frequently starting with this thing I made. I've never done anything with video before, and this was a lot of fun. I think it's a more interesting platform for my bird series, so I'll probably be doing more. Enjoy!

Illustration Friday

I haven't had a post in a really long time, and even longer since I participated in IF, but I'm turning over a new leaf (fingers crossed). I was working on these birds for another project, but I thought they fit the topic this week.

Perkins Sketching

Well, it's been a while, but I think I'm ready to start posting again. I've got a bit of new stuff, not a lot, but some. This bunch of sketches were done on a Perkins run almost a month ago. I'll try to post something a little more exciting next time.

Edit: I think Blogger feels a little jaded and for whatever reason the image is huge. I'll try and figure it out later.

STOP! It's Pin Up Time

Here's a recent pin up project I've been working on. I never really do this kind of work, but I've been pretty happy with the results so far.

This was my first real attempt at doing a pin up. It was for a painting class project 3 years ago. At the time, I was thrilled with how it turned out. Sometimes I love looking back at old work and being completely disgusted with it. It's a good way to gauge progress I guess. I can still find some merit in this particular painting, but I love being able to completely rip it apart with a fresh eye.

More Figure Painting

I took my Wacom with me to open life drawing again. The first pose that I got in on was the head shot on the left. We worked on it for 30 minutes, then another 20. Somehow I accidentally saved over the whole 50 minute pose, but luckily I still had the first 30 minutes saved elsewhere. Sometimes I really hate computers.

Forgetful Me.

Well, I'm sitting in my studio watching an old Bob Ross video and it occurred to me that I scanned in a doodle I did at open life drawing the other night. This was drawn with Prismacolor Col-erase pencils. Had I known it was going to be a long pose I would have brought actual colored pencils or maybe watercolors. Never the less, the col-erase pencils worked great.

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.

Life Drawing Bonanza

I've been trying to attend the weekly open life drawing sessions at Stout, and I hadn't missed a one until a couple weeks ago. Here are a few sketches I did over the last couple months. We haven't done any long poses (I think the longest so far was 30 min.) and usually that would upset me, however, I'm drawing in a sketchbook these days, anything between 10 and 30 minutes is fine by me.

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.

Illustration Friday: Burst

Not much to say about this one. I started rendering the drawing in photoshop and decided that I had a bit too much cross hatching in the drawing, so I think I'm going to color with water colors instead. Just some flat washes.

A Cure For All That Ales You

I've had these brewing in my studio over that last couple days. Not literally brewing, sad to say. For whatever reason I really liked the idea of an India pale ale aptly named "Hoppington Bittersworth" so I sketched up a frog. The rest, as they say, is history.

Comrade Black Ivan Imperial Stout

Sly Rusty Irish Red

Sir Hoppington Bitterworth IPA

I've realized I have to brush up on graphic design. I'll be reworking these a bit so I can use them in my portfolio.

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.