Charcoal Drawings

So here's the next post. Likely the last one of 2011. Here's to all the charcoal stuff i've done in the past 6 months or so. Sadly I don't have 2 of my better pieces (1 of which most people agree is one of my best pieces) because they happen to be of nudes and at least for now I'm keeping this family friendly.

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These first two are both from a drawing class at tyler school of art, and my first charcoal pieces. both are extremely uninteresting to look at because of the lack of value in them and the subject matter is so damn boring that I don't really want to go back and fix them up.

This is yet another drawing from tyler this summer, but from the portfolio "boot camp" (I highly recommend this class to anyone serious about building a portfolio) Anyway I don't particularly like it and thing the position is awkward and unrealistic looking, but multiple teachers/reviewers have said they like it so...

This is one of my favorites of my charcoal pieces based on subject matter. Its looking down the steps at my grandparents house up in Maine. My only regrets with this one is A) not being able to get a good picture of it and B)using to small of a piece of paper

 ...And back to tyler - Another still life but this one actually came out well. this was to large pieces of canson drawing paper tapped together making a big piece that was something like 36x24in (I think) I apparently love drawing fabric. The bottle was a pain but on the up side, this was my first good charcoal piece (this was the first thing we did in the portfolio class)

 And another piece from the portfolio class. This one was weird because I had had figure out how to make this starch white reflective half jar thing (which everyone else avoided drawing) look like it was glowing because of the light directly on it. I'm pretty sure i ran out of white charcoal soon after this one.

I also have 2-3 more pieces in progress, but they're in school right now and I don't have pictures. Anyway. peace out. Also, I was playing around with Inkscape (No I still don't have adobe illustrator) and ended up with this aztec calendar in honor of the 2012 new year.

Watercolor

Just mostly caught up on the sleep I lost during convention after sleeping until about noon. Here's the next set of past works I''m posting up here.

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These first 4 are all from last year, when I used watercolors for the first time since freshman year in general art survey. there is a 5th one, but I'm not sure where the last one went nor did I take a picture. I had worked on it during IC in Orlando last year so I'm Guessing i gave it away to somebody and just don't remember who.

This one is a landscape that i tried to paint from a book as my first water color. for my first watercolor I think it came out well.

So this was my experiment with painting around things to leave them white. it came out well and was good practice since to this day i still refuse to use masking fluid to keep white areas. I was painting from a picture in a book but then proceeded to lose the book in a stack one day into it.

So here's what was my first attempt at a watercolor still life. There's not a huge amount to say about it aside from that it took a really long time. and the table looks like it curves weirdly but no big deal.

 This is my most recent watercolor. Its a nice sunset picture (everyone likes sunsets) i really like how the sun in the middle came out but I don't like the clouds on the right side. of course i can't fix it because water colors suck like that... I played around cropping it by matting it differently but it didn't do much.

And here's a continuation of my previous work in progress as I desperately try to not screw up the water.

Well thats all for now. Happy new years although I'll probably post more before then.

Stuff From IC Philadelphia

Well I had nothing else more productive to do tonight than sitting on my computer and watching tv, so I decided I might as well just add a second entry tonight. Anyway here's most of the rest of the artwork from IC. 

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These ones are all on napkins. Why? Because I got bored at the end of dinner one night and only had some pens and a sharpie. Working on napkins was annoying because they rip easily and dry up markers like ther's no tomorrow. i make do with what I've got...

Doing something fun with my current signature and running with it.

Random shapes and hatching.

The fact that I did this in about 5 minutes, makes me wish i had done something for a regional T-shirt. I guess that just sucks since I will no longer be in USY to design the T-shirt next year...

 Kind of screwed up and ended up with a rounded box.... not exactly what i turned it into...

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After attracting my first set of spectators while drawing at IC, a few people had the idea to use the Art-Stix (basically just the insides of colored pencils) to decorate their name tags. Needless to say I felt the need to show off a bit/have fun and made an entire sunset scene on mine. 

It came out nicely and I got a lot of compliments on it, so thank you to all those people who commented on it in person.

After that a bunch of other people asked me to decorate theirs for them. I tried to make up a different scene for each one and keep them really colorful. there are 3 here, and 2 more however forgot to take pictures. I might ask them for pictures later. Again thank you to everyone who complimented these ones ( I got  plenty of second-hand compliments) and sorry to all the people who asked me to do one that I didn't get to. I wish there was more time during convention for me to do more of these but sadly there is not.

Working with Prismacolors Markers.

So after the overabundance of support for my my artwork I received at USY International Convention in Philadelphia this past week, I decided that I wanted to step up from facebook photo albums and move into the world of blogging to share my artwork. Throughout the convention I was working with a set of Prismacolor markers (my favorite media at the moment) and everyone loved them so I figured that would be a good place to start the uploading avalanche. This is in chronological order. I personally find it interesting seeing the difference as it goes through time. Without further ado...

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This first one is the product of a failed school assignment. The assignment was to animate an inanimate object. I had a few sketches that were better than this but i ended up animating a painting. Needless to say my first work with prismacolors was not great. i made a lot of mistakes in it but I came out mediocre. The fish came out nicely though and as a whole its kind of eye catching.

I really don't like to hand in bad assignments. Especially in art classes. And on top of that, someone else made a much better piece. Anyway, I decided to redo the assignment of animating an inanimate object, this time choosing a more cliche tree. This came out much batter that the last one as i started to figure out blending a bit more. Only big thing i dislike about it it the emptiness of the background and the horizon line on the left hand bottom.

This was just for shits and giggles and practice with prismacolors. Its based on a building i saw In D.C the weekend before but changed to be more fantasy/cartoonish. I really wish i had used a ruler/straight edge to make lines straight and parallel but I don't like it enough to redo the entire thing.

So this was the first time I did serious blending on multiple colors together. It's a picture of my grandparents dog, Cooper. It became a holiday present for them and is pending a frame (I'm assuming). After this one I was upset with the way the black line-work flattened the picture, especially the green chair in the background.  I liked how the eyes captured the general demeanor of the doggy.

Because of the way the the lines flattened the chair in the last one, I tried one without any line-work. I never quite finished it. The sky is kind of choppy. Tons of mistakes but apparently it was a common favorite.

This one I actually put time into. It's based  on a picture I took in New Hampshire over the summer. I really liked the line work on this one, especially the details I got on the bottom edges. I might post that later. The water reflection was really difficult because I can make anything lighter once i draw on it and it left some things to be desired and I'm still waiting to get back to the grey scale set of prismacolors for the bar on the bottom. I finished this in about 2 days on and off during convention.

 Bonus: Work in progress. This one it in the same style of the landscape above. I finally think I've figured out how to blend the prismacolors and i really love how the trees, especially the orange-yellow ones on the rocks in the foreground.