Further Illusions

More from Illusionism! The drawing on the left was a one-night in class exercise about the appearance of volume, in preparation for this week's model session. Mine got picked as one of the ones that looked most round, though I kinda cheated by picking a real light source.




Next, the two week drawing that proceeded it. While doing the Dallas Allegory for homework, this trompe l'oeil was our in class work. I themed it around Meg and my anniversary, which was coming up with gleeful speed when I started the drawing. Both of those are graphite.

So this week, the homework was to start a piece that contrasts illusionistic volume against something else--so I thought to myself, what is the absolute opposite of shaded, volumetric drawing? The answer was obvious. Nothing can be flatter than flat vector cartoons. Nothing. So this is the halfway point; the flat is done, and the space is there for a volumetrically shaded Dunny toy in the foreground! That'll be my task next week.

Dallas Allegory

This new tablet (Intuos4 Medium) is amazing. And it's really late at night. And that's all I have to say right now, ask specific questions if you want more and I'll answer them when I'm awake again.

I am not the walrus

Waistcoated Walruses Walloping a Wastrel.

Quick getting-to-know-eachother assignment for The Illustrated Book--create and illustrate an amusing 4-word alliteration. Hooray!

I actually don't have anything more to say about this piece. Watercolor and graphite, still planning to tweak a little in photoshop to push the bricks back, but overall I'm very happy. I think walruses should always have mutton chops and waistcoats.

Mantyger/Satryal Sketch

First sketch for Senior Thesis! My plan is to illustrate ten (for the semester) of the craziest creatures in medieval heraldry, working on two digital paintings for each three-week block. I'm also working now on the Enfield Beast, but I don't have a sketch I'm happy with yet for that one, so I'm letting it sit on the back burner while I finish out this guy, who I'm totally crazy over. Going to lightbox him to a tight pencil drawing, then scan that in to spend many many hours paying digital homage to the image. The plan is full color figure, but no background--in the sensibility of the naturalist drawings of the 1700s. Fun times?

First Illusionism drawing!

Ah, September. Time for classes! I'm really excited about all my classes this year, but Illusionism is the lucky class to have the first finished drawing I can post, so I'm talking about it first. It's all about fooling the eye; making things look real, or right if they're just not real. The first thing we did was spend 4 hours drawing ripped up pieces of paper, which I won't post, but then we got to apply the skills to a more interesting assignment for homework. We had to take a drawing we already had--in my case, a sketch I spent some time finishing, since I don't do many physical media drawings that would work for this--and make it look interrupted and/or disturbed in some way. I chose Edo-Period Kyu because I like it, so there. There are no actual rips, folds, or disturbances of any kind in this paper. Everything that looks wrinkled was drawn in, painstakingly, with a pencil and a brush of graphite powder. It's a completely smooth sheet of paper, I promise.

Fun stuff? Check it out full size to see the effects up close. (also, in the upper left, an unflattering sketch of Zach without his glasses. He's as blind as I am without them)

Enfield Beasts and Pilot Dolls

Just some works in progress, really... But at least progress is happening? First, the logo/tattoo design? for a sort of mini-project I've been dreaming up, called Pilot Dolls. It's really more of a steampunk and costume design concept than anything, but if Pilot Dolls were being marketed, this would be their logo.

Then, in preparation for thesis, I've been doodling Enfield Beasts at work. The original sketch is about 1.5"x2.5", and then I digitally inked it in Sketchbook Pro 2.0, which is a beautiful little program. There's another one in the composition, but for now I wanted to post the one I do have inked.

Moonface WIP

My work always slows down over the summer, even when I try not to let it. I won't be posting much, probably, but I want to do what I can. As seems to happen a lot, my inspiration is my muse/character, whom I call Moonface. Her head/face are generally the same, and she has the same feeling, but I don't know what her real anatomy is--she started out as just an odd girl with antlers. I like to draw her, for whatever reason.

And if there's one good thing to come of the "Mijn Schatje (real name Marie Blanco Hendrickx) is an unoriginal lying art thief" issue going on now, it's that it makes me want to work more in illustrator to prove that people who aren't crappy rip-offs can do some cool stuff with the program. So far, so good? I'm really learning a lot about the program, and that's saying something, because I think I already knew a lot about it.

The drawing also includes her lower body and legs, and a balloon with a fish in it, but I haven't finished overlaying the basic shapes for those. Bonus! A closeup of the face and hand, both of which I think are done. Might add a couple extra colors.

Heironeous

IT IS DONE. Yes, that's right, I mean what I say; I do have a critique tomorrow, but all of my work for this semester is finished! I printed the god-portraits today, and believe you me; they are absolutely STUNNING at 17" tall.

In celebration, I give you the final of the four; Hieroneous! Hieroneous is the lawful good god of law, order, and valor. Sounds good, right? In practice, he's a good god, but a harsh master. Everything is very black and white to his followers, who include a lot of paladins and clerics, and if you're not fully and properly holy.... You're pretty much dead. They will eradicate scum like you. I wanted to show the duality of a very holy and yet very menacing figure; inspired by medieval saints, his banner impales a tiny demon to show triumph over evil, and the six wings allude to the Seraphin who directly guard the throne of god in christianity. His armor is my own invention, based on full plate mail.

As a bonus, here's the whol group as I printed them, fully complete with all edge treatments and adjustments.

Olidammara and Hextor

Forgot to post Olidammara when I finished him, so here's both at once! Olidammara is the trickster god of rogues and bards. It's been a while since I actually did that one, so I don't have a whole lot to say. I really love some things about him, but am pretty ambivalent about others. Not my favorite, but not bad, either.

Hextor, on the other hand.... He's the god of tyranny, chaos, and evil things like that. This was somewhere in the realm of 12-15 hours in photoshop after the drawing was done. Pretty much a straight shot, too. I started yesterday afternoon and finished at 7am today. Hextor is specified as having 6 arms, and is traditionally made to look like some sort of goblin or big blue orc-thing. I wanted to go more of an oni-inspired direction, because I think it's visually more interesting and it'll give him and his brother Heironious a much more east-vs-west contrast in the end. Not all of his armor is Japanese inspired, for the sake of aesthetic chaos, but the over all shape is based off of a ronin type of costume. The arrows are because his symbol/insignia is a fist holding six really evil-looking arrows.

Legs

Dear Tawny; This is a page of legs :D