Posh & First Illustrator Link!

Here are some recent doodles. There are actually more (and of better quality), but I'm going to hold on posting those til I turn them into actual illustrations.



I drew these while I was accidentally locked out of my friend's apartment. Sitting in that hallway somehow helped me get my creative juices flowing, but not enough for anything superb. I was hungry.



I then decided to take a walk to a nearby park, and drew this while sitting on a bench:



The middle face is supposed to be Posh Spice, but I had no reference.... so I don't know.

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ALSO I decided that this sketchblog is a good place for me to post up links of illustrators/other art-related things. Here is a link for my favorite children's book illustrator, いもとようこ(Yoko Imoto). Her site may be kind of hard to navigate for those that don't understand Japanese, so the link goes straight to her illustrations.

While I can't say I'm super familiar with every book she's ever illustrated, I love her distinct style-- the way she's able to make everything seem warm and fluffy through her color schemes and textures. I'm totally going to buy her 2008 calendar. I mean, how can you not love this??



Here is one of a book I actually own:



I guess my parents bought this for my sister and I when we were little. It's been hidden in our bookshelf for quite some time (20 years?) til I found it recently and realized how amazing the illustrations are. Anyway, enough talkin', check out her stuff.

SCADDY finalist!

Yay!

I entered a bunch of my artwork into the SCADDY Awards again this year, and my Robbie Williams portrait was nominated as a finalist for Advertising Illustration! w00t w00t.



My Screaming Jack wine label was also nominated as a finalist for the same category last year. I didn't win anything last year and am not going to have my hopes too high for this year either---- but it's still quite a rush to get approval for my work. :)

Old(er) Pieces

When my Portfolio Site was updated, I originally had it planned to put some old/irrelevant work under "archives." However I didn't want to overload the site with too many images, so that ended up not happening. I figured this blog is a good place to put them up, so here they are:


I might have posted this somewhere else, but this is an anti-smoking poster made for a class. The smoke is made up of little tiny text that reads "Smoking Is Not Glamorous." Spring 2007.


Spring 2006. A piece about life and death. I personally really like the concept I came up with, I think it was pretty clever :)


Also Spring 2006. A cover for an article about toxic everything.

"I Had A Nightmare."

Brrrrrr!

When the weather gets chilly, I naturally draw people in autumn/winter clothes.





These were drawn on two separate days/occasions-----now I realize that I have a thing for knitted caps with fluffy balls at the end.

Super Blob!

Here is a 16"x12" collage-painting I made recently, based on the sketch from the previous post:



I've been wanting to paint on collages for about a year now. I improvised the entire thing, with hardly a clear vision of the final product... a total no-no for most Illustration, but I like how spontaneous and fun it turned out. Here are my impromptu steps:

- ripped magazine pages glued on canvas with watered down gesso
- yellow dye for tint
- peeling off some glued parts off to create ripped texture
- graphite to transfer the sketch
- putting down gouache with a paintbrush
- putting down gouache with a toothbrush (splattering)
- industrial duct tape to rip the surface + create further texture
- black and purple Sharpies for outlines (oh, how un-artsy)

I entered this into the SCAD Small Works exhibition call for entries, alongside random pieces from the past. We'll see how that goes.

I will definitely continue doing more fun personal projects like this!!

Blobs and Faces

The best doodles come out when you're not even trying. I drew this while waiting in line at Office Max:



I really like the blob-y guys at the top. I'm definitely going to do more with them (i.e. vectorizing, painting).

Also I wanted to develop a new way to draw faces, and this is what I came up with:



I drew the girl on the left first, and drew a younger version of her on the right. Which later turned into:



I liked this sketch so much that I'm using a variation of it for my Electronic Illustration class project.

Take Me To The Zoo

Random characters that have been compiling in my sketchbook over the past week.











I think this is a sign that I need to go to the zoo. Like, right now.

Sad Pumpkin

Halloween is right around the corner, kids.

Into The Deep Sketches

SCAD's Society of Illustrators is hosting a juried show, and the theme is "Into the Deep"-- so basically anything that has to do with the ocean. The format is 10"x14".

Here is how my sketch progressed:







I'm thinking about using concentrated dyes for the colors-- not only will it be super vibrant, but it's also a very versatile media to work with. The piece is due in about 2 weeks so I've still got a lot of time.

Penguin On A Vespa

I designed three T-shirts for Ska Weekend, and here is one of the designs:



Well, in my Electronic Illustration class I colored it:



Fairly straight up Photoshop.

Here is a closeup:



I will post images of the shirts later!

Wet (Festive) Seal

Concept #2/3 for the Christmas Item assignment. Seals are my new favorite thing to draw. I LOVE the sketch I did for this, the coloring not so much... I was trying to go for the colorful-yet-faded-retro-look, but I think it just looks kind of dull. I'm not too concerned about it, however, since it's just at the concept stage.
I'm thinking about naming him Hubert.

Christmas!

Wow, I have been terrible at updating this blog. Classes for fall quarter just started last week, and hopefully that will help me produce artwork more consistently.

Here's something from Illustration for the Retail Market, which is a new class in the department. Basically I get to come up with ideas for random holiday merchandise, home decor... anything that makes the consumers go crazy with their money. The first assignment is a Christmas item, and this is one of the concepts that I've come up with:



Just some of the random doodles and sketches.



I really liked this one so I decided to color it:



Nothing spectacular, just straight up character design. I like coming up with little back stories for my characters though (which is what we're SUPPOSED to be doing for this kind of stuff): The girl (no names yet) likes to make her lil brother help her find Christmas presents around the house... yes, little mischievous guys they are. The lil bro is very clumsy and always ends up getting them in trouble.

Yeah, this is the kind of stuff I daydream about during lecture classes! Oh well, I may or may not end up using these little guys for my final presentation.. we'll see.

Skate Deck Art

I've been meaning to make more posts here but life got in the way... and by life, I mean summer vacation! Yay! I've actually been doing work---an internship with Marcus Kenney, and doing a lot of paintings.

Here is one that I worked on for the first week of June. It's for the Go Skate Deck Art Show at Doo Gallery in Atlanta. Unfortunately the show opening is on June 23, two days after I leave to go back to Japan-- which means I'm not gonna be able to make it. However, my good pal/fellow artist Thom Foolery will be there (he's the one that told me about this show), and knowing him I know he'll take lots of pictures!



Here's a detail of the back (well, I guess "top"):



It's based on a random doodle that I did during art history class some time last month:



Usually I dig the sketch more than the actual piece, but in this case I'm actually really satisfied with the final. I think I picked a good muted color scheme for it. I can't wait for it to be all hung up at the show!

Oh yeah, this is done in acrylics.

National Bowling Week

Finals for spring quarter are starting to wrap up at last. Here's one of them, for my poster design class:



I'm really glad with how it turned out, especially the background and the colors since I didn't have enough time to do color comps for this one. It was a lot of fun to draw, I'd like to do more personifications (?) of random objects.

Ska Weekend Poster

Hooray, my art blog is finally up and running!

I'll start it off with a poster that I made for Ska Weekend 2007 for my poster class. Ben Altom, the founder of the festival, found it on my Livejournal and asked me if they could use it as their official flyer. Needless to say, I happily agreed.



I've also been given the opportunity to come up with possible designs for a T-shirt for this event. But more on that later...