Thursday, January 31, 2008

Zoo Mural Art Concept


A value comp I did for a zoo mural. It's kind of hard to see in a sketch so small, but it shows a bunch of animals partying, dressed as another animal. I'll probably keep the colors naturalistic so there's no confusion as to what animal's what (it's already so busy!).

By the way, here's another illustrator link: Matt Phelan. He's a children's book illustrator, and I'm actually doing a report on him. He works mainly in watercolors + ink to produce simple yet unique imagery. I mean, how adorable is this??

I love his sketchy look! I tend to overwork in my final pieces, so I admire how he's able to keep the loose quality of his sketches whilst defining a certain environment/atmosphere.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Silver & Celebrities.

Like I mentioned last December, one of my illustrations had been nominated as a finalist for the 2nd annual SCADDY Awards. Well, yesterday was the ceremony, and I got a Silver Award for it! Yay! Also I was informed that I became the finalist for the local Savannah ADDY Awards as well. So double yay!

Here is the with-type version of the piece I won for:


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For my caricature class, we have to come up with 2 celebrity images, one horizontal and one vertical. Being a shameless avid Hannah Montana & High School Musical fan, I decided to do Miley Cyrus & Zac Efron. Here are the sketches:

^ Yeah, half Hannah Montana/half Miley... sort of creepy.


And a sneak peek of the color comp sketches in progress:

Yes, I have a TON of references.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Upload Overload.

Alright, I've got a lot to post today:

First off, here are initial sketches (from life) of my fellow classmates in my caricature class:


And here are the final finished pieces:

One had to be graphic/geometrical (top, dyes) and the other one more naturalistic (bottom, graphite).

We also did a fun little in-class exercise today, where we had to draw the Statue of Liberty in various facial expressions:

They were definitely fun to do! Why can't Lady Liberty actually look like one of those in real life? :D

Up next are a few random doodles in my sketchbook:

My personal (=not for class) sketchbook is a small 6"x6" square format, so I tend to just put it on my lap and draw things from all sorts of angles... hence the sideways bears... Sorry, I guess you'll just have to tilt your head sideways!

Another one, drawn during a long winded critique...*yawn*:


Finally, my friend Shiho Hoshino put up pictures of her worktable on her blog the other day, so I thought I'd be a little copycat and put my own up:

You can sort of see the finished version of the piece I had been working on...the sketch is in the previous post. I'll be sure to post a good res scan of that soon!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Springin' Into Action!

Here is a comp sketch of theme park mural art concept I've been working on for Portfolio class:



Just started the final piece. It's going to have a very bright spring-y feel, and I'm using mostly concentrated dyes to get that kind of vibrance!

As for the concept, I just wanted to draw something fun and appealing to children (and not tying myself down to THEME PARK subjects). So what's more fun than a girl and her dog (in a space suit..) skipping through a plain on a rainbow-y path?? And random mushroom-y creatures sprouting?

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Girls & Yusuke Nakamura



Been drawing a lot of girls lately. It's a weird trend/cycle (?) that comes and goes: sometimes I draw animals for weeks, sometimes I draw boys non-stop, and right now I'm drawing mostly girls.

Speaking of drawing girls, 中村祐介(Yusuke Nakamura) is an amazing illustrator, mostly famous for doing artwork for the band Asian Kung-Fu Generation. He also does bookcovers, shirt designs, and various other freelance work. His graphic style of drawing girls within a design is truly phenomenal. More of his stuff can be viewed here.



I emailed him several years ago to tell him how much I love his work, and he was so nice and humble in his response. It's nice when really talented artists don't let their success get to their head, and stay grounded. I'd like to be like that one day (well first I need to get famous...).