Concept Art

This is a piece of concept art I did for a personal project. The initial idea is to make it into an animated TV show, but that most likely will never happen. Instead, I may repurpose the idea into a short film some day, if I'm feeling ambitious.

B-DAY time again.

Here's a dump of a few recent birthday drawings...



This one (above) I did for my wife. I drew it in photoshop but then printed it out on this nice textured blue paper. I was happy with the final result so, I scanned the card for your viewing pleasure.

Igneous

IGNEOUS
9x12
Acrylic on Board

My latest painting. It has been months since I've had time to do a new painting. Hopefully I can keep the momentum going...

I think this is the first in a series.

Radio Banners

Here are a bunch of banners I did a while back for the 98KUPD website redesign.

All of the artwork for these banners is 100% digital. An approach I usually don't take, but for what was needed, I think worked best. They were all designed to have transparent BG's since there was a pre-existing BG for them to be placed over on the site. I threw some flat colour into the BG's on most of them for this post.

These first two were tests essentially so that I could dial into a style that they were looking for. In the end, I ended up using a different style for almost every banner. It was actually quite fun.

Here, I was attempting a kind of photocopied, high contrast look similar to the opening titles for the TV show CHUCK. It instead ended up being a little more tonal than I wanted. Doesn't matter, they didn't like it.



Feeling the portrait approach for the Morning Sickness was odd since I usually draw the morning show as very cartoony caricatures, I attempted a digital painterly approach similar to the awesome work of Kevin Dart. Only Holmberg got into this attempt because the test was shot down by everyone.



Unsure of where to go next, I moved on to some of the other DJ's.

Larry McFeelie loves Star Wars so, it was a no brainer to attempt a Drew Struzan look for his banner. I'm relatively happy with the outcome. I was concerned I wouldn't be able to capture that look using 100% digital, but I think I did a decent job of pulling it off.



The banners on the final website, http://www.98kupd.com are quite small and on some of the portraits I worked a lot bigger initially, like the McFeelie image so, here's the full version... I wish the hands were done better. Initially they were going to be cropped out of the banner entirely, but then the final dimensions were changed. Hopefully I won't make that mistake again, and make EVERYTHING as good as possible, just in case.



Next up was Fitz. For his banner I went with an image based on an artist that drew a Henry Rollins SPOKEN WORD shirt that I got at one of his shows. If I knew the artist's name, I would certainly credit his or her inspiration. I think I saw that they smartly changed the graphic on his shirt to 98KUPD for the actual banner.



The Shan-Man was just a quick painterly sketch. Just seemed to work for this one. Don't know why.



And then Bret Vesely; some refer to him as the overnight girl. My approach for him was Shepard Fairey. I looked at his Obama Portrait amongst other things. At this size you can't see that the tonal treatment is actually all lines, but it is. Most of these styles were quite a stretch from my normal cartoony style. I haven't had to do actual portraits or realistic drawings since art school.



Now it was back to THE MORNING SICKNESS. Even though they had said they wanted something different, I think I went too far from what they're used to. This time I went with the same style I used for the FITZ image. It was different enough from how I usually draw them, while still echoing what they've come to expect from me. It was approved. Success!!!

It's the small victories folks.

City Girl

So, I wanted to do something kind of like those photos you see on blogs like The Sartorialist.

I did a quick digital sketch of the background from one of those photos, but the girl is not from one of those photos.

The Batman Runs

In an effort to post more often, here's a drawing of The Batman done for a thread on THE DRAWINGBOARD.

Dancing Deities, next on ABC

This one time I was going to draw a pretty girl, but my pencil wanted to draw a dancing elephant god. The pencil won...

Another Spacegirl

This was a birthday drawing for a buddy of mine. I've been colouring a lot of stuff with a somewhat heavy Leyendecker influence lately.

Her outfit is ripped off of a photo I saw online of a costume from what I think is a Japanese TV Show from the 80's.

Jersey Gods is awesome.

I have been sucking at updates. Too much work that can't be shown.

Here's a drawing of Barock from Jersey Gods.

Wrestling

This was done for a Wrestle City Gallery on Warwick Johnson Cadwell's blog.

You should go there now. He is an AWESOME artist with very loose, appealing drawings. Funny too.

GO NOW and bow before his awesomeness!!!

WJC LINK

U-Fest

So, this was supposed to be an easy paint over with head replacement. I couldn't find a high enough resolution of the original American Gothic painting so, I had to recreate the whole thing. Partial forgery yes, but easily the best digital painting I have ever done. I still don't hate it, which REALLY says something.

Bees

EEK! Over a month since I've posted anything!?

How did THAT happen?

It was a busy month indeed. I even got to be a Guest Artistic Advisor for a program up at the Banff Centre. If you ever have the opportunity to go there, I would. GORGEOUS. Plus, only an hour and a half from where I grew up, so I got to catch up with some friends and family for a couple days.

Any ways, here's a selection of rejected bee designs. They all seem rather happy about the rejection don't you think?

I'll post in less than a month this time... as soon as I finish updating my portfolio...

The HULK

Way back in 2008 I had this strange compulsion to draw the Hulk over, and over, and over again. I don't think I ever achieved the Hulk that was smashing stuff inside my skull, all I ever had was a feeling, but I could never get it to feel right on the page. Someday, I'll try again.

I did get to try some different inking styles at least.

*sigh* 2008 feels like it was just yesterday...

P.S Blog, I HATE the colour Hulk. I was trying too much textury crap in photoshop and it looks totally overworked, but I don't feel like doing a better version. Live, learn, move on. If I fixed everything I thought sucked before I posted it, I would never post anything.

Testing testing

Last image of the year...

Just a quick digital painting to try out a new texture that I scanned in. I'm pretty happy with the final look, and will probably use it so much that it will make most nauseous after a while.

I don't really know what this is, or what it's about. I have done a couple of similar images involving floating stone figures before (found elsewhere on this blog.) This stone is more abstract than the others. At one time, I had planned a series of these, but like a lot of ideas, I still haven't gotten around to it. One was a painting in acrylic for my friend's wedding, the other was a charcoal piece. I think this is part of that series, but maybe this is one of those figures in the midst of attaining its final form?

I sketched out at least four others. Those might be hidden on this blog as well.

Originally, I just put the robed alien there to give a sense of scale, but the more I look at it, the more I think he knows more than he's letting on. I'm not sure he's behind the formation of these large stone idols, but I think he knows who is...

X-Mas '08

This year's Christmas card. Merry Christmas to all of you fine blog readers.

The Flying Elephant

My buddy Dan had a baby recently. Originally, they wanted me to paint a mural in the baby's room, but I was unable to make it out to Florida so, I did a quick little painting to be put up on the wall instead.

Acrylic on Watercolour paper.

The Rejects

So these girls are from an art direction proposal I worked on a little while ago. I didn't get the job so, yet again, the blog flourishes where my career slowly careens into the abyss of obscurity and unemployment.

Maybe these girls will now start their own band, or become an elite crime fighting team or, if we're really lucky, they'll go through 4 years of post secondary schooling, become accountants, and solve the current economic crisis using only a stick of bubble gum, a pie graph, two paper clips, and a roll of duct tape. Dream on future accountants of America, dream on...

birthdays

How did nearly an entire month pass? Is time accelerating? Will I wake up and look in the mirror tomorrow and have an 80 year old man staring back at me? Slow down!

October is a heavy birthday month. Here's a few b-day drawings I've done recently.

The note

This is a little colour sketch I did while waiting to hear back on some design work. This is based on a sketch from a short comic I hope to draw soon.

House

On of my FAVORITE characters on television right now.

This is a quick little study I did in my sketchbook this weekend. I was reading a post by Brian Stelfreeze about how he approaches painting flesh tone on a face. He tries to separate the face into three regions of color. I didn't want to forget what I just learned so, I needed to try it myself.

I'm pretty happy with the results.