quick update....

So things have been pretty busy lately. As christmas is slowly approaching, so is the end of the semester....which means FINALS!! Haven't really had time to update, so I'll try to make this relatively quick. This is some work from my bfa class. It is based on the the story The Magic Chalk, by japanese author, Kobo Abe. It's about a broke/starving artist who finds a piece of chalk. Anything he draws with that chalk comes to life. It's an interesting story because the character, Argon, becomes so immersed in this chalk and his work, that he ends up trying to create a whole other world. It's kinda similar to the creation of Adam and Eve...pretty cool.

This is the character, Argon, from the story The Magic Chalk. Definitely have to paint it over again. I'm actually considering using one of the other poses to render.


This is his house/studio(the small, triangular one), which is set in San Francisco in the early 1950's.
These are still a WIP...so it should keep me busy over the winter break. Enjoy!

-jeff

More Paint Pushing.

So we're wrapping up with color and landscape painting. Our assignment was to paint a landscape at three different times during the day....one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one late afternoon. At first, it was kinda hard because of the weather, but once I got out there, I enjoyed it. It's pretty interesting to see the dramatic shifts in color. Part of it had to do with the weather....one day it was overcast, another day was perfectly clear. But I really enjoyed doing these a lot. And I'm pretty satisfied with the results. Anyways, these are from Lake Cunningham Park, which was right down the street from where I live. Enjoy.

Morning-around 9am


Afternoon-between 11am-12:30pm


Late afternoon- around 4pm. This one actually was the most interesting because I got out there kinda late...and with daylight savings, the sun starts to set around 5ish. So while I was painting, the light was changing pretty fast, and I actually noticed the color change in the mountains. At first they were this desaturated yellowish (as pictured below), then they changed to a reddish brown, then changed again to a blueish! I was totally amazed.

Oh yeah.....BTW

My brother dressed up as mormon/jehovah's witness....

I thought it was pretty funny. That's him on the right.

Happy Halloweeeenie!

So halloween this year wasn't anything too special. Although I had a couple of costume ideas, I actually didn't dress up. I spent most of the afternoon in the library trying to catch up on some stuff. I was originally planning on going landscape painting again, but the weather was a problem...it was overcast, which I don't mind, it's just that the rain was on and off, so it was a bit unpredictable.

Anyways, after the library, I went home and finally got around to carving my pumpkin. Every year, for the past few years, my brother and I would each carve a pumpkin. And each time I would have these cool ideas(so I thought), but the results weren't always as satisfying. One year I tried carving Bruce Lee--ended up looking like Mr. Spock; another year I tried Bob Marley--ended up kinda looking like.....James Brown! So this year, with the election only a couple days after halloween, I thought it would be the appropriate idea to carve the presidential candidates. So my brother got McCain, leaving me with Obama. My brother's pumpkin was pretty successful, as it usually is. I, on the other hand, totally rushed mine. I finished in about an hour and a half, but this is the sad result....



I thought it kinda looked like Ray Charles....my mom said it looked like "Preddie the Cougar"(ahem, she means freddie kreuger, hahaha).


My brother's Senator McCain.

The Fall is here, with it finally starting to rain....so Happy (belated) Halloween. Don't forget to eat lots of candy, go out and VOTE on NOV. 4th!! and also to change your clocks/watches this weekend for daylight savings. Enjoy!

-jeff

FUN-damentals

So in Viz Dev, we're transitioning into color. So, we were assigned to bust out our old acrylics and everything else that goes along with it, including the big painting trays and marker pads/vellum and go landscape painting. He stressed the importance of value, hue, and saturation...along with composition, color temperature, and depth elements. Basically, it boils down to light properties and how they "display" or translate color information.

Anyways, these are two paintings from a park near my girlfriend's house. I was focusing mostly on matching the values and trying to get the images to read, as far as creating depth and form/volume. I enjoyed doing these a lot, and I actually feel like I'm making progress. It felt just a little awkward painting(as opposed to just simply sketching) on a park bench and having a bunch of random people passing by casually looking over my shoulder. But then again, I can't blame them...I mean, how often do you see people painting OUTSIDE of a studio? Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the way these came out. Surprisingly, Ruben says that the first painting is pretty successful considering how much trouble I was having. So it's cool, I guess. There will be more to come soon enough. Enjoy!

-Jeff

Character Update...

So these are the same characters from the previous post. As I mentioned before, I'm still trying to brush up on my photoshop skills. Anywho, these are characters from Oliver Twist. The last one is actually an updated version because I was totally unhappy with the way the first initial drawing came out, so I basically started over and couldn't get around to painting it.

Sikes w/facial expressions


Jack w/skeleton. I think I might fix the colored one because I kinda like the line drawing better.


Nancy (revision)


Definitely have to touch up a couple of things because I'm still not quite satisfied with them.
Enjoy!

-jeff

Characters galore...

So lately, I've been doing a bunch of character designs. Coincidently, all of my classes had been focusing on character development at around the same time. So at one point, I had to do about 6 for barron's class, about 3 for viz dev, and another 4 for bfa. I haven't quite got them to where I want, just cuz I have to set them aside for right now because of overlapping projects...and some I still have yet to scan, but also, I'm still trying to get a grasp of how to paint them digitally.(btw, ruben gave a pretty cool photoshop lecture/demo, showing us how he goes about painting). But everything's pretty much been the same...busy, busy, busy.

These are just two sketches of my characters from viz dev. They're from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. They're a work in progress.



Bill Sikes...


Jack Dawkins, aka Artful Dodger

more to come, i hope... enjoy these, for now.
-jeff

Kind of a late start....

Better late than never.
So I'm finally jumping on the bandwagon and have decided start up one of these bad boys. I've been wanting to start up a blog for a while now, but I just never really had any time(don't we all?).
But anyways, I'm just taking a break from homework, and just hanging out before class starts and now I have my first post. Since this is my first post I thought I'd show something "cool," or "special." So, I figured that I can't go wrong by showing some nudity. They're kind of old, but enjoy.

-Jeff