Obligated To Post

I just wanted to add my friends Clam and Jeff to my list on the side and I always feel obligated to post everytime I update but I couldn't find anything new so here's an old figure drawing from a year and a half ago. I wish I knew what I learned in the classes I have taken since then because I didn't know squat about shadows and most of my drawings tended to be in high key. Fortunately, this was one of the ones that were suppose to be drawn in high key. Back then I always focused on certain areas that I reacted to the most. In this case it was the the hand and arms. I took the face a challenge because it's always been difficult for me to draw heads that aren't right side up.

I just got done with a rendering project and I remembered this quote my friend Dan showed me by Paul Madonna. After a couple of all-nighters, this quote epitomizes how I feel at the moment.

I've had trouble knowing when I've done enough in a day, unless I've worked myself to exhaustion./
What bothers me the most is that I try to measure accomplishment against time./
It feels cliche, but I wonder,/
Would I criticize a tree for how often it blooms?/

Here is the link to the artwork that accompanies the words.

Travel Sketchbook Pages

I've been pretty irritable over the past two days from lack of sleep and catching up on work. It sucks. This was probably the last good drawing I've had in a awhile. It was some weeks ago, I rememer looking through Kristina's sketchbook and it had this sick drawing. I couldn't remember it exactly when I refered to it in my head, except for how it was rendered so it motivated me for these pages. It's amazing how much tones can compensate for lack of accuracy or any other factors because this guys face is completely inaccurate. My teacher, John Clapp, had also told me that edges will take a lifetime to master so I was really trying to develop my sensabilities when approaching tonal ability. Nikita's sketchbook and Kim's figures had also stepped up last time I was flipping through them. I'm thankful and motivated but FUCK! this crap is becoming overwhelimg. I'm lacking the time to learn and the majority of my shapes in my Black and White render are still off. I have to write papers plus I'm annoyed and sleepy. rant...

peace and god bless

Brain Freeze

I did this while watching Juno, which is a pretty good movie. I was looking at Willie Real's blog and just really liked how he draws the eyes for his characters and I just ended up sneaking it in the drawing. I've been trying pull out stranger concepts lately. I love Odd Nerdrum's strangeness quality.

Chasing Tales

I found this little guy running around my spray can and thought Kristina would like it, so it ended up being her birthday present. It's based off the japanese folklore of Kitsune, meaning fox. "The more tails a kitsune has—they may have as many as nine—the older, wiser, and more powerful it is. Because of their potential power and influence, some people make offerings to them as to a deity."

Say Cheese

This is a word association piece using "smile." I just worked around the idea that sometimes people have something to hide behind smiles. This was mostly for playtime with acrylics after asking some of my collegues how to blend with them because I wanted to prep for the illustration class I'm taking this upcoming semester. The letters where newspaper cut out.

Sorry about the quality. I adjusted it in photoshop but this was the best I can do.

Figure Drawing- 001

Just been practicing Sheldon's process: gesture, structure, anatomy, and then blurring the lines in between. Actually, he says to them at the same time. These were either just 10 or 2 minute poses. My current goal is to achieve the volume while still retaining the gesture and the "Cal State Cools" are helping tremendously.

Here is an interesting insight I read about James Jean's process.

I'm also interested in what you've referred to as a "matrix of rules" pertaining to how your creative ideas come about. Can you explain what you mean by this?
Once you put anything within the boundaries of a picture, you start to create relationships. Scale, color, perspective, texture—your mind starts making connections between these qualifications. Once you have characters in a space, they intensity of the relationships becomes very literal. I try to orchestrate these relationships so that they are ambigious yet believable. A good way to pull that off is to understand "the rules" that I've created in the picture. Once you create an action—say if a character is in repose or if that particular part of the composition is in darkness—then there must be an opposing force to have put that character in that position or to have cast that park of the picture in shadow. I draw this world until it reaches a kind of balance, until each action is accounted for in some way.

Also, some interviews of my favorite artists of all time...

ID4 Week Sketches

I spent the 4th of July in SoCal visiting family and had mix of fun and tear-jerking moments. But over the past week I had a great drawing binge, probably because I haven't drawn from life in a while. Nothing amazing... when drawing from life, I always want to strengthen my sensibilities. Doing the blinds and semi-blinds were the most helpful lesson I got all year when it came to drawing from life. I still need a great amount of work on my tonal skills though. The writing were just some lines from "Moon Dance," written by Van Morrison. I like the August Rush version and how it was played on a slower tempo.
Check this video out. It's extremely disheartening.