Rachel McAlister

Frightful Beauty

2012-01-15T02:27:00.004-06:00

Geeze! Im starting to slack on these! Doing storyboards for my thesis has really taken over my time, but I'll try to squeeze more time in for these in the future! I tried to make this one have a paper cut out feel. I'm definitely not 100% happy with it. It lost a lot of the feel that I intended along the way. But time is a fickle lady and I had to just move on! So on to the next!!

Original Sketch

Progress Video

Quicky Sketch

2012-01-10T23:26:00.003-06:00

A little quick sketch to take a break from my winter project and my thesis. Im a little obsessed with Beyonce's Move Your Body song/video. Her look was just so playful and the sound was just so fun I had to sketch it! And congrats to Beyonce on her new baby girl!!

One Classy Lady

2012-01-05T14:41:00.007-06:00

Two posts in two days?? Could I actually be getting faster!? Anyways here is a beautiful classy 50's lady. Did I mention I have kind of an obsession with vintage stuff? So you'll probably be seeing a lot of it! Hopefully you enjoy it too! I also hope you're enjoying my music. I love sharing it this way!!

Original Sketch

Progress Video

Brand New Year

2012-01-04T19:01:00.008-06:00

Happy New Year! It's already a few days into the new year but it's only the 4th, so as long as we're still in single digits it still counts right!? For my first painting of the year I actually got my inspiration from a photo of my beautiful model cousin from a wedding dress shoot. I absolutely LOVED this dress, her pose and the general feeling of the photo so I wanted to try and capture it. I'm not 100% happy with it and I'm still trying to find a flat style that works for me but it's progress! I also switched from using imovie for my videos to premiere since imovie made 40GB sized files for 8 minute videos and took hours to edit with. Premiere is cool but it's going to take some getting used to, so please excuse any issues with the videos. Lots of learning to do this year!

My Cousin Virginia Martin

Oliver Tolentino Bridal Lookbook

Photographer: Mark Sacro

Designer: Oliver Tolentino

Makeup: Rokael Lizama

Hair: Yuri Sinata

Original Sketch

Progress Video

Last Painting Of the Year

2011-12-29T17:27:00.007-06:00

2011, you've been a pretty good year. And art wise I feel I've grown a lot this past year. So here's hoping that 2012 will be even better!

This painting was inspired by the blog of two of my favorite artists, Emily Carroll and Vera Brosgol, called Fashion From Old People. On their blog they create paintings inspired by vintage fashion they find online. Being that I ADORE fashion from throughout the ages I found this process to be very inspiring for me as well.

The coloring for this one was definitely an experiment for me (as you can probably tell from watching the video). When I draw I tend to draw with the intention of being flat, but when I paint I lean heavily on 3D rendering and struggle to keep it simple. I feel just a plain flat color doesn't work for me and always winds up looking plain so I try to add texture (usually water color or paper). Anywho, that's one of my goals with this painting journal is to find a quick flat painting look that works for me. Hopefully I will find that in the new year!

Inspiration Image

Original Sketch

Progress Video

Nord the Twinkly

2011-12-26T21:20:00.005-06:00

A little late, but better late than never! The second painting in my painting journal (obviously meant for Christmas) is the portrait of Nord the Twinkly who I assume is a very important elf to have a portrait of himself. I forgot to record the end of the process but I got a lot more than last time, so progress! Merry day after Christmas!

Original Sketch

Process Video

Painting Journals

2011-12-23T22:35:00.004-06:00

Hey all! Of course let me start out with the regular sorry for lack of posts! My last semester was insanely busy! But I've had a few guilt trips about neglecting my blog so I've been determined to update it. I have plans for my winter break to regularly practice my digital painting by taking scans of doodles from my sketchbook and updating/painting them. So I decided to try and make this a regular blog thing as well to kill two birds with one stone! I'll be including the initial sketches, the final paintings and as often as possible a video of the painting so I can look back at my process and learn from my mistakes as I go on. For my first one I did a mermaid that color wise felt a little holiday-ish to me. It's not really finished I guess but I kind of got myself stuck in a corner where I didn't really know what to do next to it so I figured I'd move on and come back o it later if I could think of what to do. The video isn't the whole process because I kept forgetting to do it but hopefully I'll remember better in the future. Hope you enjoy!

Original Sketch:

Painting Video:

I've Missed You!

2011-10-17T01:34:00.018-05:00

It's been so long since my last post! Getting ready to move back to San Francisco, furnishing my new apartment, and now very demanding classes has had me super busy for the past couple months. So to make up for it I'll put some extra into this blog and put up the rest of the art from multiple days in my character design class. First is my homework from our week on animals. We had to pick one animal and draw various versions from realistic to anthropomorphic. Obviously I picked one of my favorite animals, a fox.

The next week we had to pick a movie that had not been animated and do a character line up of four characters (including the hero and villain of the movie), plus a turnaround of one of the characters. After much debate I finally chose the Mummy Returns. The characters I chose were of course Rick, Evelyn, Imhotep, and then my favorite character Anck Su Namun. She is just so sexay! So as a result she became my turn around.

The next week of class we had to pick a fable that had never been made into a movie. If we wanted we could use a story we had made up. Being that at the time I was in a group of three for my thesis and we were debating between two stories, I chose one of those as my “fable”. This was a story called Jeirra, about a world where people live on massive creatures, and traditionally cast out their children at the age of thirteen to find their own animal to live and grow with. We were to do a line up of at least four characters and a turn around of our favorite.

For the next few weeks we worked on the process of character design in a professional setting.We had to do a character profile, references, thumbnails, variations and turn arounds of our final character. So I chose the main character of my thesis group’s second story, Lantern. It was about a girl whose mother has died, and she is not able to let go. Eventually she winds up following her mother’s spirit into the Spirit world and so learns to come to terms with her mother’s death.Unfortunately a member of our thesis group backed out and we had to revaluate our stories due to the new lack of animators. As a result we have a brand new story that I will begin sharing with you soon.

Outside of class I try to participate in as much as I can. Last year I began doing visual development for a group animation. And again unfortunately, like many animations made outside of class, it too fell apart. But I sill have some fun character designs to show for it. And it involves a Yeti, which I flipping love.

Well that’s all I have for now! Sadly due to my heavy workload this semester there will be very little updates on this blog in the coming months. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in a few thesis updates soon!

Emily Carroll Week

2011-07-30T19:51:00.008-05:00

So for this week we got to pick an artist to emulate. So I chose Emily Carroll! I've loved and admired her work for a while now, and she is definitely up there on my favorite artists list. Her style is so different from my own and still carries some similarities at the same time so it felt like the perfect thing to try. It was so much fun, and I really learned a lot from her work!

Colin Jack Attack

2011-07-20T17:17:00.010-05:00

So the assignment for week four of my Character Design class was to create 4 characters and 10 heads in the style of the amazingly talented artist Colin Jack. And for this week my teacher said to take a note from Colin Jack's artwork and have fun with your designs. I really tried to take this to heart and as a result I had so much fun I wound up with an excess of drawings! It was by far my favorite week of our assigned artist homework and it really had an impact on my artwork in the long run.

Heads Up!

2011-07-01T20:59:00.012-05:00

Here is a collection of in class and assignment drawings I did during my head drawing class. I love doing portraiture and this class really helped me practice capturing a person's likeness. Sorry for the poor quality in pictures. I took them on my cell phone in class before they would smudge on the way home. The drawing above was my favorite in class drawing. We were talking about using different levels for the background to get our desired effect. I liked the drama vibe so I usually opted for a darker background.

This was my final. It's based off a fellow student in the class who had an awesome serious sailor vibe.

An in class project where we did a portrait alternating between three students. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would!

A thumb nail for testing out different background levels. I liked this one a lot.

Some drawings from earlier in the semester.

Our first time dealing with a darkened background.

Digital Painting Class

2011-06-29T17:14:00.007-05:00

So last semester one of the classes I took was digital painting. Digital painting is something I know basically how to do, but I was very slow at it and only knew how to do it in the way that I had figured out myself. I wanted to learn more techniques that I had seen other people do. Unfortunately the class was only a three hour class instead of a 6 hour class and we had to learn a massive amount of information so it became very rushed. I'm not really completely happy with any of the finished products because I took too long experimenting with them. I kept trying to figure out the styles I wanted to learn based off of the information I was actually learning in class. A lot of my trouble came from a lack of color knowledge, but thankfully I am taking a color theory class next semester.

The first assignment we had was a landscape we painted in Corel. We were allowed to add a person into the painting if we wanted but the main focus had to be the landscape.

Our second assignment was also done in Corel and was the cover of a type of book we would like to illustrate. I chose a children's book since I would absolutely love to illustrate one in the future. I didn't have an original story in mind and I love the classic fairy tales so I chose a favorite of mine, Little Red Riding Hood. The only problem was we had to look up the standard size for our genre's cover. Children's books can be all kinds of sizes but the standard size was a very awkward square...

Our third assignment was a continuation of the book. We were to take a page from inside the book and illustrate it. I LOVED my original sketch but it didnt fit into the square page as well as I would have liked. For this assignment we could choose to do photoshop if we liked, but the technique I had used on my cover kind of required Corel so I stuck with it.

Our last assignment was to do whatever you want. I had seen a friend do a smooth painted scene for an animation and I wanted to do something similar to learn the technique. Unfortunatley my teacher didn't have the time to really sit and teach me the process so I took what I was doing in Corel and applied it to Photoshop. Thankfully while I was on break between Spring semester and summer school I had time to practice the style I wanted to learn in Photoshop. I haven't perfected it yet but I am a lot better than I had been so I'm pretty excited about it!

Stephen Silver Week

2011-06-29T16:37:00.004-05:00

For week four of my character design class we focused on Stephen Silver. I remember being obsessed with the show Kim Possible when it came out on the Disney Channel so I was ecstatic to try out drawing like the show's awesome character designer. It was also a great excuse to watch some Kim Possibles as research. As far as my heads were concerned I was still trying to practice capturing someone's likeness. So this week I used the actors of 30 Rock as my reference. I still don't believe it's perfect but I was definitely excited by my progress. When it came to my figures I felt like having a theme for the week. I have a fondness for the old circus and I felt it could produce some great characters as well as some fun poses.

I AM NERD

2011-06-27T03:18:00.004-05:00

In our third week we studied the all mighty Bruce Timm. I LOVED this week! Although I am not the biggest fan of super heros and such I did grow up watching Batman; the Animated Series after school on a regular basis. I remember loving the edge the cartoon had and the sexy pin up style the girls were drawn in (Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn being particular favorites of mine). Of course now the thing I gravitate towards drawing the most is girls, and I especially love drawing in pin up style so Bruce Timm was right up my ally.

We also had a lecture on race in our class that week, and how you had to make it readable right off the bat. At this point I had gotten the idea from a fellow classmate, who had done Dexter characters for his head drawings, to similarly do iconic show characters for my own heads. In my mind I wanted to be able to capture the character, and become stronger at drawing a likeness to a real person. So me, being the nerd that I am, decided to use Lost since it had such a racial diversity, is a well recognized cast, and well, I am a nerd. I was fairly pleased with how it came out. At first I wasn't sure it worked. And when I showed it to friends who didn't really know the show, it was less than encouraging to have to show them the reference pictures, and just lose the desired impact all together. But when I brought it to class without any kind of label on the paper or words from me, one by one my classmates started pointing out the characters. I don't think they are all total successes, but the fact that enough of them look right so that people could identify the show, and then narrow down who each person was, felt like a good step forward.

Finally!

2011-06-27T02:33:00.007-05:00

So FINALLY I get around to posting a blog. The problem was I have tons of sketches I want to post from my character design class. BUT! I wanted to clean them all up digitally before I posted them. Due to the fact that I have what my neurologist has so kindly told me is called an intentional tremor (meaning my hand shakes when I try to focus on doing something with it... i.e draw clean lines or detail), a lot of my pencil work is not where I would like it to be. Fortunately I am going to be testing some medicine very soon to try and fix my hands. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to digitally go back over my lines and make them as clean as I would like. Now I have started summer school, soon I will soon be off on a trip to Europe, and shortly there after returning to San Francisco to move into my new apartment. So I just have to face the fact that my lines being cleaned up won't happen. Which is super hard for my OCD self to accept, but I can't let my blog go unattended. I especially can't let it go with no character design assignments on it, since that is after all my passion!

Anywhoozle! These are some in class sketches done in usually spans of either 3 to 5 minutes. We would have a model with some sort of costume on. Our teacher encouraged us to often draw something inspired by the model rather than what we were actually seeing. So we were to get ideas from their poses but not necessarily draw a man in a homemade looking superhero outfit (which was often the case). I followed this very often since I'm not too much of a fan of the action macho guy sort of stuff (which was a lot of what we got in the beginning). Then later on as we got more and more sassy girl models I began drawing more directly from the model. These particular poses are from our final assignment. For this we put together a final portfolio of our semesters work, in which we had 4 pages of in class drawings. So these are my favorite drawings that I picked for my final. I hope you enjoy and I'll be posting more from this class soon!

Summer Siesta

2011-05-18T23:59:00.005-05:00

SORRY FOR MY LACK OF UPDATES!

Come Friday I'll be done with my first year of grad school. This semester was exhausting but Im excited to post some updates from the past few months soon. In the mean time an interesting thing happened today. Shay Carl put up a video where he talked about a guy who got a tattoo of him on his arm and vlogged it. When I saw the picture of the tattoo I instantly thought the image looked familiar. Sure enough after checking out the newly tattooed guy's vlog it turns out it was my drawing I had done last summer of the family that they based it off of. That's a first for me! It's a weird feeling to know someone out there is carrying my drawing on them for life. I hope the enjoy it! Here is a link to the tattooing if you'd like to see it.

Greg's Vlog

SHAYTARDS

Heads Will Roll

2011-02-21T00:45:00.004-06:00

These are a couple of snapshots (unfortunately taken on my cell phone due to lack of a proper camera) of the work I have been doing in my head drawing class for the past couple weeks. The male head is from my second week and the female (which I am much less proud of due to being made to use vine charcoal rather than pencil) from my third week. We've been focusing on building up values to create the face rather that just sketching it out and shading it. It really freaks me out to shade so dark so fast but I have been really liking the end results.

Ladies Ladies Ladies!

2011-02-21T00:03:00.017-06:00

So I've been back to school for almost a month now and I'm finally getting around to posting some of the stuff I've been doing. This is from my second week of character design class with Michael Buffington. The format of how our class works is we have a model which we do many many short sketches of (usually 3 to 5 minute sketches). Buffington stresses for us to "not be a slave to the model/reference" and push the pose, and not just draw the model in the costume that we see in front of us. This week we had an awesome female model which made me super happy since I struggled the previous week doing quick drawings with a male model. Mixed in with the drawing we do some lecturing on various topics such as the differences between men and women and how to make the race of your character quick and easy to read. For homework each week we are assigned an artist which we are meant to emulate and make 10 heads and 4 full figures in their style using references. For our first homework we were assigned Phil Bourassa. My critique was that it was very close and that I had a good ability to analyze the style but it was just slightly off and more Bruce Timm like. Also my line work is obviously not the best. But as I was one of two people who received a good critique I was happy. The refences I used for this week all came from searching various stock images on deviantart.

Validation

2011-01-15T18:54:00.015-06:00

So I have to return to my school in about two weeks. While I am super excited to start my new classes all I can think about is how much I've come to love this sleep-whenever-I-want schedule, how much I despise airports and what a pain in the ass it is going to be to unpack my dorm again (for winter break our dorms make us pack up everything, put it on our bed and then clean. GIANT PAIN). Here are some pictures of what my dorm looked like before I had to take it all down.

On the good side maybe this will give me a chance to organize a little more and get rid of some of the clutter that was starting to happen. PS- I LOVE MY CLAW FOOT TUB! And I will be super sad when the time comes that we are separated. Otherwise I won't miss my dorm or my insanely loud neighbor with the barking laugh.

I am ridiculously excited to start my digital painting class. I've always fumbled my way through trying to figure out how to do it on my own, but I've never found a solid routine way that works for me. So every time I pretty much have to relearn a way to paint which really slows things down. I've already taken some workshops with the teacher and he is unbelievably awesome so I can't wait to learn from him. As for character design I am of course excited since it is what I am at this school to learn. I'm currently doing it for a group animation project which is fun but it would be nice to know all of the terms and techniques that I currently just kind of float my way through doing. Head drawing I know will be my most difficult class (mostly because I don't really enjoy drawing realistically and I already know the teacher doesn't give above a B) but I need to learn a lot about portraiture.

It's semesters like this that make me truly realize I just picked the wrong school for my undergrad. I graduated feeling like I wasted all this time and money for a degree that meant nothing for me and not having learned anything that would help me in my desired career. I knew I wanted to be able to draw for a living but I didn't know how that was possible. I spent all 4 years figuring it out and once I realized in my last semester that it was character design I wanted to do there weren't really any courses for me to take that I could learn from. I made places for myself in classes such as the animation classes and on my school magazine as their first illustrator but no one was really able to teach me about illustration there. Now in grad school I really feel challenged artistically and can already in the first semester see my growth. I feel comforted that even though I'm not starting my career as fast as my peers I know I made the right decision.

And now a little taste of my holiday.

We didn't really get any family pictures unfortunately, but the animals are always happy to pose and be cute.

Hope everyone had an amazing holiday!

Break

2011-01-08T21:35:00.003-06:00

Hello! Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Finals and dorm related stuff got crazy and now I'm home for my 6 week winter break, which I'm now about half way through. Since my art supplies are heavy, bulky and messy and so most are still packed up in my dorm, not much more than pencil sketches for my animation project I'm working on and random doodles have been done. While I'm loving being at home and not particularly wanting to return to my dorm, I'm super excited about my classes I have this semester; character design, digital painting and head drawing! So hopefully I will produce some fun stuff to post here soon. But for now, happy holidays and enjoy any time you have off!

Progress

2010-11-28T12:33:00.004-06:00

Im on Thanksgiving break now and trying to get work done at home when all my stuff is back in San Francisco. I'm trying to do as much as I can but it's a little worrisome to not be able to make much progress on my finals so I'll have to buckle down when I get back.

bristol, pencil

Last week in Chiaroscuro we did another life drawing of the head. This time I was determined to learn how to do the kind of cross hatching technique my teacher does. Since I've been trying to learn it on my own since the beginning of the semester and have so far been unsuccessful I pestered him every break we had during class to teach me. After a few attempts he finally did and I must say I am in love with the way this turned out. It is nowhere near perfect but it looks a million times better (to me at least) than what I had been doing before. Hopefully it will translate well into my still life final!

Sketches

2010-11-19T19:30:00.016-06:00

One of the things that can always be found in my book is my sketchbook. Here are some of the more recent doodles I have put in there (most of them are done since I moved to San Francisco). Enjoy!

Digi Extras

2010-11-17T00:42:00.004-06:00

Whenever I can I go to the digital painting workshop. I already knew how to paint digitally of course, but I'm not very fond of my technique, and it often takes too long to stumble through figuring out how I want to paint something since I'm pretty much guessing. I've only finished two paintings there. I've started work on a couple others but my work load has become a lot heavier and I've been unable to go to the workshop recently. I can't wait to have it as a class next semester!

digital

This was done for a contest on sketchoholic.com. The them was nocturnal. So of course it is a nocturnal animal sleep over. While I didn't win I did receive a vote for best entry which is a step in the right direction! I was trying to get a hand done feel, like with pastels or something (I had an example I showed my instructor and we tried to figure out how to do it together). I'm not sure if I'm fond of the end result, but I learned a lot through the process which was the point for me.

digital

I did this when I was feeling the halloween mood. I had a sketch of this in my sketch book which I am a lot more fond of since it looked more like she was coming out of the water. I do like the overall feel of this though and my instructor told me how I might fix it. So one day when I have time I might go back and change it.

Renaissance Model

2010-11-17T00:12:00.014-06:00

This week I got my ultimate model visually. Her face was very round shaped, very classically beautiful and reminded me a lot of women in renaissance paintings. And when she came to our class she brought the BEST wardrobe with her! If I had her body type I would have run away with all her clothes.

newsprint, charcoal

This is what Im most likely turning in for my homework this week. The substitute workshop instructor dressed her in this weird prom dress material dress that poofed out at the bottom and a similar material shawl. Last minute she handed her the giant cartoony skull prop she is holding. I ADORED this pose she put her in. It felt like a creepy kind of red riding hood. But I had some difficulty drawing the material and shape of the dress as well as her pose. We'll see how well it fairs.

Now since I am extremely comfortable with the 20 minutes I have more time. I like to put some emphasis in the face if I have time, and on this pose I really wanted to do that.

newsprint, charcoal

I think mu trouble with the fabric shows more here. I wish I had more time to try and figure it out but we only did it for the two poses.

newsprint, charcoal

Next she was in a long velvety dress with an equally velvety shawl. I think I did ok on trying to capture the material but the I feel like the emotion and pose are lacking.

newsprint, charcoal

When she came to our class she had a variety of coats and dresses and some of those creepy flat faced fur scarf things she snagged from the other building's prop closet. By this time I almost always have alot of time left over after I finish my shading and darkening my lines. So I began playing with adding details and darkening areas with a kind of cross hatching and line build ups.

I really like how the lines and cross hatching add a kind of texture to it as well as the feeling they give the overall piece.

newsprint, charcoal

some more detail shots of the new cross hatching treatment.

newsprint, charcoal

Hola Seniora Terminator

2010-11-16T23:55:00.009-06:00

newsprint, charcoal

This week lady terminator model payed a visit to our class. Although she didn't have the advantage of the prop and costume closet she did come terminator costume in tow, along with a couple flamenco skirts, scarfs, fans and bolero jackets. I absolutely loved experimenting with how to draw the ruffles. There were so many but my conte technique still worked pretty well for making the structure of them. But I tended to get lost in making them.

newsprint, charcoal

I had some trouble drawing her in her jacket from the front because it puffed her up but it hid her rather busty chest at the same time. So I had a difficult time trying to balance and make sense of the clothing.

newsprint, charcoal

The ruffles of this skirt made me so happy!

newsprint, charcoal

This wound up being my favorite piece of the day. The texture of the skirt and the frills in the jacket really fascinated me. And for whatever reason I seem to favor my from behind drawings. Which works out fine since I have a curse where I seem to always sit where the model doesn't feel like turning, haha.

newsprint, charcoal

This is actually from the next week, and it was the basket model returned. I had the same trouble drawing her since she had another very loose fitting outfit on her very small body and again asked to have a fan on her which made all sorts of chaos with this outfit. But I was a lot more comfortable dealing with it this time than I was the last time I had her.

Baskets Guns and Groovy Beats

2010-11-16T23:14:00.013-06:00

By now I was about half way through the semester and I'd pretty much found a way of drawing that working for me and that I was comfortable with. 20 minutes was now not even an issue and I often had extra time leftover to add extra shadows and details. By this time I was in a pretty happy spot with figure drawing.

newsprint, charcoal

This workshop was probably my most difficult workshop. It was one of the two workshops I went to to try and get a drawing for my midterm and I had a lot of difficulty with such heavily draped clothing on such a teeny tiny frame. Plus the model got hot so we placed a fan on her which made the darned fabric fly all about her legs and chest where it was loose. I got a couple drawings from this session but definitely nothing I wanted to use for my midterm.

newsprint, charcoal

In order to get people to focus on the figure more my workshop instructor had the model hold these two giant distracting baskets and made us draw the figure first with no baskets. Then once we had that down we could add the baskets in. Although it was very frustrating being pulled out of my now regular routine I appreciated the exercise. Especially since we have many models in the workshop draped in props, which can sometimes become so distracting you screw up the figure trying to bend it to the props.

newsprint, charcoal

Men and guns are pretty high on my difficult things to draw list and on my second workshop to get a midterm drawing in walked this guy completely decked out in guns and military gear. It turned out WAY better than I expected but it was another very difficult session at a stressful time. The previous week's lesson on seeing the figure without distractions was very helpful this week.

newsprint, charcoal

This wound up being the drawing I handed in for the midterm. I was critiqued for maybe making the legs a little too long and although my instructor liked the affect of leaving the foot in the background looser and less defined he wished it had a little bit more line and detail to it. But I still received an A- which was a huge relief since I thought my teacher was the type to never give out A's due to a speech he gave earlier in the semester.

newsprint, charcoal

I was pretty proud of the gun shape here. I know it's not perfect but for me it is really good. My workshop instructor told me I was imagining things and that I needed to step back from my drawing more but I thought the arms looked too long. I still don't like to get up and look at my drawing from farther away very often (I get too focused on just drawing it) but I still think his arms are too long...

newsprint, charcoal

This is our only model in our class to bring music to play while we drew. It was on some radio station that played old Michael Jackson and other old groovy tunes but he kept falling asleep during every pose. But I found his face and belly shape interesting to draw.

newsprint, charcoal

Finally he wound up taking a nap for about 30 minutes till we made enough noise trying to politely get his attention and he woke up. A little extra practice for us I guess.

grandmothers and knights

2010-11-16T19:28:00.011-06:00

There is obviously a little skip in my clothed figure drawing timeline, but these are about 5 weeks in. By this time I had realized by watching another student who does amazing work that I could quickly lay down some values by using a conte pressed charcoal on its side. So I began exploring what I could do with that and how I could shade with that as well.

newsprint, charcoal

This class was one of my favorite classes because it was one of the first times a model had brought their own costume and props. Plus the model was just plain adorable! She made very themed poses that went along with her props. Some were very challenging and some were fairly straight forward but all of them were interesting. These are my earliest attempts at using the conte pressed charcoal.

newsprint, charcoal

In my next workshop we had this biker looking guy come in and put on a very makeshift knight outfit with a crocheted "chainmail" hat that stood off the top of his head... Even with it's strangeness it was still very fun. I didn't realize until my instructor pointed it out but I was quite lazy with the crosses. Darn angular patterns!

newsprint, charcoal

This is what I wound up turning in for my homework that week. My instructor loved it except for the guy's beer gut... By these drawings I had started a method of taking time to draw the face first and once satisfied with that getting the body down. For some reason that is what usually helps me keep the proportions right. My instructor doesn't like this method though. When he notices me doing it he critiques me for taking too long on the face. Oh well...

newsprint, charcoal

I still hadn't gotten the idea down here that I needed to push the difference in values. I tried to make the pants slightly darker but it didn't show. On the other hand I was getting used to using the conte shading method and growing quite fond of it. And I was alot more comfortable with the 20 minute time period by now than I was originally.

Ladies and Gent

2010-11-16T18:52:00.008-06:00

My other studio class is clothed figure drawing class. It's my first figure drawing class ever and also the first time I have ever used charcoal. We draw about 12 20 minute poses each class and then I also go to a weekly workshop where we have access to a props and costume closet to create some more interesting drawings. Because of the overwhelming amount of drawings I've done so far in the semester I'm breaking these posts into sections starting from earlier semester drawings to the most recent.

drawing paper, charcoal

This is from my first week of class. I had no idea how to use the charcoal and since it was my first figure drawing class I was sort of flustered and nervous about what to do so 20 minutes didn't seem like much time to me. I still knew how to draw the folds but shading with the charcoal was difficult for me.

drawing paper, charcoal

This was my second week of the workshop where we got the model we lovingly call terminator chick. She always comes with this kind of bad ass look and with the access to the prop closet she had some toy guns to play with as well. I had learned a good amount from my first workshop, and I was mainly trying to focus on filling in different sections and assigning different values. I was still trying to figure out how to use the charcoal.

drawing paper, charcoal

This was the third week of class and one of my favorite models we have ever had. She is an art student herself so she knows how to create fun poses that will really interest us and she is very athletic so she can hold them fairly well. I was still pretty scared of using the charcoal and still didn't know how to assign values correctly but I really loved the folds of her dress.

drawing paper, charcoal

Chiaroscuro and Such

2010-11-16T17:51:00.013-06:00

So I know I've been neglecting my blog, but the reason is because I am currently enrolled at San Francisco Academy of Art University to get a masters degree in illustration. It's an awesome program which requires a lot of work, which unfortunately leaves very little time for personal work. So instead of my usual work I'll update with some drawings of my class work to demonstrate what I'm currently learning and show my progress.

These are drawings from my chiaroscuro class. In the class you are supposed to learn about the principles of shadows and lighting and such but our class is pretty much a basic still life class. It's still been useful, just not what I expected.

sketch paper, pencil

This is my first homework assignment. My critiques were it looks too illustrated because of the line work, it's too light, there is too much detail in the cup and there's some trouble with the nail polish bottles and how they settle on the table, the composition is one line, and of course the background is very blank. Being a former photographer at a picture people where we were taught this was a good composition I was troubled by that critique and didn't really know what to do. But now I understand how it was too simple and boring. I also didn't know how one could detail an object too much but I do understand now how it adds to the illustrated feel.

bristol, pencil

In class we generally draw a still life for the full 6 hours and sometimes the drawings extend into a two week sitting. This was supposed to be a two week sitting but unfortunately I was sick the second week so mine is only half done. Never the less this is our first attempt in drawing the human form.

bristol, pencil

This is my midterm still life. I was actually very proud of this drawing since all my previous homework had been critiqued for being too light, but this one was critiqued for being too dark. And again my teacher didn't like my composition because he found too many angles in it pointing towards the owl focal point. I had previously been taught you want things to point to the focal point so again I was confused by this. And I also had a problem with my front fold reading which I definitely agree with. Some of the class thought it was a banana since the majority of the class mainly uses fruit for their homework. Regardless this is still my favorite assignment I have done and it received a B which is a full letter grade better than my progress grade assignment.

bristol, pencil

Our next 2 week attempt at learning the human form was drawing this statue of the female torso. It was still pretty boring to draw since it wasn't a real person but it was one step closer to finally getting to draw a real figure rather than some fruit and bowls.

bristol, pencil

This is my most recent homework. I don't like it as much as the previous one and I feel like it feels too close to that one as well. I was again critiqued on my composition because due to my viewpoint the ghost pumpkin looks like a similar size and shape to the bowl and it's near being on the same line with it and too much of it was in the middle line in general. My only other critique was that I didn't have an interesting enough fold pattern in my background.

bristol, pencil

Finally in class we got to do a life drawing. I struggled because two of my big weaknesses when drawing people are drawing men and drawing elderly people. But for the time we had that day and comparing it to the amount of trouble I usually have with these kind of subjects I was pretty pleased with the result. I still feel it looks too illustrated, mostly because of my pencil work. I'm still very uncomfortable doing these types of drawings in pencil. I have trouble figuring out how I want to fill things in and create values. I've watched some students around me use a kind of cross hatching and I adore the way it turns out but I've never been able to replicate it. Unfortunately I think this particular drawing really emphasizes those weaknesses. Hopefully taking head drawing next semester will help me more with those problems.

Overall I don't think I've really learned anything in this class about lighting, but I am learning how to make a less illustrated looking work. I still struggle with using the pencil and getting a composition my teacher likes but I still have 4 more weeks left to go, so I'm going to focus the most on trying to learn those things.

Wall Street Cyclops

2010-07-08T03:52:00.002-05:00

This is a drawing done for a contest on sketchoholic. The amazing Nate Wragg was in the interview chair tonight and chose the topic wall street cyclops for the contest. The prize? Nate Wragg's very own original wall street cyclops illustration. I was so unbelievably stoked for this interview because Nate Wragg has been a favorite artist and huge inspiration to me for a while now. So of course I had to give this contest a try. But the entries were loaded with amazing and inspiring work so no, I didn't win. But at least it was a fun practice in random character design. I kind of like designing these fun monsters. It makes me want to possibly start a series of creatures trying to blend in in random work places. That is if I get time. Anyways fun times!

Shaytards

2010-06-13T01:00:00.006-05:00

trying to learn corel painter better so I painted a portrait of the awesome vlogger shaycarl and his family known as the shaytards and sent it to him as a little present. Hopefully he likes it! I still need to learn alot as far as lighting and really painting in general and for whatever reason the colors never upload right on this thing but hey that's why I'm going to grad school in the fall. And it turned out better than i thought it would! So anywhoozle the Shaytards! You all should go give them a whirl!

Final

2009-05-03T12:37:00.013-05:00

Sorry this took so long to get up. Between problems with my computer, and the internet and blogger it took a while to get them posted. As you can see the pages aren't finished but page seven is what they are intended to eventually look like. Sorry some of them don't have nice text... Again massively annoying computer problems. Page one is at he bottom and then it goes up. Yup.

finished for now

2009-04-28T02:08:00.003-05:00

For now I'm calling this finished. I still have major issues with it, but I just want to let it go for like a week and then come back and see if they are worth fixing. I still don't think it really looks a whole lot like me but oh well. I still practiced what I really set out to practice. I would love critiques if you have some!

work in progress

2009-04-27T01:40:00.002-05:00

Done today during homework ( I worked on it whenever I got to the point that I couldn't even look at what I was working on. Everything I'm currently doing happens to be very tedious). It helps me keep my sanity to have a little side project to doodle on. And I wanted to touch back on some rusty skills such as portraiture and well, realism I guess. It's definitely far from done. I've only worked on it for probably a total of 3 hours, but I like where it is going. Oh, and it is supposed to be a self portrait, but I'm not too sure if I think it really looks like me, but I guess as long as it looks human that's fine.

2nd version

2009-04-01T13:46:00.003-05:00

Chris suggested I try the bubbles with no ink as well. I think I like this better. I also fixed a couple spelling mistakes. Enjoy

First finished page

2009-04-01T02:28:00.003-05:00

I took the day off of school and work because I was sick but I dedicated myself to this as a project for the day. i just finally finished it, but Im sure I'll find some problems with it later... Oh well

fixed

2009-03-31T09:11:00.000-05:00

ok, put in some oars and changed the shape of the boat.

Some more stuff

2009-03-29T14:46:00.000-05:00

Here's some more stuff from my senior overview. I haven't put so much up recently cuz I've been so incredibly busy, but this is just a fraction of what I've been working on.

I just noticed I forgot ores for this picture... I'll add them in later I guess...

Waiting for Spring

2009-03-21T01:50:00.000-05:00

I did this to avoid doing my actual homework... ah well.

King Peridot and Queen Amethyst

2009-02-23T17:48:00.000-06:00

The King and Queen, Em's mother and father. Not completely finished but close enough for tonight.

Princess Emerald and Prince Topaz

2009-02-21T18:13:00.000-06:00

Em again and the Prince she is supposed to marry. He is annoying and persistent. I changed Em's eyes a little bit from the last one.

Covvvvvver

2009-02-21T00:39:00.001-06:00

The cover in black and white or color. Helix Showdown was the only title said so that's what is on it. I hope everyone likes it.

A second try

2009-02-18T15:02:00.000-06:00

A different version with attempts to fix the color problems. I think I like this one better.

Senior Overview

2009-02-18T01:37:00.000-06:00

Concept art for my senior overview...

Older works

2009-02-17T19:34:00.001-06:00

Some older work in different styles. Some more successful than others. I guess I'm still looking for what "my style" is. These were all either done in photoshop or illustrator. And yes, there is a picture of Kelley Clarkson. She was a b-day present for my roommate.

Princess Emerald

2009-02-14T22:03:00.001-06:00

My main character for my final. Her name is Princess Emerald, but she goes by Em. She is the anti-"disney" princess, and is blunt, rude and sarcastic. Yay

Moving along

2009-02-13T01:25:00.000-06:00

Obama the builder a little more complete. But unless I can figure out a certain technique I want to do then he is pretty much done. But if anyone has any suggestions I would LOVE to hear them.

Obama the builder

2009-02-12T20:18:00.000-06:00

Another work in progress for the magazine. This one is alot of fun to draw.

BATTLE

2009-02-12T02:01:00.000-06:00

Nearly finished pages. Page 4 just needs some final color clean up and shading and I need to change the robot faces. Still not totally excited with the overall result but I need it done for Kinematifest and my Pixar portfolio.

Early sketches

2009-02-08T20:59:00.001-06:00

Some quick character sketches for my final. I haven't thought out the whole story yet so there may be more characters. I don't really know yet. But I know I want the coloring style to be kind of cut out pale construction paper looking if that makes sense...

Taxi

2009-02-06T23:23:00.001-06:00

For another class (Ampersand), but I haven't put anything up for a while. So enjoy a taxi. Again not completely finished. I need to tidy it up alot for the magazine and for my portfolio for the Pixar internship. But this is what I got done during class.

An almost finished page

2009-01-28T18:41:00.000-06:00

One of the pages for the showdown. Colored obviously. But still not completely finished.

Showdown sketch

2009-01-27T15:57:00.000-06:00

Here's a sketchy layout for the show down mini comic. The reason I haven't been posting is I haven't really made anything nice and finished looking. It's all really sketchy and crappy like this, but I figured I should put something up and this one is actually currently in my computer. It's a story of a bully girl who stole a skinny little boy's candy bar, and so he fights to get it back. I don't really have anything for the final project yet... still having trouble thinking of something...