Deju Vu

Continuing the trend of small projects, here is a small portrait I did of my roommate for a belated Christmas/birthday present.

I was looking at my older ink drawings the other day an noticed that despite the noticeable improvement in my line work, they did possess a certain amount of energy that I think is lacking in my current work. I was a lot more "impulsive" with ink when I first started using it which is something I tried it replicate with this piece. Unfortunately, it looks a little too similar to my earlier ink drawings than I care to admit.
In addition to this, I also restarted an ink drawing from the previous semester. My final project from Illustration Life Drawing III was turning out real nice until I accidentally messed up while spotting blacks. It was a huge shadow area that forced to me to compensate the other black areas. I normally don't start over old projects but this particular ink drawing had a lot of good elements working for it judging from the overall positive feedback I received during my critique. I decided to use watercolor paper instead of gessoed board this time so the ink will absorb better in the surface and if I have to use any kind of white out, it will most likely not be as noticeable. Also, this will be a good side project to work on since I probably won't touch ink for any of my studio classes this semester. Here is a little progress so far.

This will be my last entry before school starts on Monday so who knows how often this will get updated. Hopefully more than once very 6 months.

Commissions/Studies

In addition to doing small studies, this break has been a good opportunity to catch up on some commissions. Recently, my studio mate Brandon Belote decided to merge spaces together in the studio we share with other artists. This has tuned out to be good artistically and financially as it saves both of us money and we've been both spending more time in the studio. Today I worked on a couple commissions and a small study.

This small study of my friend Blair was done in my sketchbook. Before I proceeded to ruin this drawing by using ink washes, I was very happy with the inked line work. It didn't help that the paper in my sketchbook isn't the best of quality. I might expand this into a bigger ink drawing later on.

After warming up with this study, I moved on to some commissions. The following commission was completed tonight: ( note to self, I need to get a good scanner instead of using my crappy phone camera).

In general, I'm pretty happy how this turned out. I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to achieving that fine line between " not too lose or too tight". Still have lots to improve on but I'm showing progress. One thing that has had a tremendous impact is working on paper again. My last few ink drawings have been on gessoed board. Since working in my sketchbook,  it's apparent that working on paper is what I should have been doing all along ( Duh!) After completing one more commission I think I'm going to attempt a larger project to finish up the year/winter break. Until then, Happy New Year.

Another Ink Study/I Hate Pro White!

I've been trying to stay busy this week so I decided to do another ink drawing in my sketchbook (apologies for the crappy cellphone pic):

 I kinda had Tony Harris in mind when I was drawing this with an emphasis on line work. I thought about only inking the line work but I really need to work on spotting blacks. All was going well until I messed up around the shadow under the nose. I tried using pro white but I always make the mistake of trying to water it down which always ends up looking worse. Never had great luck with pro white so I'm not sure why I decided to use it. At this point I just started spotting blacks more instinctively and ended up with this: 

Though it's a far cry to say this is good, I kinda liked how this turned out. I added some ink wash as well which is something I normally don't do. I think I'll add some ink wash in my next study since it was kinda refreshing.

All in all, I think I've been good on the productive end on my break so far. I was going to wait to do a few more studies and do a larger blog update but I figure I might as well do small one's since god only knows how often I'll update this as soon as school starts up again. Well off to the next one.

 

preparation

I've noticed in the past that when my winter break hits, I feel this momentary rush to work on my own art outside of school. The problem with this though is that I tend to put this expectation on myself to turn out a bunch of work which is honestly not a whole lot of time. I end up rushing into work and I rarely ever like the results. This time I've decided to do small studies and sketches to help flesh out ideas more thorough. I've sketched out a few ideas this week that could end up either being paintings or large scale ink drawings. Just today I completed this small study in my sketchbook.

I normally hate self portraits but I found this one kinda interesting. I ended up inking this one as well.

 In retrospect, I think the drawing looked better. I might do a similar portrait of someone else since I do like the concept Ive been developing in the last year or so. I'd like to continue to do more small studies such as this and possibly try to start a larger project before the the next semester starts. Well, I'm off to the 100 Grand Show. Hopefully I'll feel inspired afterward.

Ugh!

Since I'm preparing to publish my new website, I thought this would be a good time to update my poor neglected blog. The semester is wrapping up so it gives me some time to reflect on the semester. For a variety of reasons, this has been a very frustrating semester on an artistic level. It started off pretty good that culminated is this painting:

    This was a small painting that did as a commission for my old friends back In Jackson. I consider this one of my best paintings I have completed so far. Everything kinda went downhill from there.
    One of my goals this semester was to really push myself creatively. Take myself out of my comfort zone so to speak. Despite completing this goal, It really didn't leave me with much work to put in my portfolio. Experimenting with skin tones proved to be rather difficult for me as they became either too muddy or too chalky. Still not quite sure how I'm going to approach it in future paintings but I'm starting to develop a better color sense.
    I also began to do life painting which I had never done up until that point. It took some getting used to but I started to see some results by the end the semester. Here are some of the better ones taken with my crappy cellphone camera:

Despite what I consider many failures this semester, I did learn a lot of what to do and more importantly, what not to do. Because of this, I think I set myself up pretty nicely for my next semester. As soon as break starts, I'll probably do some small color studies to see what happens and hopefully complete my website I previously mentioned. Hopefully this we be the first in series of consistent blog updates....we'll see.

Taking a Break to Ink

My current painting I'm currently working on is moving along but I decided to take a break for a few days. Though I will continue to paint, ink drawings is still something I wish to pursue. Before I even started the aforementioned painting, I inked this drawing.

I tried a couple different methods while inking this and consequently, this didn't turn out quite as satisfying as I had hoped. The good thing that came out of this is that I tried to narrow down the type of methods I use to to ink a drawing. I've never enjoyed rendering all too well so inking is something I enjoy very much. I did a second one soon after.

  

I was slightly happier with this one. The detail in the dress was not working so I followed the "Frank Miller" motto of "if it's giving you trouble, cover it in black". The following drawing was done a couple days ago.

I liked how this turned out and even attempted to to color this in photoshop today. The fact that I'm showing you the ink drawing should tell you how that went, though it was my first attempt at digital coloring so I will be trying again in the future. On that note, I will probably resume my painting next time I hit the studio so hopefully my next post will include that.

The Benefits of Working

It's been nearly a month since the end of the semester and started working full time again and I'm already starting to feel exhausted. As previously stated, I feel very fortunate and grateful to have a job, but since I switched to working first shift, my body clock hasn't exactly "synched" up so to speak. This has resulted in a lack of sleep most nights. As a consequence, I haven't been able to make it to the studio this week at all to work on my current painting. To be quite honest, the current update of my blog is basically me trying to feel like I accomplished something today (well I woke up about an hour ago so technically I didn't get anything done yesterday). Hopefully, when I eventually wake up tomorrow( today?) I'll manage to get down to the studio. It's obvious that I need to develop some new habit in my schedule.

While at work today, My manager had inquired me about doing some labels for some beer he is currently brewing. He gave me a very broad outline in what he was looking for and I decided I'm going to take a crack at it. If i get a chance, I think i might try to go digital with it. I've been looking for an excuse to go down to Kendall and try out their new touch screen tablets so this might be a good exercise to experiment with that. It's been a while since I've used illustrator so I don't imagine this will come natural but I need to start somewhere.

I'll leave this with another excerpt of my essay "Perspectives of motivation" (please ignore the incited sources, I'm very terrible that).


What is art? Such a broad question about an undefined thing has invoked multiple theories and responses and always will. Illustration along with work considered "abstract" are commonly argued as being defined as "art". In it's most simplified form, illustration has been associated with works that are generally created with an intended purpose or direction such as articles or stories etc… Fine art on the other hand has been associated with aesthetics or concepts and is often synonymous with gallery work. However, in more recent years, the dividing line between fine art and illustration has begun to blur as successful illustrates have gone on to have successful fine art careers and vice versa. Despite the cross over appeal, there are still many similarities between the two from the start. Stylistically, illustrators and fine artists have shared many qualities in their work as fine artist are commonly drawing influence from illustrators and vice versa. Documented in the online blog Illustration Art, David Apatoff has written extensively about the technical similarities shared by illustrators and fine artists such as Bernie Fuchs, Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kline (Apatoff 06).