letting color in

week - 8 Greece

perspectivish

week 6 - Midterm. We got a week to rework and continue to push 3 pieces of our choice, so essentially nothing new.

week 7 - Egypt

4 more [fo'-mo']

the theme for the last 2 weeks was Noahs Ark again

week 4





week 5

Perspectivities

week 2 - Geisha





week 3 - Noah's Ark
(Definitely bit off more than I could chew in a week's time, and had to cut some ideas short. Should'a seen it coming though, the subject matter is of biblical proportions)





week 4 already in progress...

another 100 days and nights of learning rain begins

This semester one of my classes is going to require 2 or 3 really good drawings every week. Which is so far a shock to my system, cause I'm slow and in classes prior we've had 3 weeks to deliver a fully painted illustration. It's not going to be an impossible amount of work, just a whole lot.

Also this weeks theme was Samurai.

finally got away from painter

After finishing up some last minute color beat boards for A Cup of Orange and finalizing some personal digital paintings, I managed to sit at my desk for a few days and not get sucked into spending the day in Corel Painter.

Instead I began exploring Adobe Illustrator and a few days checking in again with my analogue paint skills with some still life painting.


These were both made using the automated functions Illustrator. The top one is directly converted from a photograph (photo of a painting), the bottom one was assembled from a painted sketch that I worked up in layers to facilitate conversion into vectors. I'm not really happy with the results, but this was a valuable exercise in getting to explore Illustrators various tools, drop-down menus, and mode of thinking.


Still-ill-life, Acrylic on top of and intermingled with Colored Pencil. Thank the maker for Matte Medium.

Visual Development for "A Cup of Orange"

I didn't take any classes this summer but I still felt the crunch of finals.
The thesis I was helping develop the environment and props for earlier in the summer, and last semester, changed from chase scene to tea party at the beginning of the summer semester...

...We began by exploring a few dozen silhouettes of teapots, teacups, tables, and chairs...


...from there some shots of the scene...



...then I worked up an establishing shot, to test out color schemes...


...then a big one with everything dialed in.

camping

Watercolor & Colored Pencil
This was the scenery inside of Goblin Valley. I began this one on site, but ended up setting up in a windy spot and got sand in my hair, my eyes, the water bucket, the brushes, the paints, and on the painting. I had to finish it off at home from a photo.



Watercolor & Colored Pencil (from photo)
This was part of the view from the campsite, just out side of Goblin Valley State Park. Gotta love BLM land, we didn't see a soul until we went into the park.

All in all camping was great, and it was good to get in what relaxing I could. The painter in me was overwhelmed by the colors cause everything here in the city has grey mixed into it most of the time.

digi paint, and a coupla days.

digi eye study

feels like that digital class is starting to sink in

Also, incase you were wondering

I ball parked the number of tries this last year, from mid summer'09 --> the end of spring'10 semester, to somewhere between 700 and 900. (depending on how you count those sketchbook pages full of thumbnails)

And if I also include the last 3 years efforts I'd say modestly I'm around 2500 tries total, cause the first few years didn't demand the same volume of work. So if I can pick up the pace and try to get in around a 1000 a year I'll be at 10,000 by 2017. Which is also when I'll be re-naming this blog "Do or Do not..."

back on the horse

Been keeping busy letting the semester really sink in and trying to relax, which is not my strong suit.


micron pen and digital watercolor


1hr digital shadow study

I've also been doing some work on a collaborative project from school, here are some of many sketches. Hope he doesn't mind me posting them here.

Heads & Hands 2

From beginning to end this class pretty much went like this...

Charcoal Connie in 40 min



Pastel warmups



Pastel classwork




Acrylic classwork



Acrylic & Colored Pencil Final



Exposure to still more media through this course was intimidating and enlightening. Pastels gave me unexpected insight into painting in general and am looking forward to more rematches in the near future. Also, Rob Revels is an awesome instructor.

I dug this out of the stacks while putting together my final portfolio, 10 minute head homework from earlier in the semester. Kinda makes me laugh.

Pastel for Heads and Hands 2

Landscape for Ill3

Some goodies from chucks clothed figure 3 class. All 20 minute drawings except the pirate with the chain, that one was 10.

Midpoint review

7 drawings from life (5-20 minutes a piece)
2 paintings to show color and paint application
5 completed illustrations
12 sketchbook pages
2 personal illustrations
aiming for childrens book illustration
and/or
visual development and concept art for games and movies

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andris_liepnieks/show

(i can't get the link to work in this post for whatever reason, sorry you'll have to copy and paste)
...
we'll see what the committee has to say.

digital paint?

the first assignment from illustration 3, the idea was to tell a story without people (that is to say tell a story with things instead) so here is a place where something happened. I'm not stoked on how it turned out but I am stoked on what I've learned about Corel Painter and bits of Photoshop. Hopefully the learning curve is similar to the other illustration classes and I'll have some work I'm happy with by the end of the semester. (note that the first assignments from the past classes haven't been posted)

Turning the linear circular

Purple is the simultaneous perception of blue and red electromagnetic radiation, not to be confused with Violet which is its own wavelength nearer to the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. Purple is in a way an illusion and it makes an unexpectedly useful circle (color wheel) out of our linear perceivable spectrum. If that's not an example of circular thinking synthesizing the macro and the micro, I don't know what is.

for the next 100 days and nights

Classes are back on and I'm not sure how much I'll be getting around to keeping up on this. I should have some good stuff to post from classes soon. But if I'm as busy as I was last semester, I probably wont have anything ready until after its all over. But I am getting a little better at managing my time so who knows. I probably won't be getting around to much more location painting, however that doesn't mean I won't be getting in the practice elsewhere. This couscous, for example, was malleable and delicious while warm.

bridge garden

this began as a color "rough" but as i realized classes start on monday and i probably won't have time to pick this up again for a more finished look, so i decided to see just how far i could push it yesterday and got in some pretty good brushstrokes in the foreground around the bridge/garden thing. took a second look this morning and after a few more touchups i scanned it and chopped it up and added the clouds. it could probably stand a few more trees also.

isometric explanation

hopefully this is a clearer description.
(the next task is figuring how this contraption sits atop a tower)
also
sent out some rough figures to the "lab" to calculate some estimates of forces involved. the numbers will give me a sense of if i'm even designing on the right scale.
like
how much horsepower can a single piston in a stationary steam engine produce and how does that relate to the torque down a series of gears?
and
how much how much energy is going to be needed to rotate a 5-10 ton disk around a centered pivot?
something tells me the stationary steam engine is going to need to be larger, but even a few horsepower could be all that is needed.
we'll see what the numbers say, when they come back.

telescope

i'm reading the Discoveres by Daniel J. Boorstin right now and it made me realize that telescopes are rad. this book is going to be awesome.