A new direction! I've been messing with photoshop more and more lately, leaving Illustrator behind for now. I have learned a lot about details. and how to care less about them—that's much easier in photoshop. I found this one fun to paint! It's based on a rough concept described to me by my friend at work. He runs a tabletop game and wanted to introduce a crazy, horrifically mutated human. The idea is that a scientist has attempted to modify a programmed genetic virus to infect humans—the virus turns it's victims into bio-weapons; using the genes within the host to convert their bodies into a machine for destruction. In this poor guy's case: the teeth of his mandible have extended to cover most of his face in a protective mask, his tongue has erupted through his throat to extend to grotesque lengths with tendrils at the tip—I'm thinking it's a prehensile limb/poison strike weapon—anyway, his skin has dried, thickened, and hardened to function as a rudimentary armor, and lastly, his arm as bulked up, and the bones from radius & ulna to phalanges have elongated and fused together to form a bone sword. Terrible, but at the very least, this is the darkest and creepiest thing I have ever made, it is also the first thing I have ever painted this way. I didn't even know I was capable of it... I want to do more!

Hope

It's a working title... I know I have been gone for a long time, let's never speak of it again.

Furthermore...

Character sketch, nothing special.

Some head & skull studies

What I've been doing instead of drawing...

One Hundred

Eukaryotica

An idea for a potential piece... I'm dreaming them up faster than I can make them!

It's been a while, blogosphere. I've missed you and I'm sure The feeling's mutual. I've still been drawing just about every day but a lot of it is under NDA at present and can't be exuded into the internet; soon, but not yet.
In the meantime, I've basically fallen off the bandwagon... Only recently have I tried to clamor back on. And while it's a tremendous shame to me that my hundredth post has to express more excuses on my lack of work to show, I am nevertheless happy to offer you these two drawings of late.

Sketches

After recently looking at my old "Urbanites" Series, I saw a lot of weaknesses I hadn't noticed before. Most of them aren't emotive, they're a little stiff, while I like their 'designs' they lack luster and vivacity. With that in mind, I began drawing San Francisco people that I've seen in a sort of rebuttal to my urbanites series, while I regret not planning the compositions better to entirely fit on their pages I am still pretty happy with the way they came out. And as soon as my afterwork schedule has calmed down a bit I hope to render them either in Illustrator or Photoshop.

An actual Hipster

A new Urbanite based on my friend, Jose

I've also posted some recent life drawings. It's been a crazy past few weeks, I've been super busy outside of work, so I haven't had much time to actually draw or sketch. Hopefully that will change soon. But I should be back on some kind of reasonable schedule soon. Stay tuned!

Life drawing at work

More from the same pose

Seashore cliffs in Half Moon Bay

My company's owner speaking at a company event

Work Birthday Cards

So I'm a little too busy this week to scan/photograph any of my drawings but I recently rediscovered a bunch of old birthday card illustrations I made for my coworkers over the years at Crowdstar. some of them are pretty good, and I thought they ought to see the light of day again. What's nice is most of these are quickies. I had to do them fast (some of them probably had too much time spent on them) but for the most part, trying to find rapid, cheap solutions to things had really fun results! Enjoy, and hopefully more posts will come soon!

This happened on a company trip to Hawaii, those were the salad days.

It began when Barlow's wife got a hamster guinnea pig. Afterward he began receiving package after package of guinnea pig equipment at the office. I knew it was only a matter of time...

Erin likes batman... why I made him fat, the world will never know.

George Rodgers is our CD, sometimes I am certain I must seem like a derpy sheep with a wacom tablet to him.

King lowered his desk one day. the name low-rider stuck.

Tu Bui always raises an eyebrow at terrible puns

My friend Maggie tends to become overwhelmed by all things cute... overwhelmed to the point of evil! 

Bitter & Sweet

So I made these little dudes for a Valentines Day gift. The idea/theme is Bitter/Sweet and I thought it would be fun to embody that theme in the form of two little monsters. A Bitter one and a Sweet one... but both should be cute. So they are. Watercolor on Cold Press 8x8

Bitter

Sweet

What I've been up to Lately

So here are a bunch of the drawings I did last week, Most of them were in development for my valentine monsters. and most of them ended up being too pug-like. but I thought they were cute.

And here is an unrelated sketch of what I hope will be my next vector piece, a mermaid sitting on a rock. simple enough hopefully I would be able to do this one quickly too. I have a pretty good idea of how I want it to look.

Head & Heart

So! The show opening has come and gone. What a night! I had my first appearance in a San Francisco Gallery show and sold my piece on the opening night to boot. It was great to see such a wonderful turnout too, Mission Comics & Art was packed probably beyond capacity. I offer a sincere thank you to everyone who made it out to see the show. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to meet the individual who purchased my work. I was on my way back from a quick bite, but alas, I was too late. I would have loved to have thanked you and just spoken to you a little bit. But nevertheless, whoever you are, thank you for supporting my art! I hope you love this piece. To those of you who couldn't make it out, here's Head & Heart. Ironically, this piece was artistically, very difficult to make. It's been a particularly long time since I have done anything featuring a figure, let alone one a nude. It has also been ages since I have worked with Photoshop. At times working on this piece was exciting, uncertain and fun, while at other times, it tested me more than any of my illustrations in recent memory. But nonetheless, a great deal of care went into this one. I re-worked the lines of the body alone perhaps 4 times before I achieved a quality I liked. I even mapped out much of the cardiovascular system leading from the heart to the head with researched anatomical accuracy before later discarding most of it for clarity. But guess the work paid off because everyone out there seems to love it. Thank you to all my friends out there who were so encouraging to me when I was absolutely sure that I was making rubbish.

So the idea behind this piece is to represent (perhaps a bit too literally): The frustration that arises in us all when we suffer the inner conflict between our passionate and analytical selves. When we want something for the possibilities it contains but know that it could hurt us. It was, of course, originally inspired by love experienced by the weary. Yet, as I continued to work on the illustration, contemplation led me to add that such an angst could be produced by so much more in the human condition. The pursuit of art itself was, for me, a particularly salient example of such. I love to create things that stir me deeply, finding something within myself and thrusting it into the open, into some form everyone can see. And I simultaneously dread the potential for failure. Failure to succinctly, or even fully capture that which I want to convey, and failure to evoke the same sentiments in others. Exposing intimate sides of my mind to the world is difficult, things that may be profound to me can be trite or vapid to others. even if I portray it perfectly, which never happens. That constant friction between love and fear within me is aptly echoed in the subject matter of this piece. I guess that's all I have to say about this one for now. Thank you again to everyone who helped me make it to the versus show, and thank you again to the wonderful people who bought it on opening night! You've made me incredibly happy.

Versus Sketches

 So, exciting news! Come February 4th, I will be participating in my first Gallery Show! Random I know. I was invited by my amazing friend and the curator: The lovely Daisy Church. The theme of the show is Versus. and while I don't want to spoil anything, my piece will be Of Head and Heart Depicting a figure torn between the pull of her heart and the force of her will. I'll write more of what I'm talking about for the final piece but for now that's it. In the final illustration her heart and brain will emanate through her skin, radiantly glowing in contrasting colors. To emphasize the conflict, blood vessels shall ensnare the brain while nerves fetter the heart. I am trying to convey more subtle queues to echo the conflict to. As she is fighting the feelings of love internally so she is externally; one hand weakly veils one breast while the other is exposed. As the one hand holds the blanket feebly, the other forms a fist: palm pressed against the head in frustration.
 Because of the heavy anatomy in this piece, I spent some time this past week, doing studies of both brains and hearts for my sketching assignments. It was honestly a lot of fun, and also honestly, I hadn't planned on doing studies until I drew my first brain sans reference and realized how off it was. doing the reference studies actually helped a lot in my final drawing. Anyhow, Here are all of my sketches, and a life drawing from Bvrlingame to boot.
I feel a little better about the quality of this week's post. But I still feel like it is mostly sub-par stuff. I've been reading Mastery and The Perfect Bait simultaneously. they're good books so far and I know through a sort of osmosis that most of what they're positing is the best way to become a stronger artist. I am trying to embrace the advice as best I can, but by its very nature it will take time. I'm in this for the long haul. I really want to be the best artist I can be. Mastery, advises one to stop seeking the 'level-ups' in his quest for mastery; to learn to enjoy the plateaus, I am having the hardest time with that part. I want so dearly to see my work improve by just a modicum. But nevertheless I remain on my plateau. I'm starting to imagine that succeeding in loving the plateau will actually be my next "level-up" as it were. Regardless, I must continue. This piece will be certainly be a challenge for me, I must complete it by February first. I relish the challenge and I am eager to begin vectoring it. wish me luck!

Possibly final sketch before vector? I may still play with it

One of the process sketches, refining the pose

Brain studies

More Heart Studies

Heart Studies

A 20 min life drawing in Burlingame

This is your brain on no reference

Cross-section of a heart study