A Fisherman's Shirt Design

A friend of mine came to me asking for an image of a halibut's tail for a shirt he wanted to make.  The markings on the tail of a halibut are unique, so this would be the tail of the largest fish he and his crew caught last season.  I painted up the tail, boat, and water in Gimp and he took it, added the words and the fishing grounds background.  I'm super happy with the way it turned out.  I think he did an awesome job.

It was a lot of fun painting the tail and the boat.  My friend provided me with a ton of reference photos so the actual image was a breeze to make.

Unloading my Sketchbook

In the last few months, I haven't had time to do much other than quick sketches in the book I carry with me.  Things have been busy and in my free time I was working on a concept piece for a friend's short movie idea.  The following drawings are from life, from the show Mad Men, hand studies from a children's book, and people at the airport while waiting for a flight.

Enjoy!

Los Angeles

John Hiatt Caricature

My wife got me into John Hiatt music a few years ago.  While listening to "The Tiki Bar is Open" recently I was inspired to create a caricature.  I'm very happy with the way it turned out especially considering that I've been wanting to be able to pull off this style for a long time now.  I drew and shaded a black-and-white verion in pencil first, scanned it, then colored it in Photoshop.  (Without a cintiq, I have found that this pencil-first method is the most efficient for now.)

Enjoy!

And the pencil version:

Some Tiny Orcs

This is the beginning of what I hope ends up being a larger series.  I started it for the Tiny Pleasures competition over at theartorder.com.  Each painting is acrylic on a 3"x3" stretched canvas.  I'm having a lot of fun with them and learning a lot about value and hue (as well as how to use acrylics).  The biggest thing I've discovered is that the portrait can be pretty much done, but if the background color isn't right (with these, a heavy contrast with a desaturated complimentary color) the portrait doesn't look three-dimensional.  Once the background color is right the face really "pops."

I've also discovered (once again) how difficult it is to take a picture/scan a painting so that on the screen they look like they do on my desk.  So far I've had the most luck by taking a hi-res photo and adjusting the contrast and playing with some light filters in photoshop.  When I scan them, the scanning light reflects off of every bump of paint, whereas I can use indirect light when I'm taking a photo so that the painting isn't covered by hundreds of tiny points of light.

Stuff From the Sketchbook

A collection of sketches mostly done this last week.

It seems that I see this stereotype a lot in LA.  I always figure he's walking his girl's dog.

 Went to the LA zoo last weekend.

 More inking practice.

I decided to try drawing in a different style than I'm used to in order to broaden my practice.  I used reference, but only as a starting point, the poses are much more exaggerated than what I was looking at, the clothes even are different.

They still feel a little stiff to me, so I'm going to keep working on this to try to get even looser and break away from the model even more.

Life Sketches

This weekend I sat at an outdoor plaza and sketched people walking by.

 I decided to paint some up on my iPhone using Sketchclub.  I used a new brush and tried out a new style.

Another iPhone Girl

I didn't have a lot of free time this week, so I just decided to draw only one girl on the iPhone but to put as much detail in it as I could throughout the week.  This is the result of drawing in 5-10 minute bursts whenever I got the chance.  I'm pretty happy with it.

Christmas Break Art Dump -- An iPhone Extravaganza

These are the drawings I did over Christmas vacation.  All of them, except for the first one, were drawn on my iPhone using Sketchclub.

The last drawing of 2013 was done just an hour or so before midnight.

(I think he's the year 2013 on his way out.)

Drew a couple of girls on my iPhone.

 Saw this guy drawing at coffee shop, so I drew him!  On my iPhone!

I was in Alberta, Canada for Christmas and it snowed like nobody's business!  On one of the days that we were stuck inside (because the roads were so bad) I drew this snow ninja.  I imagine he could travel no matter what the road conditions.  I drew him in pencil and ink first and then colored him on my iPhone.

During a particularly thick day, I took this picture and added the robot in Sketchclub.  The concept was inspired by Simon Stålenhag's sci-fi art.