scratchboard illustration

Process for my scratchboard illustration dealing with gambling addiction. 

9.5x11.5"

I've pretty much memorized how to draw my friend, Kyle Katterjohn's face by now, but I asked him for reference anyway. This project was exciting because it allowed me to get my feet wet with scratchboard as a medium, and I found it much easier to invent most information. There are a lot of differing opinions when it comes to using reference--many condemn it, complaining it undermines the artist, while others are enthusiastic advocates, claiming the more available information, the better. Personally, I would like to  do be able to draw without it, I feel chained to the photograph when using it, and find drawing tends to be much more creative, expressive, and altogether more enjoyable when drawing from my head. However I find it easy to get frustrated with concepts like anatomy, shadow, and color without it--so for the time being I have been still bound to it. 

I hope that this illustration will prove to be a landmark in breaking away from this habit. Perhaps because this time around I was dealing with line and value monochromatically, but I found myself barely looking at the reference and focusing entirely on the illustration, inventing flying poker chips by the handfuls (about 9 poker chips will fit into one hand at a time). I felt I was using the reference as it is meant to be used, as a guide rather than a crutch. 

Bananas!

16x20" Oil on canvas

Architectural Salvage

I wish I had more to show you guys! This is the only remaining sketch from my night at Sarasota Salvage, (probably because it isn't very good) where eight other friends and I spent a few hours meandering through the venue's Salvaged Art gallery exhibition sketching, meeting people and giving away art while promoting the Illest of Illustration event tomorrow night.

The Salvage is somewhat of an antique shop filled with just about anything vintage you can think of, and  earlier tonight hosted a gallery exhibition featuring fine artists such as Steven Strenk and Mark Burdette who were asked to create pieces from salvaged material.

My role in this event was to let people know about the Illest of Illustration show at Ringling College (October 14th at 7:30 in the Exhibition Hall--be there or be square!) while sketching the event and getting to know both artists and patrons alike. 

The event provided a great opportunity not only to help with Illest but to also promote myself and get to know some names in the Sarasota art community. I met some great artists, gallery owners, and frame shop owners whose names I won't be quick to forget, as well as had some wonderful conversations with patrons and prominent figures in Ringling's faculty alike. 

Big thanks to Sishir Bommakanti and Scott Prather for organizing Illest's involvement in the show and making the event possible!

Watercolor Portraits

8.5x11" watercolor and gouache on illustration board

16x20" watercolor on illustration board

I have really been getting into watercolor recently. Doing landscapes and portraits alike. Here are two different approaches to the medium, one approached very tightly and stylized and the other approached loosely and quickly, but treating the palette more realistically. I enjoy working quickly and spontaneously, loading the brush thick with water and pigment and letting fly over the canvas, and this method of watercolor has been great in letting me do so--I'm excited to see what else I will be able to produce with more practice.

charcoal on newsprint

messing with Caran d'ache crayons on bogus recycled

friends

sketchbook

second commission

22x30" acrylic, colored pencil and pastel

Thanks so much Amanda and Jason!

first commission!

15x20", watercolor and pencil.

kent williams copy

in progress

kent williams copy in-progress. (acrylic)

i have a commission! my neighbors have asked me to do two pieces. a black and white photo of their family and then another color piece of their two sons. I'm thinking both will be something like 16x20 or 20x24. the black and white will be a combination of watercolor, charcoal, and ink (probably) and the color will be either pastel or acrylic. (or both)

these are a couple quick portrait studies in preparation for getting supplies tomorrow.

welp

right hand

left hand                          

thoughts on this: As a kid I was naturally ambidextrous, but as I grew up chose my right hand as my dominant one. The past year or so I've been trying to re-learn how to write with my left and do other things simply out of personal interest.

What is to be noted here is the vast improvement with my non-dominant hand. I approached drawing the same way--why was I more successful with one hand than the other? As a creative writer it's sometimes suggested you brainstorm using your non-dominant hand because it unlocks parts of the brain not generally used. As we learn more about something our brain creates shortcuts when repeating a task in order to be more efficient. The leap in quality from one hand to the other is suggestive of huge mental blocks when drawing. When learning to draw student's are generally referred to as 'learning to see'. Which I think is also a large implication of the struggle a person naturally has to overcome when drawing. 

The very fact that people have these mental blocks and have to remove themselves from seeing things only in symbolic representation (artist's often hear "you're drawing what you think it looks like, not what it is") is extremely interesting in itself. The very fact that this is even a struggle at all gives great inclination to the patterns of human nature. What mental blocks do I have when living my day to day life and not drawing? The fact that we can live so delusionally and simultaneously be so comfortably ignorant of this fact is sort of terrifying.

recent figure work

some of the last figures i'll do before the summer

2 minute gestures

30 minute portrait

1 hour hand study

45 minute full figure

progress

pen and ink hand studies for a homework assignment in figure class

my family is coming down to florida this weekend!

unfortunately instead of spending the weekend on the beach i will be working.

the amount of homework i have right now is astounding.

only a week until school ends

stress sets in.

year in review

academic works:

drawing with Matteo Caloiaro
(1st semester)

                                         

figure with Larry Forgard
(second semester)

    

artist trading cards from painting class with Dee Hood

(1st semester)

3D with John Williams

(second semester)

the above left sculpture got into the best of core!

observational color with Steven Strenk

(second semester)

intro to IL with Thom Casmer
(second semester)