Tuesday Night Dancing

Here are just a few quick sketches from this week

Happy Mother's Day! (a little late)

 

Here is a digital painting I made for my Mom for Mother's Day 2011.  It wasn't completed by Mother's Day, but I sent her a work in progress!  She likes when I paint flowers for her, and I don't usually paint flowers... so I  figured this would be a good thing to do! 

Artist of the Week : 9) Carter Goodrich

Carter Goodrich is an illustrator, with his work appearing in books and on magazines, as well as a character designer for animated films.  Goodrich's designs have appeared in Open Season, Finding Nemo, and Despicable Me on which he was the lead character designer.   I love the textured values in his pencil drawings and illustrations.  His characters are overflowing with personality and attitude.  In the case of Despicable Me, I didn't really appreciate the character designs (outside of Gru) until I saw his sketches. 

Artist of the Week : 8) Edmund Dulac

This week's artist is the French illustrator Edmund Dulac.  He illustrated many classic fairy tales and stories for books and other publications.  His paintings, mostly watercolor, appear largely as wide shots with the figures in full body.  The moody images are very colorful, although muted, and rich with texture.  These are definitely what come to mind when you think of classic illustration. 

Warm Up Drawings

     Here are just a few warm up drawings that I did.  I recently started doing P90X... well so far I did about two days of it over about a week  (a few of those days were spent walking around bent over in pain).  Nevertheless, I found a great other use for the workout DVDs - FIGURE DRAWING!

 

Artist of the Week : 7) Peter De Sève

Peter De Sève is an American illustrator and character designer.  His illustration work appears in many publications including The New Yorker and his character designs have appeared in Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, and the Ice Age films, among others.  His most recognizable character is the neurotic slap-stick "Scrat" from Ice Age, one of the most memorable characters in an animated film. 

His work is so fun to look at, his drawing style is very appealing and the characters are full of life.  His work is bursting with story and expression.

www.peterdeseve.com

Artist of the Week : 6) Honoré Daumier

Honoré  Daumier (am I pronouncing that correctly?) was a 19th century French lithographer, painter, caricaturist, and sculptor.  He lampooned political leaders and sympathized with the common man, fighting for social justice.  His work was appreciated by fellow artists, but began to gain much popular success only a year before his death.  His painting style is impressionistic, even inspiring Manet and Monet.   

What I take away from Daumier's work is how he used his work to say something.  It was not merely pretty pictures, but commentary on life and fighting for change.

Monk's Restaurant / Work in Progress

 

This is a sort of work in progress, more of a color study and/or under-painting.  I haven't decided how far I'll take it, but here's what I've got so far.

Running Boy

 

I was playing around with the technique of painting textures over masks in Photoshop.   I was also trying to let the shapes mostly define themselves without much added contour line work.   

 process borrowed from here:

http://theartcenter.blogspot.com/2011/03/wouter-tulp-shapes-and-textures.html

quick sketch / Moleskin Sketchbook

Artist of the Week : 5) Miguel Covarrubias

Miguel Covarrubias was born in Mexico City in 1904, and was already an established artist by the age of 19 when moved to New York City.  He was a painter, caricaturist, and anthropologist (among many other things) with his work appearing in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.  

It is fascinating to note how his stylized line work served as an inspiration to Al Hirschfeld. 

Stagecoach / Moleskin Sketchbook

In preparation to go see "Rango" (ILM's animated Johnny Depp as a lizard western), I decided to watch John Ford's classic 1939 "Stagecoach" starring John Wayne as "Ringo".  Here are some quick sketches I did while watching the movie. 

eyes on the road!

Artist of the Week : 4) Mary Blair

I love Mary Blair  (well, who doesn't?) 

For a long time in their history, the Walt Disney Company was not known for employing female artists in major creative roles.  That probably goes for much of Hollywood in that time, but nevertheless is true at Disney's.  They had female artists inking and painting, but you never hear of women in the animation department or key development roles.  The major exception to that was Mary Blair.  Mary worked for Disney starting in 1940 and created stunning artwork for such films as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Cinderella, and later designed the "It's A Small World" attraction. 

Mary Blair's dynamic compostions, bold use of color, charming shaping, and painting style make her work instantly recognizable.  It is some of the most unique and appealing in Disney history.  Her work is cheerful and playful, yet elegant and sophisticated.  I'd rather look at her paintings for an hour and a half than actually watch Alice in Wonderland. 

"Slim Jim" Stylus

...or how I learned to stop worrying and rub a greasy meat stick all over my beautiful iphone.

"This WAS His First Rodeo"

I recently got my new Verizon iphone 4 and have been playing around with the app "Brushes" to make digital finger paintings. The unfortunate thing is that the iphone only responds to the touch of your finger, which I'm not accustomed to drawing with, it doesn't respond to other normal objects. You can buy a stylus to draw with, but my friend Fred informed me that the iphone also will respond to a Slim Jim. That's right, the one-of-a-kind snack with the intense flavor and snap that consumers love. So here are the results of my Slim Jim painting experiment.

The Beast was one of my first attempts with "Brushes" and the Slim Jim. I drew something familiar so I could focus on figuring out the program and get used to using the Slim Jim, without having to think much about what I was actually drawing.

"Beast a la Viande"