Plants and Animals

More sketches and painting! The pencil drawings/half-watercolored sheets are all studies that I did at Lincoln Park Zoo of some of the animals. Man! It is so tough to draw these guys while they're all moving around, especially the monkeys and the birds because they keep jumping and flying around all over the place (the monkeys don't fly... they don't have that sort of species at the zoo). I can't remember what the name of that plant is, but that painting is from the Garfield Park Conservatory, which is absolutely gorgeous inside. Drawing plants is pretty easy compared to the animals, but you still have to get in just as much detail and form.

This is only a test!

If you are seeing this post, then congratulations. You're either reading this on Blogger or Livejournal (or Tumblr... or Facebook!)! Here is a picture of a puppy as your reward (if this works, anyway!).

EDIT: It actually didn't work. Darn. Oh well. You can keep the puppy, anyway!

BFA Show Photos

Today is the last day of my BFA Show. I'm so happy that it went well and I received some great, constructive feedback on my work. Here are some photos from the exhibition and some pictures of the prints I exhibited.

Lady Amherst's Pheasant

I still have to finish it, but here's the beginnings of a beautiful pheasant painting. His little head cape totally makes me think of an Egyptian pharaoh or god. Perhaps he is one of their incarnations. If you ever see one unleashing curses and scarabs, report it!

Happy November! Figure Drawing + A Beautiful Raptor

It's November! Hooray! These figure drawings that I chose to show are actually from last month, but of course... it's still cool to show them! I mean, there's no law against posting pictures from October in November. Psh.

And here's a color/inking guide that I made for the animation that I'm making. I might mess around with his coloring a little more... but you never know! The little guy may just turn out to be deliciously green forever.

Also, have this quick little doodle I did... just 'cause.

Undergrad Exhibition + Other Fun!

First order of business (which I will probably repeat again somewhere else like Facebook or via a bullhorn on a busy Chicago intersection): if you are in the Chicago area, why not take a trip downtown to my BFA show? The SAIC Fall Undergraduate Exhibition runs from October 30th to November 20th, from 11am to 6pm Tuesday through Saturday at the Sullivan Galleries right in the heart of the Chicago loop. Like you've probably read in these past blog entries, I'm showing three of my digital prints. They're so super awesome. You should go see them in person!

Second order of business... things I have been doing other than the BFA stuff! Here are some simple animation backgrounds that may or may not be complete due to me being fickle and wondering whether or not I should add some more details.

Painting "Did"

I'm putting the final touches on my last piece for my BFA entitled "Did". It's a sort of artistic representation of (or, uh, just an attempt to represent) dissociative identity disorder and, at the same time, represent multiple identities that everyone accumulates for their every day lives. All of the mask pieces touch this subject in some way or another, and this one just happens to show another danger to not being true to oneself: being bombarded with so many personalities and false representational images that one can't keep track of.

I really love this one, though. I really do. I don't like working large... I really like keeping my drawings very tiny and detailed. When I work big I feel like I loose the ability to make everything tight and crisp and perfect and sometimes end up losing track of the big picture because I'm always catering to the tiny little details in sections. With something like this (this picture is around 11x14, I believe...) I can focus on the whole thing but still be able to work on it in sections and make something that I feel a lot closer to. And... oh, man, I love the texture. It just makes the mood of the picture, it really does.