Circus Art Show

Recently some friends and I were in an art show in downtown San Diego. It was a circus theme. We met and saw some live painters at the show, had a couple free drinks and got to see some cool art. Good times!

Random/Recent

The top image is a portrait I drew of my grandma from her high school days. It was an exercise for me to see how close I could get a drawing to look like a photo. It's funny, I don't see  what's off in a drawing until I scan it and put it on the computer. For the most part I'm happy with how it turned out and look forward to doing some more drawings from photos.

The middle drawing is of the Disney Pixar character, Wall-E. I used colored pencil and marker for this peice. It's for a co-worker that's going to give it to her grandson for Christmas.

Finally, the last drawing is a mild caricature of another one of my co-workers. It was supposed to be a warm up drawing but I was having fun with it and took it a little further. 

Twilight Drawings

A couple weeks ago I went and saw Twilight on opening night at the theatre. My friend told me it was a movie about Vampires and love... so I'm thinking, "cool, I really liked the Underworld movies, this could be good." I didn't realize what I got myself into till seeing about 50 high school girls lined up waiting to see the movie. Anyways, I thought it was kind of funny that one of the vampires falls in love with a high school girl, considering he's lived to pass several generations. What a loser. 

Figure Studies

Pretty sure it was comic books that really got me inspired to draw more and the human figure has always been a favorite of mine. Especially, drawing Spider-Man and Venom. They're fun to draw doing these crazy acrobatic/dynamic moves, and Venom's just fun to draw as a bodybuilder on steroids that slobbers everywhere. 

These studies were to test my knowledge of anatomy and see where the week points are. I'm still learning about the lower torso so that's why there's a lack of construction there. The perspective in the ground plain is a little off too. All in all, these were fun mini puzzles to fit and piece together. 

Figure Study

In my quest to become a better quick sketch artist, I've started drawing figures from photographs. I'm also doing this to learn how to see value and render the figure. These are drawn with charcoal pencil on newsprint paper. Each figure took about 4-5 hours. 

For this caricature of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I used the same procedure from life drawing classes. It's kind of like a 1,2,3 step process that helps create a strong foundation for the drawing. I've learned this creative process while taking art classes at Studio 2nd Street

Hope you guys enjoy!

Tommy Lee Jones Caricature

My friend showed me this site called drawingboard.org. It's a giant forum and I checked out the caricature section. The artists were posting their versions of Tommy Lee Jones so I decided to take a crack at it.

Purgatory Sketch Club

A group of artists and I started a blog (Purgatory Sketch Club) where we do these "challenges" every month. The challenges range from Cowboys and Indians to 80's cartoon characters. It's a fun way to get each other motivated and create new art. 

These are some of the images I've created for the blog challenges. The top image is a group of guys in line at a comic convention. The middle image is the Transformer known as Starscreem. The bottom image is an Orc, ready to lead his army to battle. 

The challenges are fun because they're usually something you wouldn't draw. It pushes you to explore more with your art. It also helps you create work for a portfolio if ever needed.

T-Shirt Designs

These were a few t-shirt designs I did for a rugby company. The lady I worked with would give me these slogans she wanted on the shirt and the rest was up to me to figure out. It was a fun side project because I got to put my anatomy class work to practice. 

Head Studies

Since moving to California, which has been about 9 months now, I've been studying portraiture. The bottom two newsprint drawings were done in 2 hours with instruction from my teacher. I'm still learning the different planes of the face but the latest challenge has become rendering with charcoal. The top drawing are studies of women from a magazine. Influenced by J. Scott Campbell and Tom Richmond, I've always admired how these artists can make women look sexy. This was my shot at it, taking a little bit from what I know along with their expertise. 

Spider-Man / Gambit

The Spider-Man drawing was inked back in March and I decided to color it now that I have my NEW COMPUTER! To keep with the comic book theme, the bottom drawings are of my favorite X-Man inspired by Kenny Parks. Enjoy!

Live Caricatures

These drawings are from last week at Legoland. I carried a camera with me for most of the time taking pictures of my drawings though out the day. The goal was to take the good/bad/and the ugly so that I could look at them at home and find areas of improvement in the drawings. These were some of my favorites. 

Lately I've been averaging 1 - 2 "reject" drawings a week. Usually the only problems I have are with young - teenage girls and their mothers. I did have a father get bent out of shape a couple weeks ago, that was a first. Usually though, I never get rejects (that I know about) and what's weird to me is, I don't think my "live caricature" style is that exaggerated. If any thing (and I'm not crazy about this) but my drawings seam to lean more towards being "cute." At least that's what the customers say. The park that I draw at (Legoland California Resort) is geared towards kids and parents so I can image most people getting a caricature aren't looking for exaggeration as much as a good likeness. Actually, it seams like people are more interested in the body we give their faces to go with the picture (ex. Jedi, Princess, Fairy, Power Ranger, etc.)

Selling retail caricature has definitely given me thicker skin about my art. My first year drawing caricatures, if I got a reject drawing, it crushed me on the inside. Now a days, if I know the likeness is a good one in the drawing and the customer hates it, it's no big deal. In fact, I like playing the "I'm a starving artist" card and let them know that this comes out of my pay check if they don't buy it. And truthfully, it kind of does. 

To end this post, I will say that it's an adrenaline rush when you're drawing someone and you have a good hunch that the person you're drawing won't be ready for the truth when you give it to them. It's even more fun though when you show the person your drawing and they love it! Can't describe the feeling much more than a natural high and that's something I want to push more towards these next couple months at the park.

Side Tracked

Bet you can't guess who my favorite super-hero is? I got inspired to do this one after looking at Sean Galloway's work the other night and colored it before work the next day.