tribute

For all the many things to which I could pay tribute to my brother, Tag, I choose to recognize one thing that sets him apart from everyone else in the entire world.  Since it's inception, there has only been one individual who had the courage to be an open follower of my art blog.  Now I know there are a handful of you that secretly take a glance here and there, and I appreciate your visit, I do.  But according to my secret blog statistics, my brother stands alone as my 1 follower.  I salute you Taggart Giles.

As a token of my esteemed gratitude I post a rough sketch depicting your majesty.

Some of you may be wondering why the above image is merely a low resolution photo of the sketch taken with a camera phone.  Well my friends, I still have not developed the habit to save my work as I go and my computer loves to freeze on me when I least suspect it.  This is not the first time this has happened, and I suspect it won't be the last.  Does anyone know if Photoshop has an autosave feature?

So in conclusion... I'm a doofus.

beleza pura!

Assignment:  compose a figure drawing of at least three human figures in some sort of environment

I went the extra mile.  Mine has FOUR.  (the other two are back in the trees)

first fruits

In it's most crudely primitive form, I present to you my first animation.
So far, everyone who has seen this asks me if the sandbag is a pig... and no one has yet asked me if it is a sandbag.  It is a sandbag.  Not a pig.  Just a regular bag of sand.  A bag with sand in it.

an intricate orange peel

By popular demand I am about to reveal the story behind my header.  I'll warn you now that intrigue and drama abound in the following story and you may be wise to take a few breaths before continuing.  You may even want to dim the lights and hold hands with someone you love.  If by the end of this story you haven't altered your perception of the world and felt compelled to adopt a child or a highway or something noble like that, then consider yourself in a state of numbnity.  Yes, numbnity.

Now that I've talked this thing up, prepare to be let down.

The idea for the design came like any other solid idea:  absolutely out of nowhere.  It was initially to fulfill an assignment for class where I had to demonstrate continuity or something like that.  So I came up with the idea of a puzzley sphere.  I started by making three stencils that all fit inside of each other in a 3d spherical sort of way.  Only one of the stencils has since survived.

Next I traced them onto card stock and painted the individual shapes.  This is the how the assignment looked that I turned in.  I probably got like a moderately low to high A for a grade.

The next step was to quickly teach my self a program called Adobe Illustrator.  I took the above photo and traced it in said software and finished it off by adding a few gradients here and there and creating a nice blue smokey atmosphere in Photoshop.
I'm pretty sure there was one point during this whole process where I thought it would be neat to peel an orange like this.  Maybe I'll do that some day when I'm old and I can only eat oranges.

And here's a quick animated video I made that illustrates how the pieces fit together.  For some reason it only lets me play it twice and then it gets all confused and disoriented.  Maybe you'll have better luck on your computers.

Well, they almost fit together.  You get the point.
So, that's all.  I hope you had fun.  I did.

unrelated fact:  saw Inception.  Nolan totally nailed it.  A fine job, Nolan.  A fine job indeed.

trees, wrinkles, and a service offering

Here are some old relics from my photoshop archives.  Just doodles really.  But since I haven't been posting as often as some people would like, I guess you'll just have to get the mediocre art from yester-year.

Here is a handful of trees.  You may ask, "Red. Why red?"  Well, chlorophyll is the substance in plants that makes them green through the process of photosynthesis, I think.  But not all chlorophyll is green.  Some types of chlorophyll are more resilient to the cold so they last right on into the fall season.  These types are usually red, or yellow.  Of course, none of that had anything to do with why I made the trees red.  I just thought it looked neat.

Next here we have a wrinkled cloth of sorts.  I've never been too great at drawing drapery, so this was kind of a practice study in wrinkled linen.  You might say I tried to give it a spooky kind of feel by having some sort of creature pushing his way into the cloth.  And of course you might not say that.  Either way, I don't really expect you to say anything.  But that doesn't mean I don't encourage comments/ovations when you're done viewing.

To conclude, I've decided with some trepidation (but with a gentle nudge from family) to put more confidence in my art and try to make some money.  With the rising cost of diapers (because of the energy crisis, I think), my wife and I realized we're not that well off.  So, since some of you have inquired about soliciting my services for portrait paintings and such, I am pleased to announce that I'm now open for business.
Also, if any of you need illustrations or animations to help market your own business, I do that as well.  And furthermore, If anyone knows of a growing company that's looking for a full-time illustrator/beginning animator that doesn't involve being bitten, sworn at, and hated (my current job) I am ALL EARS!!!
Happy Independence Day!

now for some acrylic paint

The last time I had a chance to mess around with actual paint was in high school and that didn't go any farther than some drain pipes and four faceless portraits of the band Weezer.  After that I thought I'd finished on a pretty high note.

Since I've started up school again, I've been compelled to try again.  I have to admit that I forgot how fun it was.

The following are various assignments.  I'll walk you through each one.  

Please step into my gallery and follow me.  Don't touch!

These are a handful of 8x8 paintings meant to illustrate various color harmonies

Monochromatic

Analogous

Triadic (tertiary colors)

Triadic (primary colors)

Here we have a copy I did of another painting.  You can see the original (obviously better one) at the Hope Gallery in Orem, Ut.

And finally, this is a study in value depicting a screenshot from the movie There Will Be Blood.

His name is Daniel Plainview.

Well folks, thanks for stopping by.  Sorry for wasting your time.  I can only validate if you purchase something from the gift shop.

Stay tuned for some of my first animation projects.

It Only Ends Once...

Anyone who has checked out my facebook interests would know that I only claim to like two television shows:  LOST and Wishbone.  I'll pay my respects to Wishbone at a later date.  For now my thoughts are on LOST.

I feel sorry for the infidels who gave up on the show when it started getting challenging.  I don't pretend to defend its flawlessness, but it has spoken to my inner-me so many times that I feel I owe it some sort of solemn allegiance.

This Sunday is the two and a half hour finale to conclude six seasons, which will be preceded by a two hour series recap and followed by a one hour after party event.  Suffice it to say, my night is booked.

So I present to you, for your criticism, a painting done of the most intriguing antagonist in television history.

Benjamin Linus, also briefly known as Henry Gale.

primogenito

Christmas gifting is so much easier when you have a knack for art.  It's cheaper and it means a lot more.  This past holiday season, I made a few digital portrait paintings of "first born" children in my family.

Lily is the first born child of my brother Tag and his wife Tracy (family blog).  She was the guinea pig of this little series of projects.  It's one thing to mess around with art in the privacy of your own home, and it's another thing completely to try finishing something that needs to be somewhat presentable to others.

Next up is Charlie.  He is the first of my sister Shelly and her husband Dave (family blog).  He came a little bit easier after everything I learned from painting Lily.  I wasn't quite sure how to do the background.  I kind of faked my way through that.  I probably should have looked at some reference paintings to get a feel for it. 

And last was my sister Shelly who is the oldest of us three, presented as a gift to my mom.  

I completed these in mid-December and looking at them now I can already see tons of things I would have altered or done differently if I would have spent a little more time. They all could probably do for a few more hours of touch work and a quick cleaning of a few edges.  The recipients, however, were very grateful.  

And speaking of primogenitors, I mustered up one of my own this weekend.

Clara Giles, my new best friend and daughter.

a fellow "tom"

The following individual was drawn just as soon as I received my refurbished wacom drawing tablet in the mail.  Mine is a more primitive model, but boy is it different than drawing with a mouse. This man is an actor named Tom Wilkinson.  It's easier to draw well known faces, cause you get a better idea if you captured the likeness or not.  You might remember Tom from Batman Begins or maybe if you caught Valkyrie.  He was nominated for best supporting actor for his role in Michael Clayton, which I was totally floored by (or 'by which I was totally floored').

In the process of sketching out his face, the computer froze up on me.  This was before I was in the habit of saving my work as I go. The whole thing would have been lost, however, turns out I'm crafty. I took a picture of the sketch on the frozen screen with my nifty camera phone, reset the computer, then re-uploaded it back into photoshop via advanced bluetooth technology.

After a few filtering tricks and some slight un-skewing of the image, I was back in business, sort of.
Then I decided to ruin the drawing by trying my hand at painting it.
It turned out kind of flat and waxy looking.  I think I like the un-painted drawing better.

handful of aimless gnomes

Some time ago back in December of '08 I received an email from my mother which included an intricate plot to take over the world. This plot involved writing a book about a gnome. And since she didn't want to share the weight of such accountability, I was invited to do the illustrations.

Well, back in December of '08 I was still convinced that my art career was just the ideation of an oblivious, day-dreaming adolescent. So I have my mother to partially thank for giving me a reason to rekindle my childhood aspirations.

The progress of this book is only known by Marilyn, but I was able to widdle up a few simple ideas for gnomes just to help subdue my thoughts that this book might not ever even happen.

Here they are in order of genesis.

They author has already chosen her favorite but if you'd like to make suggestions to sway her one way or the other, you may visit her blog.