Buddha Lady

This is a class demo in progress. I plan on finishing it in black line soon. We were discussing Buddhism and I got the idea of a female Buddha type character so I came up with this image while drawing with students.

Demos from online character design

Hello there friends! It's been so busy I fell behind on everything once again including sharing some art with you. I had to travel and attend to various responsibilities and free time was at a premium. I was able to get back on track recently with some demonstrations I created for a couple of my online students. Here's a sample of the lessons I was parsing out.

This student was having problems getting started with their concepts utilizing the construction method I was teaching. So I went through the process to illustrate how to go about it.

Start with a foundation ...

Use the foundation to build out your design ...

Once your have your design established you can eliminate the foundation sketch. It did its job ...

Add some shadows from an overhead light source to help describe form ...

Another demo involved getting my student to break out creatively and really push the concept and the design. This is what they had to start ...

By creating a construction based foundation you can set up your approach ...

Push the foundation sketch and let the character emerge ...

Now that you've got the anatomy established it's time to explore clothing ...

Add a shadow level to enhance the dimensional form and you're in business ...

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to check in! It's always a pleasure coming here and posting art.

Yo-Yo Crash

Color tint and line

I drew these concept sketches in black line a few years ago when I was developing a project for a friend's newly formed game company. The project unfortunately never materialized. Recently I used some images for a lesson in tonally tinting hand drawn content with digital color during an online session.

A Happy Monster

Different kind of wizard

Hello there and I hope everything's great with you! It's nice to post some recent stuff. Going through a very busy period as of late but made some time to create mostly as a result of demos. One of my students came up with a suggestion that I draw a wizard pig character so I created this rotation during a session in character design.

Later on in subsequent sessions I took the idea a step further with straight ahead drawings in ball point pen to have fun with concept design and to keep my skills sharp. Drawing with a non-erasable medium is great practice.

Easter 2017

View from my office studio

One of the things I'm most thankful for in life is a very simple pleasure that brightens my heart whenever I come into work. No matter what may be going on all I have do do is look straight ahead out the window I'm facing and enjoy this view...

What makes this special is what I'm looking out at on any given day. Here's a zoomed in shot with a description...

Every time I gaze upon this vista I'm humbly reminded as to how fortunate I am.

Still here Crash

The Clouds of El Nino 2017 - Burbank

Every 15 to 20 years a weather pattern emerges in the Pacific Ocean that brings heavy rainstorms to California. In the old days the Spanish called it "El Nino" because it was noticed around Christmas time when the rainy season gets in gear. Following many years of drought conditions we got hit with quite a few hefty storms one after the other the past few months. The building I'm in is the highest point in central Burbank and after the storms passed through sometimes I'd go to the roof and get a few shots of the cloud formations. Now that El Nino season is wrapping up here's a few photos to remember it by,,.

Looking to the west...

Looking to the northwest...

Views to the north...

Looking to the east...

March sunset through the church steeple...

Thankful for the rain!