Crash Bandicoot - Painting by street light

Well I was asked at the last minute to help out at the first annual Music and Arts Festival tonight at Johnny Carson Park in Burbank California where everyone is happy. The park is tucked between Disney Studios and NBC on the south side of town. They wanted me to do a painting demo at the booth for the Burbank Art Association which has been in the city since 1850 and I was the president 2 years ago. Great honor.

So I packed my painting gear along with some acrylics and tucked it all into my traveling bag and hopped on my bike and rode off for the night show. They had a band playing with great music and canopies with a lot of different arts organizations there. At our place we were painting for the people.

I had about an hour before it wrapped up so I got my stuff and started sketching out something on heavy duty illustration board that had animation register holes punched in it. Then I slapped on the pigment. I was painting by street light as it was already getting dark when I got there. Plus the shadow from the canopy blocked what light I could get. Very challenging conditions. Had a nice group of people around getting into the music and enjoying themselves as I did this...

Exploring Ogres

Here are a few lecture demos I created from working with online students this week. I was explaining how to develop some ideas for a specific kind of character. In this case an ogre. In the first sketch I used some comparative anatomy between our species and neanderthal to show the difference in skull morphology. I had something of a neanderthal in mind as I started to develop a design. These drawings were done digitally on a Cintiq.

By the third image I was combining some animal design elements and pushing simplified graphics. A lot of fun plus my students appreciated the lesson.

Spyro Portrait

I've been swamped and it's good to finally be able to post some new art again and sat hello. Here's something I finished this evening. A class demo in acrylics for my visual development students. I thought I'd give Spyro a little love and attention by painting a portrait of him. This took 4 sittings. About 45 minutes to an hour each time. It's as far as I got. I've also included the underpainting to give an idea as to how it progressed. I hope you enjoy it. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for checking it and good wishes to you!