Christmas 2016

Spent a special Christmas Eve doing what I enjoy most and that's kickin' back and creating art. This started as a quick sketch demo for an online student a few days ago. Thought I'd put something together for the many Crash Bandicoot fans who frequent my blog. A little something from me to you. 

Merry Christmas !!!

God bless and may all your dreams come true !!

Spyro's First Flight

I had a lot of fun doing this. It started as a quick sketch concept demonstration for a Visual Development student that I teach online. With each progressive session I worked on it a little more refining the composition and if I had extra time on my own I'd work on it some more.

Here's the final art as I imagine this being Spyro the Dragon's first flight through the air as a youngster. A confident little tyke from the start. It's my Christmas present to all the devoted Spyro fans out there who love the character and who frequent my blog. Merry Christmas! Wishing everyone joy and happiness and creativity with all you do in life. May you soar to new heights in the New Year!

   

Elf Head color demo

I've got a pretty good crop of online students now as 2016 marks the year that I started teaching this way. In addition to my on site classes in Burbank that is. This approach has given me an opportunity to work with individual students and spend a little more time doing demonstrations in Photoshop. Here's what I came up with last week. I took a blue pencil drawing which was a demo from a couple of years ago and manipulated it digitally to change the line color to black and used that as a base for rendering simple color and gray tone. I used tints and then built up a more opaque application on areas such as the cheek, nose, forehead and the tip of the ear.  The original drawing follows the digital version below.

Another Conan the Barbarian

Here's another version of Conan following the preceding post. This time I took a more graphic approach. Away from realism and into the realm of iconic design. 

Conan the Barbarian was a very popular comic published by Marvel from 1970 to 1993. The series was created by Robert E Howard in 1932.

Conan the Barbarian

Hello there! It's been a while since I posted something. Not for want of doing so. It's been one of those phases where I get real busy with things that distract me from creating art. In any case I had a chance to do some sketching this evening with my students and I thought I'd work up a concept for one of my favorite characters from my days when I was an avid comic book reader. This is an interpretation of Conan the Barbarian. I'll be drawing him more in the future at some point so this is a start. Thank you again for following my blog and I hope that everything is going great in your life.

Felt like drawing Spyro some more

From last post with black line.

Felt like drawing Spyro

Felt like drawing Crash some more

From last post with black line... 

Felt like drawing Crash

Chicago Cubs - Champions of Baseball 2016

It's been 108 years since the Chicago Cubs won a championship but they finally did it last night in dramatic fashion! What a series and what a game! Growing up in the Chicagoland area I've been a Cubs fan all of my life and wondered if I would ever see them do this while I have breath in my body. It has happened so now I can depart this mortal earth in peace when my time is up.  

In honor of their victory I went into my archives and found a painting I did way back in 1983. I had a company that was printing and marketing sports posters at the time. I created this for the Cubs in hopes that I could get a license to market the print. Alas it was too cute for the franchise as they were changing their image to something more aggressive so the feel of the character didn't work out for them. And since Photoshop didn't exist in those days it was too labor intensive to redo the painting. So I moved on to other things.

Here we are 33 years later so why not get this out as part of the celebration. The original image followed by something for today. The past and the present merge.

  

Crash Bandicoot - Soccer Short by lillemann / GeniDude

Here's something that a visitor to my blog posted in the comments of my previous post. This is what lillemann came up with. GeniDude on YouTube. Using the drawings from the little Crash strip I published here for the World Cup 2 years ago he made an animated video. Take a look...

Vampire Girl

Hello there and I hope you're well. I had a chance to do an acrylic demo in class tonight. 

Yes I do indeed enjoy painting. Digital is nice but this is the real deal baby.  We go back in time to a scan of the composition once the initial tint was applied to get rid of the white of the surface and seal the pencil line. This is on heavy duty illustration board.

In the beginning there was the primal drawing.

Much fun and everyone had a good time.

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! 

Portrait of a special pooch

For a dear friend's birthday I was at a loss as to what to get as a gift so I painted a picture of her dog. Acrylics on illustration board. I used a photo that was emailed to me before as reference along with my own interpretation of the subject. Something different and fun to do.

Drawings from class

Hello to all! This week I collected several of the drawings I did for my students in class. I took their assignment concepts and instead of going over them I drew next to their composition. So here's an exhibit in chronological order. These are from online and onsite students. Taking the exact character and pose they were striving for and helping them by example to nail it with solid drawing and design. 

It's a challenge going from one style and approach to another. Working through a wide variety of individual and unique concepts. Teaching like this really helps an artist to lock it down with their own skills.

Catching up

Hello there and thanks for checking in with my blog. I've been busy busy busy folks. My school is buzzing along and now that I conduct online sessions that aspect of it has taken up even more time. It's all positive and I'm not complaining other than I wish I had more opportunity to dedicate to personal creativity. In any case it's all good as they say. 

I am still experiencing happiness and joy for the Crash Bandicoot fans over the recent news of the revival of the character as a Skylander and also the remastering of the first 3 games.

I've had a chance to do a few things lately. This is an image I came up with while toying with a new software called Mischief. It allows you to create vector based digital images. Amazing stuff as one can create within an infinite canvas. No matter how much you zoom in on the picture the pixels will never break up as with bitmap based programs like Photoshop. You can export the visible image as a jpeg file.

Earlier a long time friend of mine who is a masterful artist at the major studio level stopped by and we had fun coming up with the look for a new character. He described what he was looking for and I tried a few versions based upon his concept.

  

Thanks again everyone and I would like to especially thank you super cool people for all the page views I've been getting even though I haven't been active as of late. I'll try and get back to a more frequent schedule. 

Sparkly girl

More fun with Photoshop doodling in color.

Double header

Last Sunday evening I came in to have some fun creating and to practice on Photoshop. This is what I came up with that night.

Coy fish painting party

Howdy to all I'm happy about the Crash news and riding a high from it. On June 15 a couple days after the news got out I was at a painting party in Burbank. We all followed a leader not knowing what we were going to wind up with and this is what I did. Since then I've been on a creative explosion of some kind so get ready for lots of art coming down the line.

This is acrylics on canvas board.  Had a good time doing it.

I know there's a ton of Crash Bandicoot fans here cuz the pageviews on my blog have gone through the roof. Crazy but I'll take it! Anyway folks thank you for stopping by and I wish everyone happiness and fun.

CRASH IS BACK

Latest sketches

Had a pretty good week with a chance to do a little more drawing. This is what I came up with drawing in class and also a session with a very talented friend. There's more but I'm not able to show the rest since it's my friend's project and he is keeping it close to the vest.

Thanks for checking in and I hope everything is going great in your life.

Spyro turn

Hello there! It's been a while since I've posted something. Another of these busy phases that keeps me from creating personal art. In any case I had an opportunity for a class demo last night so I chose to revive Spyro as the subject matter. I drew a 3 pose rotation in Photoshop for CG modeling. I did it very fast which is not necessarily how I like to work but time was a factor. In fact I did it so fast I had a window to pull some color into the demo. The students enjoyed it plus they learned from.

For those of you who are character designers or studying character design, a CG rotation is used as reference for digital modeling purposes. In the profile view it's okay to show where the arm is connected to the body instead of actually drawing the arm. Same thing in the back view where the tail connection to the torso is shown and not the tail protruding towards the viewer.

This week's art

Hello there! This is what I came up with earlier in the week as demonstrations in class. The girl is from Character Design 2 and the head rotation and concept sketches are from Character Design 1. 

Also I've been successfully beta testing online classes in Character Design through my school utilizing Skype. If you're serious about improving your skills and you'd like to take class let me know. 

Blue pencil and ball point pen ...

Concept sketch and 5 pose head rotation ...