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!

This week's art

Good thing I started having sessions online. Things are never too busy for me to create. I have more opportunity to focus. The onsite classes in Burbank tend to be more demanding of my time in other ways. Still had a chance to create.

I started a new approach by which I'm having online students art direct what I'm doing. After I review their work I do a demo and they help to hone in on a subject and mood of the composition and other things. Then I go from there for the time we have left. These are works in progress and will have another pass in upcoming sessions. Everything was done in Photoshop with the head turn as the exception.

Monday...

Tuesday in the Burbank class...

Wednesday...

Thursday...

Friday...

Enjoyed myself and we learned something too.

Phone photos of LA and Hollywood - Dec 8 2016

Sometimes I find myself in unique locations. Last year in December I was at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. This is a very special place. Presidents stay there when in town. As fortune would have it I wound up on the top floor of the hotel. Around 32 floors high. There's a revolving restaurant at this level that offers great panoramic views of the city. I took a few phone photos while I had the chance and would like to feature them here.

This is the view from the Bonaventure's revolving restaurant. Takes around an hour for the floor to make a complete rotation.

Here's what downtown LA looks like from there...

This is the tallest building in Los Angeles...

Here's what the street looks like at its base...

 This is the view towards Hollywood...

Here's a zoomed in shot of Hollywood. You can make out the sign on the hill. The light colored structure towards the right of the sign is the Griffith Observatory. On the other side of the hill is the city of Burbank.

Latest demos from online sessions

In what turned out to be an extraordinarily busy week I found an opportunity to churn out 2 demonstrations while I worked with online students. The first is a drawing of an incidental  character I came up with when first developing Crash Bandicoot way back in 1995 during the Willy the Wombat days. I did this very quickly in a matter of a few minutes in Photoshop as time was running out during the session.

The second one below was started during the class and I found time to continue working on it this evening. What began as a very basic and simple approach to coloring turned out to get more involved than I originally planned but it was fun none the less. My student asked for something kind of dark and grim and menacing so I fell upon a werewolf type of character. It's been a while since I came up with one. Enjoyed myself after the madness of this past week. Gets crazy sometimes but it's all good and everyone's happy it seems.

Edit: This is how far I was by the end the online session...