Alchemist roughs

Tangiers concept sketch

Chieftan sketch

Santiago the shepherd character study

The Chieftans

  Many years ago on a flight from Connecticut to Denver I had the chance to read The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, a beautiful story about a young Spanish Shepherd that embarks on a journey to unlock the significance of his recurring dreams. The story is filled with captivating imagery, beautiful landscapes, and magical characters in which have inspired me to create a series of illustrations. This post contains an assortment of rough drawings in which I hope will result in finished watercolor paintings. The scene containing multiple figures is furthest along in its development, while the others are tiny thumbnails taken from my moleskin sketch book.

The Kraken

Kraken Thumbnail Drawings

The Kraken Rough Drawing

Here is a quick preview of a new project I am working on . The top image in this post shows some of the tiny thumbnail drawings that I do when starting a new painting. During the thumbnail phase I try to nail down the large shapes that will be in the composition, as well as perspective. Once I have the overall composition worked out I move on to the rough drawing(image 2).  I like where the image is going but will most likely make some changes before completing the final drawing .

Thai Fairy Tale

Floating Village

18" x 24"

Watercolor on Arches

I created this image in one of my graduate school classes taught by Ted and Betsy Lewin. In the one week class, I created a 32 page book dummy to accompany a Thai fairy tale of how the limestone mountains were formed around Krabi. This is one of the finished spreads that would be the book opener of the floating village where the story takes place.

Shaman Creature Design

 Shaman Creature Clean up

Shaman Creature Concept

Here is a little something I am working on today. Hopefully by the end of the day I will have his pose a bit more refined , as well as some sort of staff in his left hand. The red drawing is directly from my sketch book , where I try and keep thing loose and gestural. Once I have something loosely put down in my sketch book I begin a series of refinements. At this point I will push certain elements further, remove others, and so on. 

Z Brush Sculpts

Guanteen

Monkey Island

Over the past week or so I started to learn the program Z Brush. I have to say it is one of the most amazing tools I have ever used. I can also say that it is also one of the most confusing and frustrating as well..... At ant rate here are my first two sculptures I created using Z Brush. These are assets from the pencil test I posted earlier, but rendered in 3D. These will become the basis for a fully animated short. Versions of these will be simplified, brought into Maya, rigged,light , and later animated.

The monkey model will be recycled for both the Ganesh project, as well as the Humanality short.

Ganesh's Monkey Side Kick

Monkey Designs

Monkey Orthographic Sketch

In a previous post I included some drawings, as well as screen grabs for a model I am working on of a Ganesh inspired creature. My creature is going to have a sidekick which is a monkey and these are the preliminary drawings for what he will look like. These will be made into a 3D model as well with Maya , and animated along with Ganesh.

Ganesh 3D Model in progress

Learning a program like Maya has not been easy, and to be honest, I didn't think I would want to see it through. As I have spent my time knocking my head against my computer , things have started to come together. In this post are some screen grabs as well as renders generated from Maya of my model. The model itself still needs some editing, and the textures are going to be much more refined before he is animated. For now here he is in progress.

Back to School like Rodney Dangerfield

Ganesh with Monkey

Ganesh Side

Ganesh Crawl

Ganesh Pointing

Looking to broaden my skill sets as an illustrator and artist I decided to take a few classes in animation at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. So far the experience has been pretty good and I figured I would share some of the preliminary drawings I am doing for my intro to Maya/3d animation class. This character was inspired by the Hindu Elephant Deity , Ganesh. Ganesh is said to be the Lord of success and destroyer of evil and obstacles. In addition he is worshiped as the god of education, knowledge , wisdom, and wealth. For various reasons I am a bit weary about being back in school again. Reasons such as the financial burdens that come along with education in the US. So I am hoping Ganesh will look out for me, even if I happened to cross him with a turtle in my design. These drawings will be made into a 3d model, textured, rigged, and animated. I hope to post the process along the way. For now here are the drawings...

Skunk Skate Punk

These are the preliminary drawings for a piece of art in which was intended to be entered in a competition that the Purple Skunk Skate Shop in San Francisco was hosting. Unfortunately I missed the deadline, although I do still plan to finish the painting. For now here are the roughs...

Skate Skunk

Skunk Character Designs

Dropping the Ball

Alien Head

Graphite

Alien Head/City Close Up

Digital

They Live

Work in Progress

Digital

The John Carpenter film "They Live" is one of the many campy 80's films in which I enjoyed growing up. I was asked to be a part of an art show back in CT. , and the theme was 80's Horror. So I decided to go with "They Live" as the basis for my piece. Unfortunately I have dropped the ball and have not finished the piece in time for the show. For now here is the WIP.

Not so weekly sketch

Have not been keeping up with my weekly sketch post for various reasons. Hopefully I will get things together here. For now here is one I put together this week:

Weekly Sketch

Planning to post a weekly drawing or sketch of some sort. We'll see if it happens??? I have been working on a lot of different projects lately. All involve some pretty wild subject matter, ranging from skateboarding dogs to Venezuelan Bush Planes . For this week here is one of the many new pieces in my sketch book.

Skateboarding Pit Sketch

5"x8"

Random Drawings/Sketches

Haven't had all that much time to get to involved with any big projects at the moment as I am moving to the bay area on weds.. So time has been spent packing things up and getting somewhat organized. While digging through my art work in order to figure out what I am taking with me I came across many drawings and sketches that I have created for various reasons. As you can tell they are pretty random as I think a lot of my work is. In order to keep things fresh, I tend to bounce around between different mediums and subject matter. In addition I like to switch things up as far as the way in which I create my work, as you can see by looking at these drawings. Some are done directly from photographic reference, some are completely created out of my imagination, some from direct observation, and some are a combination of all.

Georgie Porgie

Brush and Ink, 6"x7"

Five Brave Nights Rough

Graohite, 5"x7"

Five Brave Knights Rough 2

Graphite, 5"x7"

Pasadena Prelim,

Graphite, 6"x"9"

Sketch Book Page,Koh San Rd., Thailand, 2010

Graphite, 5"x5"

Kinaree,

Graphite, 8"x11"

Rough Drawing for DPM article

Graphite and Digital, 7"x11"

Cuckoo's Nest Drawings

Nurse Rached

Graphite, 9"x13"

Shock Shop

Graphite,8.5"x11"

The Ward

Graphite, 8.5"x11"

Mac

Graphite, 8.5"x11"

The Escape

Graphite, 8.5"x11"

Arrival of Mac

Graphite, 8.5"x11"

Chief Bromden

Graphite, 8.5"x11"

When I began the MFA program at the University of Hartford back in 2007 the first class I was enrolled in was known as the "Dream Assignment Class". This class was supposed to guide us along in the direction that we were going to head in for the thesis project, or at least get the wheels turning. This class was completely open ended and as the name suggests was to encourage complete creative freedom.

At first I thought I really wanted to do some Illustrations pertaining to Ken Kesey's , One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. We were supposed to show up on the first day of class with six potential compositions. So in this post I am including the six drawings in which I showed up with that day as well as the final drawing(Nurse Rached) I did during that week at Hartford. Similar to most of my classmates, my thesis project took a completely different turn from where things started in this class. I am thinking about going back and finishing all of these pieces in a digital format.. We'll see.

Random Sketches

It's always fun to post random sketches. The ones included within this post were all created for different reasons and or purposes . Some are sketches from life, some are from my imagination, some from photos, some for projects, and some for just plain fun.

Ichabod Crane

4"x6"

Graphite

Thumbnail for interior page of Norton B. Nice

2"x4"

Graphite

Mark Twain Sketch

2"x4"

Graphite

Francis Bacon sketch

3"x7"

Graphite

Atlanta airport sketch

8.5"x 11"

Graphite

Cambodian Nun

7"x 10"

Graphite

Sea Goddess

8.5"x 11"

Graphite

The Headless Horseman

Over the past few weeks I have been working on an illustration from Washington Irving's short story the Legend Sleepy Hollow. I wanted to focus on the Headless Horseman and I have managed to come up with various compositions and solutions. Finally I have gotten to where I am happy with one and I have included it from start to color study in this post. At the moment I am unsure of what medium I want to use to take it to the finish. I am leaning towards acrylics although it may be fun to do a large watercolor, in which I hope would be a bit more atmospheric and moody than my initial color study. There are still a few things that need to be solved in the illustration such as how and where ,and whether or not I am going to include the Horseman's cape. Including the cape may mean that the fun shape in which the Horseman and his horse create will be lost. So I am trying to find a way in which I can include it, where it will not interfere to much......

Below I have included my initial sketch, my final drawing ,and a color study :

Rough Sketch

5"x 5"

Final Drawing

8"x 8"

Color Study

Watercolor and Digital

8"x 8"