Red Panda in Space

Cosmico

watercolor 13"x19"

Stitch Fan Art

Stitch's underwater world

Stitch 

13"x19" 

Working on doing a little fan art piece of Stitch, inspired by one of my favorite movies Lilo and Stitch. I was hoping to do something reminiscent of the Totoro piece I did a while back, in which the body of the character depicts other elements of their story.

Boat and Hassip

Boat and Hassip

6"x6"

Watercolor on Arches

A small character study I did for a personal project I am working. 

Alchemist #3

Alchemist opening illustration

13"x19"

Watercolor 

Here is the third painting in the Alchemist series.

The Young Locals

 The Young Locals

       20"x 27.5"

Watercolor on Arches

In the winter of 2008, I was fortunate enough to travel to the temples of Angkor Wat located near Siem Reap, Camboda. Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century and is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world.  One day while on a tour of the Bayon Temple, I was greeted by a group of three local boys who said they would be my tour guides and show me the temple where the movie Tomb Raider was filmed in exchange for some American coins. They led me down a faint path through the jungle and along the way we crawled through a ruin of an old temple where the sun shined through a small window illuminating the space. Inspired by the unique shadow pattern created by the fragmented light, I asked the boys if I could take a photo of them which became the reference for this painting.

Guard Painting

Guard

Photoshop

Another character painting that I am finishing up today.

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. 

Petzl Proj.

Delivery

Watercolor and Digital

Santa Drawing

Santa Roughs

Here is a little something I did for Petzl back around Xmas time. Along with the final illustration I decided to post some of my preliminary drawings . My process almost always starts with a series of thumbnail drawings ( sometimes as many as 50), accompanied by a number of character studies.

Weekly Watercolor???

Monkey

Watercolor

Chances are that it will not happen, but I hope to update this blog with a new watercolor each week. So here is the first of what I hope to be many.

Lawson Wood

Lawson Wood is another one of the many great illustrators that I had not heard of until recently. While in graduate school and on a trip to California , my group had the pleasure of visiting the home of Jane Eisenstat( I posted some images and info in an earlier post titled: A Day at the Eisenstats.) The Eisenstats have an amazing collection of illustration , and among the incredible paintings that grace the walls of their home , was an original Lawson Wood watercolor.

Rock and Ice Illo

Here is a piece I did for Rock and Ice a while back.

JCL Santa images

Christmas is here and I just wanted to post some of my favorite Santa images created by one of the best illustrators ever, Joseph Christian Leyendecker. Just amazing stuff!

Trail Runner Illo

Dog Attack

Digital

Pit Detail

Digital

This image was used to illustrate an article about dog attacks in the December issue of Trail Runner Magazine. Unfortunately I had to vilify Pit Bulls in the piece. Despite the bad rap that Pit Bulls receive they still remain one of my favorite creatures on earth. This was a tough one because I did not want to make a super gory , extremely dark image, as the topic is already heavy enough.

At any rate here is the image in which I came up with. It was created with a variety of techniques and with a combination of both 2d and 3d software.

Work in progress

Thumbnail comp

Mule character design

Painting in Progress

This is number one of four in a series of paintings I am doing about the Wild West and the days of the Gold Rush. This one is about 80 percent finished, with a bit more to do here and there. As always I like to show preliminary drawings that I have used along the way when creating an image. So here is the initial thumbnail, character design for the mule, and the final painting in progress.

Angels and Demons

This is a little detail of an illustration that was published a while back in Rock and Ice Magazine.

Nesh and Guanteen

Nesh and Guanteen

This painting served as a way to test the colors and textures that were applied to my 3 D Ganesh Creature model.I plan to post my finished Ganesh model and animations as well over the next few weeks. For now here is the painting in progress.

New Web Site

Put together a new web site. My old one is still up, but I like the simplicity of the new one. I just wanted to have one to serve as a nice clean portfolio site.. So check it out if you have a minute..

www.DJYJR.com..

Rock and Ice Paintings

A little while back my friend Tomas Donoso and I started working on a project/photo essay about Connecticut climbing, in which we wanted to try and pitch to a climbing related publication. At first we were not so sure in what direction we wanted it to go in, except for the fact that we wanted to try and do something fresh and unique. For a while we toyed with different ideas in which we talked over while we were out shooting photos of various boulder problems. Tomas eventually decided that it would be great if we could somehow link Connecticut Folklore with Climbing. This seemed to work especially because many of the blocs that we climb upon are situated in the woods in which much of Connecticuts Folklore originated.

Tomas shot some amazing photos of many boulder problems within Connecticut as well as some portraits of a few of the different climbers in the area that helped contribute to the piece. I created five watercolors to accompany these photos in which are seen within this post. The project was submitted to Rock and Ice Magazine and was accepted and printed. The staff at Rock and Ice did a great job with the layout in the magazine as well as the handling of the artwork and photography. Big thanks to everyone at Rock and Ice for accepting this piece and making it happen.

The issue of Rock and Ice Magazine with this feature is available now and can be found at most any major bookstore , climbing gym/retailer, and news stand. I urge everyone to go out and pick up a copy!

Chief Sassacus

Watercolor, 8.5"x11"

The Black Dog of the Hanging Hills

Watercolor,8.5"x11"

Jemima Wilkinson

Mixed, 11"x17"

The Leatherman

Waterclolr, 8.5"x11"

Dudley Town Curse

Watercolor, 8.5"x11"

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.