Alchemist layout #3

Tangiers layout

This is the third drawing for a series of paintings I am working on. There remains quite few things I would like to refine and possibly add to this one, but here it is for now.

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.

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.

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

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 4

Another page from the sketchbook:

Weekly Sketch 3

Third weekly sketch.. Nothing fancy , just another page from the sketchbook.

Weekly Sketch 2

Second weekly sketch here, sticking with the skateboarding creatures theme!

Pool Riding Beast

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"

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"

Jet Lagged

Its 7 a.m here in Bangkok, and I have been awake for the last 2 hours. Even though I have been here for the last 3 days I am still feeling pretty Jet Lagged. From what I was told , it takes one day for every hour for someone to become fully adjusted to a significant time change. This I have found to be fairly accurate , with the first 4 days being totally out of whack. At any rate I figured I would include the Sea Hag Illustration I did a while back. She is part of a series of small paintings in which accompany some silly, simple rhymes that I wrote in my sketch book while visiting South East Asia back in 2008. Here is what I wrote along with the image:

Feeling worn out and tired like an old sea hag! I guess it is a case of serious Jet Lagg!

Sea Hagg

5"x5"

Acrylic on Panel

Below is a map of where I am heading on this journey. Today at 5 p.m I am hopping on a bus to Vientiane, the capital of Laos .

Map for this years trip

Quick sketch I did sitting in JFK:

Airport Sketch

5"7"

Getting ready to board my plane in Hong Kong:

Hong Kong Airport

Here is a random shot taken in Bkk, of one of many shrines you will find scattered about the city. It is common to see numerous people gathered around, praying, socializing,  and interacting, on any given day.

Bkk Shrine

Sisyphus

We are putting on another bouldering competition this winter at Prime Climb. It will be the fourth bouldering comp we have hosted , and is something we plan to make an annual event.

As in the past this comp will be known as the Power Struggle. So I am working on making a little poster to promote the event. I decided to use the Greek Myth of Sisyphus as the base idea for the story behind the design, for various reasons. For one obviously Sisyphus was faced with a very difficult power struggle. For two, I often feel that bouldering , even though I love it is a sisyphean( both extremely effortful and futile) activity. Especially when climbing is not going so well.

Of course I made some changes to the myth in my illustration, because why not, thats what I do and I wanted to make the picture tell a bit more of a story. From my understanding Sisyphus was not a very cool guy, he started a lot of trouble with Zuess, and violated laws of hospitality by killing guests and travelers. So I didn't feel that his punishment was enough, and in my version he is constantly harassed by two monkeys. One uses the rolling rock as a tread mill, and the other taunts Sisyphus with a large stick that he could potentially use to prop up the rock and escape. Tough time for Sisyphus. Below is my initial thumbnail.

Power Struggle Comp Poster Design

Thumbnail

1.5"x 3"

Below is my rough drawing that I will use to create the final. Most likely some more things will change in the next day or so if time permits. I plan to work on the monkeys a bit and a few other things.

Power Struggle Poster Design

Rough

6"x9"

Iron Mike

Here is a sketch of Iron Mike Tyson from my skecth book. To his side I stared to draw Don King as well. I didn't include King because I never liked him, his hair do, or what he did to Mike Tyson. Say what you want about Iron Mike, but there is no denying that he was a tremendous athlete in the ring, a vicious and brutal champion! I hope this sketch captures a bit of that!!!!!

Iron Mike

Iron Mike with Cus Damato

Random Sketches 2

Thai man

David Grove

Chef

troll

waitress

norton

flying machine

dragon

I am bored so I am posting some random sketches.

Some new some old, some for work some for play.