Landscape painting!

Here are a few more images from my landscape painting class. The images below are (top to bottom): a page of mastercopies, a series of quick studies of El Matador Beach at sunset, and a painting from the hiking trail at the top of Lake Ave. in Pasadena.

Op Ed Final: Family Comic

For our Op Ed final, we got to design an Op Art piece. I chose to create a comic based on the parallel trips that my grandparents and I made from Maine to Los Angeles--theirs in 1946, and mine in 1998.

The piece was far more time consuming than I'd planned, but I'm really happy with the end product. I'd love to do more comics in the future.

Op Ed Ill...in color

A few weeks ago, we got an assignment to do a cover piece--that meant color and a portrait. From four article options, I chose the one on Stephen King. It was a book review, but most of the article was on King and his literary merits.

He says at one point that he was afraid of being brought into the upper-echelon literary fold because people would wonder "who let the barbarian in the palace." I based by illustration on his feeling of being judged by the greats (pictured below are Shakespeare, Bronte, Balzac, and Dickens). I'm thinking about going back in and including their names (duh). Originally, I didn't want the text to become what people focused on.

More landscape painting practice...

Live Assignment from the New York Times!

Our Op Ed Illustration class got the opportunity to do a live assignment for the Letters page of the Op Ed section of the New York Times. Like all their assignments, it was a super-fast turnaround. We got the letters packet on Monday morning, and had to have a finished illustration to them by 9am on Tuesday.

The letters addressed an Op Ed piece by John Bolton and John Woo, entitled "Why Rush to Cut Nukes?" Pretty self-explanatory. The letters all argued against their position, and for the New START Treaty for controls on nuclear weapon counts.

The bad news: I didn't get picked. The good news: They went with a piece by another student from our class, and the art director was so impressed with the selection of pieces submitted that she asked to do the live assignment again next term.

Here's my piece, followed by a link to the article and a great piece by my classmate, Julie Wojnarowski.

The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/opinion/l17nuke.html?scp=1&sq=why%20rush%20to%20cut%20nukes,%20letters&st=cse.

My Art, Her Body

I got the opportunity to do some chickadee tattoo designs for a friend (of a friend of a friend) recently. She ended up dropping the text since it would be too small and wouldn't age well. She went with the third chickadee.

I have to say, it was amazing to see something I created actually tattooed on someone. It was quite humbling, and I think the true honor of it is still sinking in.

More Op Ed Ill

Two more projects from Op Ed Ill class.

The first article was about an Afr.-Amer. professor who noted that 9 times out of 10, the only empty seat on the high-speed Acela train in New England was next to him.

The second article was titled, "How Not to Fight a Cold":

I'm still thinking about putting some color on it...

Millard Canyon, 10/31/10

Some recent paintings from my Landscape class

Op Ed Ill

I'm taking a great class this term with Brian Rea and Paul Rogers. Brian was the art director of the Op Ed page of the New York Times for several years. In this class, we get one-week assignments to illustrate a current Op Ed article.

First assignment finals, "Follow the Dirty Money":

The second assignment final, "Weird Weather in a Warming World":

Final from "How to Spot a Terrorist," an article on homegrown terrorism:

"Growers First" video

I recently had the opportunity to work with a great organization called Growers First. They help third-world coffee growers become self-sufficient, cost-competitive, and eco-friendly, without giving handouts or making them feel beholden.

The hands in the video are mine! I pretty much showed up and drew what I was told. The creative vision belongs to Andrew Davis.

You can view it on YouTube at Growers First (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5HapSv1ngc) or below.

Inventive Character finals

For Inventive Character class, we got to choose a story, create a special slant/setting for the story, then design five characters. I chose the story of Matilda, by Roald Dahl.

Matilda is a gifted girl who has horrible parents, and an even more horrible arch-rival, Agatha Trunchbull. Miss Honey is Matilda's only support. I chose to set the story in a traveling circus. By the end, Matilda has used her telepathic powers to become the star.

Miss Honey didn't make it to the portfolio pages. People didn't seem too fond of her "Yah-ta-da-da" pose.

Graphic Design for Entertainment

The second project of the term for Graphic Design for Entertainment was to design a series of pieces for the movie, Guys and Dolls. The first portion of the project involved designing a show poster for Miss Adelaide's show at the Hot Box, as well as a menu cover for Mindy's.

The menu cover:

And the show poster:

The last portion of the project was to design a street block in Times Square from the 1950s.

The pencil:

The final:

All Cox, All the Time

Our first project of the term for Paul Rogers' Graphic Design for Entertainment class was to design a memorabilia wall for Dewey Cox from the movie, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. I used Milton Glaser as a design influence and did Dewey Cox takes on several of his well-known pieces.

His Bob Dylan poster became:

His Elliot Gould Time cover became:

And lastly, the famous "I Heart NY" became these stickers:

Digital Landscape Finals

I took Digital Landscape with Mike Humphries during the Spring 2010 term. We painted in gouache on-site at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. When we had a base painting we were satisfied with, we scanned the image and did touch-ups digitally with Photoshop. We also kept a sketchbook, which I'll post later.

Here are my four final paintings.

Some vis dev pencil layouts from Will Weston's Sketching for Entertainment.

Prompt: A beaver dam, as influenced by some form of building style. In this case, shanty town.

Prompt: A submarine built by an extremely intelligent 6-year-old girl, who has scavenged parts from wherever possible to realize her vision.

And a repost of the color version:

Here are a few in-class pen, ink and wash drawings from Gayle Donahue's class, Drawing for Illustration. In her teaching, she really encourages students to embrace freedom of expression and creative flow.

For a third term project in Gayle Donahue's class, I combined the bodies of friends with the heads of their pets. Still one of my favorite projects to date!

More work from last term's Dynamic Sketching with Norm Schureman.

Some fantasy forms and applied textures:

Zoo-based caricatures:

And insect-based character designs: