Laura West

2012-01-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

More play-practice and exploration!

Random shape...

Stream-of-thought drawing...

Zoots was out for blood after his back-alley steampunk reassignment surgery was interrupted.

Accidents happen to everyone.

2012-01-05T17:33:00.000-08:00

Dame Judi Dench was fierce in Pride and Prejudice...there may be more drawings to come of her.

2011-12-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

Today's warm-up...

2011-12-29T15:56:00.000-08:00

Playing with textures and layer effects...

2011-12-16T17:52:00.000-08:00

Warm-up drawing today. Shyster rabbits with mustaches and mice throwing accusatory fingers...

2011-11-22T17:55:00.001-08:00

Some drawings from this week's workshops...

2011-11-15T17:07:00.001-08:00

More short-pose lunchtime drawings, 5 mins. I was impressed with how many different characters Jonathan Cripple was able to create...(click for slideshow)

Done in by a cup o' tea!

2011-10-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

Quick gesture drawings with the dreaded Sharpie and the magnificent Stacy Walker...

2011-10-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Each year, DreamWorks has its own internal "Con" for employees to showcase, share, and sell their personal work. I created the artwork and poster for this year's Dream-Con. We chose an Oktoberfest theme, so I transformed the campus into a German village...

2011-10-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Zorro rode into town for our lunchtime drawing session...

He peered down protectively on our humble studio,

then lept into action when a fierce tater-tot dispute erupted in the comissary.

After quelling the uprising, he contemplated the pros and cons of a tater-totless existence. Hash browns cause much less trouble, he thought.

Sharpie, 5 minutes apiece

2011-09-20T20:52:00.000-07:00

Today's lunchtime drawings. The pencil and I were barely on speaking terms, but the model was terrific.

3 to 5 min poses.

2011-09-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

More sketches from the lunchtime drawing sessions at work. Really fun model.

3 to 5 min. poses.

Sharpie Hell

2011-09-13T22:32:00.000-07:00

Still struggling to make magic with the Sharpie. These are from two different sessions, both with Dave P.

1 to 3 min. poses.

N.C. Wyethesque

2011-08-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

This week's model reminded me of an N.C. Wyeth character. Great silhouettes and expressiveness.

2- and 5-min poses.

2011-08-01T22:28:00.000-07:00

Had an elegant model last week, and chose an inelegant tool to draw with--a Sharpie. Interesting challenge.

2011-08-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

Samurai theme for another recent gesture drawing session...

Frazetta-fied

2011-08-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

We had a model at our lunchtime drawing session a few weeks ago who must have been a model for Frazetta. Epic hair, nails, jewelry, prop sword...

(1-2 min poses)

Practice, practice

2011-07-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Some figure drawings from a recent fast-pose workshop.

Sketchbook...

2011-07-09T15:37:00.001-07:00

From my tiny, falling-apart sketchbook...

I went on a cave tour when I was visiting my parents in Texas. At one point, the guide turned off his flashlight so we could experience total darkness--besides a cave, the only other place you can experience total darkness is very, very deep in the ocean.

On-site Gouache

2011-07-09T15:28:00.000-07:00

Hot on the heels of Landscape Painting, I had Illustrative Storytelling class. I painted with gouache on our first on-site day. 2-hour pose in Union Station.

Landscape painting!

2010-12-19T00:07:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-15T19:12:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-11-19T22:44:00.001-08:00

Live Assignment from the New York Times!

2010-11-17T20:35:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-03T21:14:00.001-07:00

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

2010-11-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-11-03T00:09:00.000-07:00

Some recent paintings from my Landscape class

Op Ed Ill

2010-10-30T17:55:00.001-07:00

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

2010-10-30T12:44:00.001-07:00

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

2010-10-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-17T17:23:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-17T17:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-01-20T17:01:00.000-08:00

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:

2010-01-19T20:25:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-19T20:10:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

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:

2010-01-19T13:42:00.001-08:00

Some work from Will Weston's Inventive Drawing class, fourth term.

Will asked us to create a cast of mean girls, with a leader, a lieutenant, and henchmen, as well as victims.

Another assignment was to draw different men's and women's hairstyles.

2010-01-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

An in-class expression drawing from first term...

Portraiture

2010-01-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

I've always been fascinated by faces. I love finding the unique parts of each person's face and mentally reconfiguring them into a caricature. That said, I also thought it was important for me to learn a more classical approach to portraiture. To that end, I took a portraiture class with David Luce last term. He has a very traditional teaching approach: begin with a rub-out, proceed to grisaille, limited palette, then move to full-color. Here's some in-class work.

I couldn't resist doing just one caricature...

Dynamic Sketching

2010-01-17T12:50:00.000-08:00

Another class from last term, Dynamic Sketching with Norm Schureman, focused on drawing organic and manmade objects, with a goal of capturing form and texture. The class covered an amazing amount of ground: plants, insects, marine life, mammals, tanks, planes, cars, and more. Field trips included the Los Angeles Arboretum, the LA Zoo, the Autry Museum, the Nethercutt car museum, a military vehicle museum, and the Long Beach Aquarium. Here's a selection of my sketchbook drawings from that class.

Digital Life, aka Goodbye Cruel World

2010-01-17T12:16:00.000-08:00

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a traditional media person. The transition to digital has been, and continues to be, a bit of a challenge for me. One class from last term in particular really tested my limits. Digital Life, with instructor Cliff Nielsen, involved painting still lifes and nude models using a tablet and PhotoShop or Corel Painter. I believe in humility, but I'm still not posting any of those in-class paintings. We also had three long assignments for homework.

The first assignment was to do a digital master copy. It had to be a stroke for stroke copy, all on the computer, and all in one layer. I had no idea what I was doing, and consequently there were many, many CTL + Zs. I copied a Jenny Saville painting. I spent two days and 30 hours on this.

The second assignment was buffet-style, from several options. I chose to do a promo piece for Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter: Warlord of Mars. In doing the research, I was struck by the outlandishness of the story, and also by the, um, sexism, of much of the art. I opted for a tongue-in-cheek take on the franchise, and called it John Carter: Boarlord of Mars. The line art is traditional brush and ink, with digital color.

The final assignment was fairly open, so I chose to apply digital color to a vis dev drawing I did for a previous class. The prompt for that drawing was to create a submarine that an extremely intelligent six-year-old built in her dad's ship-building workshop.

Style Class

2010-01-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

During the last term, I took a style development class with Mike Humphries. The assignments involved receiving a prompt scenario, choosing an artist with a distinctive style, analyzing that style for key points, then applying those style points to our own design process.

The first scenario was a hunter's shack in the Smokey Mountains, set in the early morning. I chose to analyze and apply the style from "101 Dalmatians."

The second scenario was a San Francisco art school in a renovated Victorian house, set at night. I chose to work with the style of Charley Harper.

The final scenario proved to be quite challenging, for many reasons. The prompt was to design a playground attached to a themed restaurant. I chose to study William Joyce, and, rather foolishly, chose t0 theme the restaurant with the elaborate Louis XIV style of design. Complicating matters, this was also one of my first attempts at a full, vis-dev PhotoShop painting.

All in all, the class was incredibly informative in terms of understanding how artists adapt universal design principles relating to contrast, hue, value, simple v. complex forms, etc. to create their own unique style.