Mystery/Train Sketch

Today I found a little sketchbook from a class I took at MICA called Visual Journalism. It was a great class, taught by one of my favorite professors, Warren Linn.  I'm not sure why I decided to buy a 9"x13" sketchbook to take with me on the five+ hour field trips we took every class.  I was always envious of the kids with smaller sketchbooks,  as mine was comparatively enormous.

So when our final project was to compile several of our best spreads in our books, I made a (much) smaller version of the original: 4"x6." Here are a couple spreads from it:

            

  

I haven't done any portrait studies in pencil lately, and I really enjoyed drawing the sleepy people on the train and on the light rail. So, today I went on a bit of a tangent and watched a good portion of Mystery Train and drew my favorite character, Jun.

Hairy Baltimore

For the Baltimore Book Festival this year, illustrator Alex Fine curated a little book called Hairy Baltimore. It compiled drawings from over 20 differentlocal Baltimoreans with famous hair.  I drew this dude Adam Meister, a Political Examiner, and his tousled pomp. Drawing sooo many pomps lately.

Words on Wheels

Words on Wheels is a program that puts poems by Baltimore school children on city buses to promote literacy and the arts. Students at MICA were asked to illustrate the poems. A committee will decide which students' work gets put on a bus in the next couple weeks.

I was assigned a poem called "Blessed Tears" by a Courtney Wilson, a 7th grader at Mount Royal Elementary and Middle School. It's a decidedly dark poem, much more than many of the others. Some of my initial sketches involved lots of arms surrounding a figure. I guess this was the first thing many people thought of... a couple other students assigned to this poem did something similar. I was encouraged to take one of my stranger sketches to final.



I used a brush and ink to create the drawing on different layers of tracing paper, then I scanned in the layers, and arranged and colored them with Photoshop. Here is how it might look with the text and Words on Wheels banner beside it:



Not sure how the Maryland Transit Authority will feel about this one, but I'm pretty pleased. Unfortunately there is not much room to be creative with the type. Also, as usual, Flickr took all of the oomph out of the color in the original file... so use your imagination!

Flappy New Year!

One year closer to the Apocalypse. Can't wait!

So far I've had a pretty productive break. I finally started and finished the portrait of my grandparents that I'd been promising them I'd do for a while.

...I tried.  I shaved a couple years off 'em.

Then I decided I'd do a couple little pieces for fun. These are going to be hanging up in Patterson Perk on Eastern Avenue, along with some framed collages, the Wanderin' mind, some wacky wall sculpture I'm finishing now, and more!

Kit Gloves. Collage and acrylic on two 6" wood panels.

And for good measure, here's a peek at my thesis as of the end of fall semester.

Next semester I'll be making four more box constructions, and then documenting all of the pieces and putting them into a hand-bound book.

Thanks to Janna Morton for taking pictures, I was so sleep deprived on the last day of class that I forgot my camera!

I'm with you in Rockland

A small (about 4"x6") goache painting of James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in the movie "Howl."

I'm moderately happy with it, though I think I would do it again differently if I had the time.

Plus, it's really the color that sells it... and much of that gets lost in the upload to Flickr.

It's nice to do a little practice with some figural painting every once in a while.

Charm City Art Space Exhibition

This post belongs in August, so I pre-dated it.  A couple weeks ago, I hung up some work at the Charm City Art Space. 

I just got a new digital camera, so I snuck into the Art Space to take a few pictures of my little wall.

Some of the items on display I've already made posts about, like the R2D2 illustration and the Heartless 7inch artwork

(though here it is shown in its original, non-digitally altered colorway).

Below are my last two Star Wars drawings.

The above piece is something I made while I was thinking about ideas for thesis (I'll be making box assemblages about Russian Folklore). 

It's not quite finished.

At the bottom right of my display, I had a small selection of my promotional matchbooks. They were all gone after the first week! I dropped a few more off when I took this photo:

Classes started this week (I'm typing this on September 2nd!) and my Shakespeare and African Art Forms classes have already gone well. I'm excited to get started on my Thesis work... Senior year. Oof.

Rickles for President

 A few minutes ago, my friend Mika handed me a couple crayola markers and one of these pieces of paper. Go to fundred.org to participate in artist Mel Chin's project to persuade the US government to send funds to New Orleans and other cities dealing lead contamination. This is a bad photobooth picture of my quick dolla'bill, I drew Don Rickles and Drinky Crow. It's free, fun, and it's for a good cause!

Maatryoshka and some Chubby, Hairy Dork

I suppose these first several entries will be loaded with things I've done in the last few months, but I'll start with something fairly recent. I'll introduce you to my icon, a (gasp) digital painting! My first full-on digipainting, actually. This was an assignment for my Illustration 2 Studio with John Malloy. A portrait with "doll-like characteristics." I don't know anyone who looks more like a baby than I do, so I did a self-portrait.

To regress, I'll post the first assignment from my current class... a digitally rendered drawing of Dan Deacon. Can't say I'm the biggest fan of the guy, but here he is nonetheless.

And last but not least, my most recent piece for my Illustration Studio, a redesigned label for an Arnold Palmer Half & Half Arizona can. I love a good Arnie Palmer, but I think I'd love one more if it came in a can like this:

This particular assignment specified no human figures. So no disrespect to the original can, but if you're going to use a picture of Arnold Palmer, you should make sure to get him in his hay-day.

 Right? No Comparison.