Oh, and Valentines Day is in 2 weeks. Am I getting someone something? I wish I knew...
Eh, that's neither here nor there, is it? This is about sketching!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
A Nun and a Facist
After looking over the blog world and, well, life in general, it seems everyone is in a bit of a malaise. Makes sense, really; Last week was a big with celebrations and "hope", and this week has been.. blah. The fact that temperatures have been at or below freezing for most of the country didn't help, nor the cold economic reality that life fucking sucks.
Oh, and Valentines Day is in 2 weeks. Am I getting someone something? I wish I knew...
Eh, that's neither here nor there, is it? This is about sketching!
Oh, and Valentines Day is in 2 weeks. Am I getting someone something? I wish I knew...
Eh, that's neither here nor there, is it? This is about sketching!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Tattooed Woman and Military Might
Just some more sketches from the last two days. I had an idea of drawing some tattooed girl sitting on a tattoo needle and another of a series of military women I've been doing. That's about it.
Friday, January 23, 2009
From Sketch to Finish: A Quick Overview
I don't want to give too much away about my process and how I get to an end... at least not yet. I like having people dissect it to get their own meaning out of it. But here's the sketch:
Now, I started to mention this yesterday, but here some more detail on the subject:
When I was in art school from 2002 -2006 (worth mentioning because I think I may be among the last to learn old-fashioned principals of design... or sound like an ass for saying that), there were teachers who had been in the industry for nearly 30 - 50 years. Hearing them talk was boring at times, but hell, I learned a lot! One teacher in particular was Mr. Crawford, and he taught some really basic, really smart things. For example, when your doing a sketch of a design layout with type, make little boxes for each letter. I was, ironically enough, doing that when I was a kid so it was a pleasant surprise.
You can see little notes about the font choice. That was a big thing to me because, as much as I'm a fan of artists like Brute and Shepard Farely, I never want to just copy them. I hate copying my hero's, it feels like I'm ripping them off. I'd rather just learn from them and make it my own. So in this case, I was looking at the work of Brute and realized that using Impact for everything would be ripping him off. For that "RULES" series I did, and all my propaganda pieces, all the fonts are Arial Black (oops, gave away a secret!) that I've modified. In the case, I didn't think it would work so I wound up using some new font I got. I can't recall the name... it started with an "F" but it wasn't Franklin Gothic... eh, anyway, that's besides the point.
I've been getting some really rude comments about images in some of my pieces, and I try to only use photos I took myself or in the public domain. For this idea, I needed public domain pics. Interesting fact: Any image created and distribuited by the US Government is 100% free. Enjoy!
I messed around with a few ideas and for the one I plan on executing in public, like printing and such since black and white is cheap, I did this:
I actually have another one in some color. Not much, just a little to go with what I normally do. I'll post that later.
Now, I started to mention this yesterday, but here some more detail on the subject:
When I was in art school from 2002 -2006 (worth mentioning because I think I may be among the last to learn old-fashioned principals of design... or sound like an ass for saying that), there were teachers who had been in the industry for nearly 30 - 50 years. Hearing them talk was boring at times, but hell, I learned a lot! One teacher in particular was Mr. Crawford, and he taught some really basic, really smart things. For example, when your doing a sketch of a design layout with type, make little boxes for each letter. I was, ironically enough, doing that when I was a kid so it was a pleasant surprise.
You can see little notes about the font choice. That was a big thing to me because, as much as I'm a fan of artists like Brute and Shepard Farely, I never want to just copy them. I hate copying my hero's, it feels like I'm ripping them off. I'd rather just learn from them and make it my own. So in this case, I was looking at the work of Brute and realized that using Impact for everything would be ripping him off. For that "RULES" series I did, and all my propaganda pieces, all the fonts are Arial Black (oops, gave away a secret!) that I've modified. In the case, I didn't think it would work so I wound up using some new font I got. I can't recall the name... it started with an "F" but it wasn't Franklin Gothic... eh, anyway, that's besides the point.
I've been getting some really rude comments about images in some of my pieces, and I try to only use photos I took myself or in the public domain. For this idea, I needed public domain pics. Interesting fact: Any image created and distribuited by the US Government is 100% free. Enjoy!
I messed around with a few ideas and for the one I plan on executing in public, like printing and such since black and white is cheap, I did this:
I actually have another one in some color. Not much, just a little to go with what I normally do. I'll post that later.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Some New Sketches from January 21 - 22
I'm going to have a post about artists I'm checking out, but once again I'm going to make a renewed effort to post more here.
That said, here's some pieces I did over the last few days in my sketch book. Some of them lead to other finishes, as you'll see. It's always interesting to me to see the thought process.
The first one here is a Vulture. I took a photo, printed it out, and drew from it. Yeah, there are plenty of vultures in Philly, but none of them look like the one I wanted; the ones around here look like human beings.
So next up are some sketches of various projects I have in mind that involve, you guessed it, the vulture. I did these yesterday after the inauguration and was inspired but a lot of the imagery. I wanted to do a faux-presidential seal for a few months now (wow, that's a long time!) and finally decided to give it a shot. The entire "He's Watching" thing is based on how Obama voted in favor of keeping wiretaps... and the fact that his face seems to be everywhere. Am I the only one who thinks that's like "1984"? Eh...
I'm posting the sketch now, but I'll do the reveal tomorrow. How do I like to develop an idea?
Well, for anything that's purely design, 99% of the time I just wing it on a computer. It tends to be better than me over-thinking it and, in my daily job, I kinda have to. So it's rare that I do a full semi-detailed sketch of what I plan on doing. You can see in the sketch above that I laid out my type in boxes. I had an old design teacher teach me that... but that's another day. The entire idea was to create something that I could make into about 9ft by 3ft, maybe even larger. I'm going to ask around about doing "Street art"... anyway, here's the thing:
That said, here's some pieces I did over the last few days in my sketch book. Some of them lead to other finishes, as you'll see. It's always interesting to me to see the thought process.
The first one here is a Vulture. I took a photo, printed it out, and drew from it. Yeah, there are plenty of vultures in Philly, but none of them look like the one I wanted; the ones around here look like human beings.
So next up are some sketches of various projects I have in mind that involve, you guessed it, the vulture. I did these yesterday after the inauguration and was inspired but a lot of the imagery. I wanted to do a faux-presidential seal for a few months now (wow, that's a long time!) and finally decided to give it a shot. The entire "He's Watching" thing is based on how Obama voted in favor of keeping wiretaps... and the fact that his face seems to be everywhere. Am I the only one who thinks that's like "1984"? Eh...
I'm posting the sketch now, but I'll do the reveal tomorrow. How do I like to develop an idea?
Well, for anything that's purely design, 99% of the time I just wing it on a computer. It tends to be better than me over-thinking it and, in my daily job, I kinda have to. So it's rare that I do a full semi-detailed sketch of what I plan on doing. You can see in the sketch above that I laid out my type in boxes. I had an old design teacher teach me that... but that's another day. The entire idea was to create something that I could make into about 9ft by 3ft, maybe even larger. I'm going to ask around about doing "Street art"... anyway, here's the thing:
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