Sketch book peek

So, once again I have not been uploading much! It's not that I am not working, I just don't scan stuff. However, I took the time today to scan my sketchbook and upload it here. These sketches include drawings for school projects and random doodles when I am bored. I recently had a felt pen and marker obsession because they are great for coloring solid spaces fast and the colors are always so rich. I had a lot of fun doing those jacket drawings because they were so spontaneous and intuitive.

Recent schoolwork..

This was made for my Digital Imagining class at Emily Carr, and the assignment itself was quite cheesy. We had to create a "self-portrait with a minimum of two quotes" and it had to be created entirely in Illustrator without the trace tool. Damn, after this project I am actually staying away from Illustrator while I experience Bezier curve withdrawal for a bit first. I realized just how time-consuming digital inking is! The final outcome looks really clean, and I am pleased with how it turned out. Final time spent: I dont really want to know, too many hours.


Final

Mock-up

Piano Lessons Poster

Over the weekend, I threw together a poster for Chris Arrific to promote his piano lessons! He originally wanted the new words over the old show poster design I did for him a while back, but I opted for a similar concept that will be able to accommodate tear off numbers. I kept the piano's keys as teeth, but this time they double for number slips as well! Doing this poster let me escape from doing boring design homework.

Sketchbook 2009 Updates

Wow, once again I am tardy at uploading stuff onto this blog! It really is pathetic that my latest entry was in August or something. I shall blame it on blogspot not being as user friendly as I expected. I would like to try out wordpress or something because uploading photos onto blogspot is frustrating still.

Anyways, these are some sketchbook drawings done over the summer while I was gallery sitting at Little Mountain. These were based off photos in National Geographic, and it was a great method of trying out watercolor tricks.



Some of you may recognize this door! It is the door to Little Mountain Gallery.

Fun Times - Hand Painted Shoe!

For the Fundraiser for Fundraisers show, I got to hand paint a pair of my mom's never been worn Nike Airs from '92! It was great painting a pair of white shoes, because I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted to them. I wanted to keep them simple though, without too many graphics. They were very time consuming because it was my first time painting paneled shoes, and I wasn't quite sure of the materials to use! The most trouble I had was with covering up the dry panels, but I figured out a good method using paper towel because it doesn't stick (do NOT use tape! or cellophane, as some tutorials may say!). I had a lot of fun painting them and a rewarding experience. I was bummed they didn't sell at the show. C'mon, $100 is a decent price (vintage + brand new + hand painted)!


(click the images for a bigger view, as some pics are cut off. i haven't quite figured out a good method yet to upload pictures.)

Fundraiser for Fundraisers Sneakpeek

The art show at Little Mountain Gallery is coming up in less than two weeks and I am very excited to see how everything is going to unfold. The show will consist of Tevis' and my artwork, along with many donated pieces from various artists. I am very amazed at just how helpful and generous the people around us can be, and for them I am very grateful. Without them, there will certainly be no show.

I am looking forward to this show because it is a great chance for many of my friends who donated work to finally show off their talent to the public! The great thing about these shows is that you never know who will see your artwork and what reactions they will have towards to your work.

So, in anticipation of the show, I am posting the process of a piece that I just finished, entitled "Let's Ride Together!" Done with pencil crayon on tracing paper and paper.


Final composition with tracing paper overlay.
Pencil crayon underneath.Pencil crayon on both sides of the tracing paper. Tracing paper is magic, I swear.Sketches. I discovered that working on graph paper helps a lot, even for doodles.

T-shirt design for Young Life New West

So I was recently asked to do a design for a tee for YoungLife New West (hook-ups from my sister because she works there) to be worn by kids going to a camp in RockRidge. The basic guidelines were to create something that these kids (in their teens, i guess) would keep on wearing outside of camp. I don't know if I may have accomplished that or not, considering the color was seafoam, which may not go too well with the dudes. But that's "in" now right? Wearing ridiculous colors are cool. Thank goodness they didn't want collared shirts, so all the kids can pop their collars and be super "awesome".

So the idea for the shirt came from making these new west stickers, which turned out a lot better than i thought it would! My other doodles have been not too great because I had to go the commercial route and design something that kids in high school would wear. My main influence was Hydro74, a rad designer that does a lot of commercial stuff. I chose him because all of his designs look similar but still very distinctly Hydro74. Very marketable.

I printed out a few designs and crumpled them up and rescanned them to get a plausible aged look, rather than throw a bunch of fancy brush effects on them. I had to play a bit with the ripped sticker bits, but the magic of photoshop never fails. Overall, I was really stoked on the bird design, but I think they will be picking the sticker design. Goes better with guys in gr. 12..


Good ol' threadless template.. comes in handy for everything.