Scratch Board

Neon signs and rainy streets are awesome.

Little Red Riding Hood

I had to come up with a monochrome illustration in a vertical format for the story Little Red Riding Hood. I really wanted to do a piece that had a different take on the story. After thumbnailing a few ideas, I sketched out this rainy alleyway in pen with Lil' Red being the only color in the piece. I painted the final image digitally.

Another thumbnail idea I came up with was making Little Red a Russian sniper in Stalingrad during WWII. I could see the story in my head with the wolf being a German counter-sniper or spy and grandmas house is a key strategic point. Little Red is red because she's communist. I think the idea fell a little too far from the tree to be used in class, but I painted my thumbnail up anyways for fun.

Watercolors

I enjoyed doing these pieces after learning a good way to approach watercolor painting in media class. I  wish to do a few more when I get a chance. Below are the pieces I did for class.

And below are just some I did in my sketchbook for practice and fun.

Pen and Ink

Just finished up working with pen and ink in media class. For a final piece I did an eel because I liked the patterning on it.

The rest of these pieces are just some quick studies and sketches.

Gibson Girl Copies

Franklin Booth-esque sketches

Industrial sketches

woof.

First Oil Painting

First time using oil paints ever I painted this still life. I definitely enjoy the flow of them that you can't get with acrylics.

Monochrome Cowboy

I decided to try using a monochromatic color scheme for a painting this week. I just started randomly sketching this cowboy out in photoshop and decided to paint him in shades of yellow-orange to give that sunset feel. It was interesting playing around with the temperature of the hue by pushing it towards yellow or red. I'm pleased with the way it came out although some spots made need a little more refinement.

A Robot and Custom Shape Sketches

Last week I made this piece to experiment with edges. The composition was odd to work with, but it helped me use hard and soft edges to create a focal point. I tried to play with leaving the background abstract, but I feel I may have left it a little too messy.

This week I found a new technique using custom shapes to paint and create quick compositions on the conceptart.org forums. I decided to try my hand at it, so I went out and took some photos of the random half built and rusted out machines lying around my dad's farm. I silhouetted and combined them to make some scifi shapes to use with the custom shape tool in photoshop. By using the custom shape tool you're given more control over the size, proportions and placement of the shapes than the brush tool, it's easy to throw together some quick compositions like the one I did below in about 10 minutes.

Also by utilizing multiple layers it's easy to paint into the shapes while still maintaining their edge with the transparency lock on. I did these value sketches to experiment with the different shapes. I spent about 20-45 minutes on each one.