Death of the Jabberwock

This week's illustration project. I hate it a little. Gouache, 14"x21"

The Question Arises: Will I ever post something other than illustration?

This week's prompt: depict fear, anger, or joy using only figures and abstract elements. Naturally, I chose to show a peaceful zombie scene.

Approx 13"x15"

Ink on Bristol

Moar Illustration

This week's illustration project: convey sadness, anger, or joy through an illustration devoid of figures, animals, or clothing with a monotone palette. I decided to try and tell a story in my image to accomplish this, perhaps of a man receiving a letter with devastating news (a break up, a death, etc) who drowns his sadness in alcohol. Or something like that. It's open to interpretation.

Note to parents: Fear not, I do not own the bottle depicted in my painting. I extrapolated from this image I found on google.

Gouache on Bristol, approximately 14"x15.5"

Back at the Rhodes School of Island Design

Well, here I am back at RISD, into my second week of classes. Feels like home. Anyway, here's my first assignment completed this year for my illustration class. Prompt was to evoke a single word with any type of illustration.

Spoiler: My word was "lost"

HL Fanart + Foot study + Photoshop practice

That's all there is to say...

Ink, 14x17

Ink, 14"x17"

Sketchbook, ink & pencil

Photoshop, 1200 x 2700 pixels

WSA Web Refresh

More stuff from my internship! I was assigned to create a new background (+header and footer) for my high school's web page for the new school year. The design isn't live yet, but hopefully once we have some time we can work out the details and put it up...

Stompbox Business Card Design

A month or so ago I designed the business cards for Stompbox Creative (where I'm interning). For anyone interested, here's what both sides look like:

Guide to the Hides

30" x 40" Mixed media on illustration board

A narrative map for 2D class about the thrill of finding hidden or overlooked spots and exploring their potential.

Extracurriculars

Despite my packed studio schedule, at RISD we still manage to make time for extracurriculars. Clubs and sports are of course part of this, but what I consider more important are the excursions we organize on our own -- sometimes spontaneously, sometimes months in advance. In any case, here are some things I've been up to besides working recently:

Devotchka and Gogol Bordello at the House of Blues in Boston
An incredible concert that was well worth the travel time and preparations. Gogol Bordello remains as my favorite group to watch live. Their new album came out April 27, and I suggest that anyone with a remote interest in Gogol Bordello to pick it up.















Z-Day (Or the H1Z1 outbreak)
Every year, hundreds of Brown and RISD students (and others!) join a zombie horde to shamble over Thayer St. and parts of the Brown campus.





Urban Exploration
As part of a 2D project, we explored an abandoned arcade with surprising results.







With finals month gearing up, my amount of free time is already diminishing...but hopefully I'll still have time for a few extracurriculars!

2D and 3D Final Projects!

After many hours of toil and frustration I have finished two of my final projects. I am always curious to see how many hours go into the pieces I make at RISD but honestly I have no idea. It should be enough to say that in the past week my average bedtime has been 5am. But really the fatigue doesn't matter when you're doing something that truly fascinates you.

In any case, for my 3D project I made a sort of soap box car, loosely based off of a prototype I made earlier in the year. Working on it was a series of failures, redesigns, and reconstructions. I never learned how to use power tools with any semblance of skill, so I used this project as my own personal woodshop class. While the car (working title: rocketcar) didn't turn out like the idealized image I had first envisioned, I am happy with the amount of learning that took place while working on the assignment. I would love to make another soap-box style car again in the summer if I have the time and money.

The rocketcar does not have true axles. In each "axle" there is a five inch lag bolt in the 2x4 where the wheel (plywood) connects. Each wheel therefore rotates independently. The car has steering by means of pushing the front axle with your feet. I unfortunately did not put in any brakes yet, so I won't be flying down College Hill anytime soon -- But the car is functional and I would estimate holds up to 180lb.


I test out the car during crit


Comparison to my early prototype (illustration board)

My 2D project, entitled "Furs," is a short animation based on the concept of climate change. It is comprised of approximately 250 hand drawn and scanned frames on tracing paper. I unfortunately had to put the thing together in iMovie, which probably added at least three hours to the editing time. I started with the idea of animals removing their fur as one would take off articles of clothing. It turned out a lot darker than originally intended, but I suppose that's all you can expect from such a creepy idea.



Still to be completed is my drawing project, art history final, and a research paper for English...But with these two projects out of the way my workload is essentially halved. Maybe I'll get some sleep this week? One can only hope.

Cape Cod Trip

Monday was our trip to Cape Cod! My 3D teacher, the awesome Eddie Oates, took us to his house -- which is also a museum of his own work over the last thirty or so years. It was inspiring to see the variety and originality in his pieces. Also interesting was a series of around one hundred sketchbooks containing self portraits. Eddie has drawn a self portrait once a day for thirty years.


Jay grabs a nap on the hour-long ride


Eddie Shows us around the place


Interesting piece from a larger series


My favorite piece from Eddie's museum

Anyway, once our tour of his museum was over we rode over to the beach. It was very cold and windy, but the wave action was fantastic and more than made up for any discomfort.





Intense waves...


It was so cold!


An adorable and friendly dog came to say hi!


But soon ran back to her owner :(


Section eleven and Eddie!

I finally took some pictures from my work in 2D class. So far it's mostly just exercises in tone and colour. Here is a series of 8x8 gouache paintings for this purpose:


Some of my black and white compositions


Recent colour compositions (second is a study for the third)

Time for a nap after all this blogging...RISD rocks.