Sitting around with Bagels

You'll find below:
-Page four of the bagel comic. I decided to change a few things about how I approach the story/the drawing for the next few pages after this one so I'm no longer sure how long it will be. Planning's for squares and successful people!
-Some little watercolours I made on the paper that my parents were so kind as to mail to me all the way from the PacNW. The first couple were scanned but the others were just captured with my crappy digital camera so they are a little dark/weird.

Enjoy & Fullview xoxoxox

A Warm Week

It's been pretty hot recently, a trend which I expect to continue for the remainder of my stay. Time seems to be passing all too quickly. Anyway, here's some more sketchbook documentation, chronologically. As always, things look much better if you fullview for some reason.

Places I've Sat

I've never been one for drawing environments too much, I'm much more of a figure person, but lately I've been enjoying sitting in one spot for a while and just drawing my immediate surroundings. It's kind of like a puzzle - trying to make all the perspective and proportions line up on the fly in pen.

I'm hoping to get a little faster at these and maybe try to sell some drawings in my free time (while making other drawings?) to tourists, since my internship is sadly unpaid.

(embiggen em)

Park St. Viateur...there is a very shallow moat sort of thing that creates a small island in the center (this is where I am sitting)

looking out the door at Le Cagibi, my favourite cafe so far.

Rue saint viateur and avenue de l'esplanade, not far from my apartment. Behind me is a cafe/bar where all the italians hang out to argue and watch football

Comics & Bits from Winterlude

Since RISD's schedule is an odd little arrangement due to Wintersession, I just wrapped up a compact weeklong break from school. I was lucky enough to spend it visiting home to see some family...and get my wisdom teeth pulled. During the time I wasn't lying around wallowing in nausea and self pity, I managed to get a few minor things drawn. Here they are, in roughly reverse chronological order:

First page of a comic that I would like to continue in my free time...Kind of a light thing to explore some ideas and practice with nibz. 

I asked at the dentist's office if I could keep the tooth fragments, and they sent me home with the pieces (two intact, the rest in bits) inside a larger plastic tooth container. Pretty meta...Anyway, I wanted to colour this but I had some technical difficulties. Later.

I got to spend a hot minute at the Gauguin exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum with my dear parents and got some sketching in. I actually returned a couple days later and made some better drawings, which I can post when I return to PVD.

Very rushed drawings due to grumpy security guards.

A quick digital color thing applied to a sketchbook drawing. I forgot how much easier things are with a tablet...being stuck with just a mouse seemed to make the simplest Ps tasks a huge pain.

Pretty self explanatory? I really did often just eat slices of cheese with pizza sauce by the way. And it was delicious every time.

A couple revisions

I reworked two of my XX/XY projects slightly based on critiques I received in class and on the big scary world of the internet.

What's new? Text bubble, no more lines behind the figures, a few minor adjustments to the bodies. Most significantly, person #6 lost her giraffe legs and person #7 has top surgery scars. It's still not where I'd like it to be, but hopefully it is less problematic (visually & conceptually) than the original image. Next!

This was pretty difficult to revise since it started out as a fairly small ink drawing. Mary sat down in a chair and put on some pants (she's no longer stuck wearing an impractically long dress). Meanwhile, the plants on the right grew a an inch or so and jesus put on some brighter shoes. Half the revisions were made directly onto the original via white gouache and more ink, but the entire pants & chair area was drawn on a separate page and photoshopped in. A few more adjustments were made in photoshop to clean up stray marks. I wish I could have made Mary's halo smaller, but it turned out to be too time-consuming and frustrating a task to complete.

Advanced Drawing Final

My Advanced Drawing final was supposed to be a series of paintings, made into a book, but at the end instead of a book I made a comic page...whoops. All the paintings are based off of a jumble of WWII reference images of American planes, mechanics, and factory workers. Anyway, here's what I made:

More Machine-People

Here's a couple more bits of my advanced drawing final project. The first one is the most recent piece (and perhaps my favourite so far), and the second is one of the earliest experiments I made for the project. You can see I deviated pretty far from my initial vision. This is mostly due to A) reading too much moebius B) switching from bristol to watercolour paper C) figuring out how my new paint set works, sort of.

Both are about 7"x8".

On "Break"

I made it to Thanksgiving break in one piece! This calls for a celebration! Oh, wait, I have work to do, sorry. I'll push that celebration back until the winter holiday break. In the mean time I'll keep chugging away on my finals and trying to chip away at my cynicism problem.

Anyway, I've got a load of stuff to scan and upload, but even more that I just need to keep working on between now and December 16. In the mean time, here is an isolated piece from a series I'm working on for my Advanced Drawing final.

"You're Making Me Feel Bad"

This week went really well for me work-wise. I don't know if I'd call it a breakthrough, but I was just unusually happy with everything I made. On the other hand, I had to sacrifice all activities besides sleeping, eating, and working to get everything done. The only time I wasted went to a couple hours at the grocery store and savers. Anyway, I made this artists's book for my advanced drawing class.

It's a little hard to explain, but it makes way more sense if you get the process so bear with me. The assignment was to do a "collaborative drawing", but since I hate collaborative projects at school, I decided to do something that minimized the amount of collaboration. I got about 20 or 30 of my friends to make me a small drawing of something that made them feel "anxious, nervous, sad, or generally bad." Once I collected all the drawings, I was struck by how petty our troubles were: getting too hot in a sweater, feeling uncomfortable when looking at the homeless, having "itchy pubes", etc. So I stained the paper and proceeded to paint on top portraits of people with real, desperate problems, like natural disasters, extreme poverty, or war. This was a weird experience for me, because I felt like I was exploiting these people by using their situations to make my own project. So between the original drawings, the contrast with the painted portraits, and the feeling of exploitation, the whole project made me feel...well...bad. The book is an encapsulation of feeling bad and the shades of meaning within the statement "I feel bad".

Now that block of text is over, here's some photos and scans of the pages.

Accelerated Atelier Figure

Here's a drawing I did in Advanced Drawing a couple weeks ago in an attempt to follow the atelier style. I only got to put in about 2-3 hours in, but there are certain things I see developing that are pleasing to me.

Sketchbook Page

I went to a lecture by famous illustrator/painter James Jean last night, and was thus inspired to do a million more anatomical sketches and studies. I already do anatomical studies for fun, but seeing James' sketchbooks made me realize that I need to do more. So here's one spread representing part of today's sketches.

Recently, I look like this

Vine charcoal self portrait for my advanced drawing class. Just a straight up, studied self portrait from staring at my face in a mirror for five or so hours.

Edit: Actually, its pretty interesting to compare this to a self portrait assignment from my freshman year (below). I'm guessing I spent an slightly more time on this earlier piece, although there were more faces to do. But regardless, I feel a bit better about my current portrait, putting it next to something from two years ago...

Comics#1111111

I had my second comics class today and turned in my first assignment (One finished, self-contained page). I  can see how far I am right now from where I would like to be in terms of technical skill, composition, etc., and it is more than a little disquieting. View my first comic for the class below, forgive the necessary profanity. Also note the hour-long Moebius master-copy Shanth had us make from a projection in class. It's shocking/humbling/embarrassing to think that this is all I can accomplish in an hour.

So much to study and draw. So much to read and watch. Gotta run.

"For the Sport"

In-class Moebius master-copy

Rapidograph Love

Some sketchbook pieces made with the rapidographs my parents were so generous to gift me.

Gross self portrait

Excuse to use ALL THE COPICS

Sketches of Late

I've been doing a lot more sketches than usual in anxious anticipation of the school year starting. Here's a sample...

Inane Comix

Action Figure / Gestures

Typical of my time at a coffee shop