Several Card Concepts

My final illustration project is to design the face cards (or more) and a backside to a deck of cards. Here are the concepts for my idea I will propose tomorrow. So far there is no king, hopefully I'll get around to that later today.

Backside Pattern

Fragment 4

Piece #4 my drawing series. Decided to break out my acrylics for this one. It just seemed right. I'm not quite happy with how the figures are interacting with the background, but I feel like I'm getting closer as a whole.

Fragment #4, Acrylic & Ink, 12.5" x 10"

I started with a pen and ink skeleton study for the background and worked on top of that with first ink washes, then watery acrylic. I kind of lost the skeleton a bit, which is unfortunate because I rather liked it as a study. It was actually a huge pain to make because I was using a rusty nib - I don't recommend anyone else tries this. It turned out to be extremely labour-intensive and it would have been worth walking 20 minutes to the art store to get a fresh nib. Fortunately, I took a picture of the study before I began ink washes. Here it is, as it was today at 6am (when I went to bed).

❖ HPPYTHXGVNG EVRY1 ! ❖

Fragment 3

Piece number three! This one is almost reversing the approach of the other two by going for a high contrast, high detail background with more obscured figures. I'm going to explore this more in the next piece, although I have a hunch some reconciliation between the two methods will end up as the right way to go.

Ink & Gouache, 12.5" x 10"

GIF(T)

I just learned tonight how to make animated GIFs in photoshop! Or any types of animation, for that matter. Please enjoy this pointless experiment / assault on the eyes. Images used are both mine, photo is of my good pal robbie.

Fragment 3 in alpha testing

Part one (background) of my third piece in the series. It's all rapidograph marks except for the strip on the right side. I liked how it is looking so far, so I decided to document this stage in the piece just in case I royally screw up something as I move forward. I'll be making some figures separately to cut out and place on top of the skull background. Not as morbid as it appears, promise!

Ink, 12.5" x 10"

Fragment Two

Second incarnation of my series. I'm still struggling with the direction to take it, hopefully it'll become clear with the next two pieces.

Gouache & Ink, 12.5" x 10"

Fragment (repost)

(reposted due to a display error)

here is the first piece out of a series for drawing class that eventually must total to 1000sq" (or 2000sq"? I should probably resolve that). i'm still trying to figure out how to put the concept into words, but the basic idea is an exploration of how we as humans place so much value on social interactions, while our various friendships/relationships are quite insignificant when one considers the whole. in a world of 6.7 billion people, the importance of our social successes or failures dwindles to zero very quickly. my goal for the series is to depict various personal interactions, using colour to emphasize the structure of the human body -- as we are all simply human animals in an environment. depending on your point of view, it is either incredible or ridiculous that we so highly value banal interactions with other creatures of our species, often basing our goals and actions on expected social outcome.


but i digress into rambling. hopefully by the end of the series i will have a more concise explanation.


this one didn't turn out as expected, hopefully the next...twelve or so should go better. my process is pretty simple: ink wash and lines first, then watered-down gouache used with a pen nib for the skeletons. also, bad photo.

Gouache & Ink, 12.5" x 10"

Carmen Poster Assignment

My most recent illustration project was to design a poster for a showing of Carmen in a 1:2 format, with several text requirements. We were given freedom in time period, interpretation, characters, etc. so I decided to do a more urban/contemporary character-based poster.

gouache, 9"x18"