"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.

Shifter

After a lot of sleep deprivation and ink stains I finished my Tezuka themed comic ("Shifter") for today. It was received far better than I could have hoped, which was nice since I invested a lot of time and effort into making it. It was also good to know that I could finish four pages in two weeks, which is nothing compared to Tezuka's god-like output, but an improvement over the one page a week pace I'd been working at previously.

Next week's assignment is to redesign/redraw/rework these pages, so this is really still a work in progress.

Halloween Diorama

I don't really enjoy making cute things. Although I love me some kitsch now and then and I enjoy doodling weird monsters, drawing happy children is not my strong point. Despite this handicap, I pushed through on my "halloween diorama" artist's book assignment. I actually drew this out in pen and ink, intending to color by hand, but was told in class to try it with photoshop (and I'm glad I did). The only annoyances were having to pay a print shop to print out several copies for me and having to cut all the tiny little edges on the trees and kids a second time.

I can't get over how much I like doing the covers for these books. Something about thick, soft paper wrapped around a solid rectangle is really satisfying for some reason.

If only that horse costume was real

Disregard the ghost behind the book

Nothing on the cover for now

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.

Tezuka-mania

My current comics project is to make a comic of several pages that is informed and inspired by the methods of Osamu Tezuka. If you haven't heard, Tezuka was rightly considered the "God of Manga" and possibly created more comics than any artist in history. Several of his works famous in the states are Astro Boy, Phoenix, Black Jack, and Buddha. I'm a huge fan of his work and I'm currently waiting for the return of Phoenix pt. 7 to the library. I made a couple of scans from Phoenix pt. 5 for reference, they give a pretty good idea of what I'm looking to pull from in Tezuka's work.

My project will be 3-5 pages and is set in a futuristic environment inspired by Tezuka's worlds. I just finished the first page yesterday, seen below.

I've got high hopes for this project! Below is a sketchbook spread that includes the thumbnail  I used to plan this page. You'll notice that it's fairly refined, and that's because I went through two or three messier versions on the previous page. On to the next one...

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...

Dream Sequence

Last week's comic: a dream sequence, starring yourself, set in Providence, ligne-claire style. Here I wander around in my underwear and decapitate Roger Williams in Prospect Park. Woop!