Anatomy Sketches in Blue

Just some dudes in blue gouache.

Work in Progress: "Reckless"

To celebrate my summer break, I'm working on a new piece! Wait a minute...working? I was never really good at breaks.

Here's my initial thumbnail. I have a little bit of background story for this floating in my head, which made it easier to imagine a scenario for my flying eel beast and its rider. In short, you've got a world in the clouds with cloud people and cool flying creatures that resemble aquatic fauna.

At this point, I had built my flying creature maquette and then found a more dynamic pose. I re-drew my thumbnail referring back to this new pose and also broke things down to more abstract shapes. I could more easily see how the foreground and background shapes interacted. Also important at this point was determining the lighting before I took my final reference photos of my flying creature. I thought a nice light from the top left would be flattering. It would add some drama by contrasting with the gloomy lighting of the storm clouds.

Here's the beast! He's made of foil, tape, paper, and magic. I would usually add a layer of Sculpey clay on top, but it occurred to me that he is much more poseable without it. Also, the wrinkley texture from the tape works really well as it is.

A head! It belongs to the rider. I may have other plans to draw more of this character, so I spent a good two days on the head. I may bake this one, unlike my other sculptures, which I usually recycle. The eyes are baked Sculpey that have been painted white with acrylic paint.

Here's the pose I'll be using for my painting. The image has actually been reversed so I could have the smirky side of the face facing left.

Here's the shot I will be getting most of my lighting reference from. Natural lighting is a beautiful thing.

Other reference that you don't see here include those I have for the rider's pose, the clouds, and various aquatic creatures to inform my flying beast.

The current progress of the painting. Good reference makes your life so much easier. From here, it's just about adding small touches to bring the characters to life and adding color once I'm happy with the underpainting.

Poses and Noses

Just a little page from my sketchbook of two sculpted figures and bits of faces. Gouache on toned paper (recycled file folder) as usual.

The Giver and a Facelift

Here is a cover I recently made for The Giver as my final project for my Illustration Markets class.

 

Even though I wasn't able to avoid all of the tangencies, I'm pretty happy with my clever title treatment. I don't usually create my own "font", so it's a small victory for me and my typographic endeavors.

In recent news, I updated the banner and will be re-organizing my gallery pages in the near future.

Dragon Con Poster

My portfolio is lacking in dragons.

 

The solution? Make a mock-poster for the Dragon Con Independent Film Festival. I approached the project like I was receiving art direction from an art director for the event. Aside from the fact that I was receiving art direction from my teacher and peers (for which I am grateful), I took into account that all of the posters in the past had dragons and usually something related to film.

 These are the comps I made for class. The third one was a new idea that came to me after I finished the first two comps. I like the concept, but I think the execution is much less successful than the other two. 

 

Here is the poster as it stood before critiques.

Here is the final poster with some revisions I made after critiques. More information about the festival can be found at the official website.

Adopt a Griffin

You could be the proud parent of my baby griffin painting. It is now for sale at the ArtOrder Store along with many fantastical works of art. 

Guest Post: Funny Bones

 I would like to introduce my amazing sister, Kelsey Broersma. I will be enriching my blog with her insightful posts from time to time. You can see her full blog at kbroersma.blogspot.com. Enjoy her post on skulls: 


I love science, especially biology. As a kid, owning pets, watching Animal Planet, reading National Geographic, and discovering the ecosystem in my backyard fed my desire to learn more about the animal kingdom. As an adult, I still do all of those things and the natural world never ceases to amaze me. Drawing is learning. When I take the time to study a found object, I am amazed by its structure and complexity.

I received a partial skull and eagerly awaited to make a few skull studies. I believe it is a raccoon skull, but it could pass for an opossum too. The skull's small size made it ideal for life drawing--I kept the studies "sight-sized", a technique where you draw the object the exact size you perceive it whether it is next to your paper or several feet in front of you.

I took my skull theme to the internet, where I pulled dozens of animal skull images. I wanted to represent as many animals I could, so I ended up drawing twenty skulls including reptiles, mammals, amphibians, fish and birds. How many skulls can you identify?

Profile images display the most striking characteristics, so I let that rule guide my reference selection. Make sure you click on the image to enlarge it! I shaded the darkest areas to simplify the overall form.

If you want to see more scientific illustration, I recommend Cal State Monterey Bay's student gallery.
Have fun discovering!