Ninjadump!

I’ve been working on a long-standing barter project that’s very near and dear to my heart. My 13-year-old son just received his black belt hapkido at Portland’s Ninja School, a martial arts academy specializing in Heuk Choo Kwan style that’s dedicated to their students’ transformations and sense of personal empowerment. The owners are really awesome folks, and we worked out a trade for my son’s tuition in exchange for a comic book to promote the school. It’s been a great project, and the storyline they’ve been cooking up is expanding well. Here’s a sample of the work we’ve done so far.

It Snowballed

I had some time during a webinar at work today to doodle and ended up doing a little self-portrait for a new Facebook profile image. Two of the DJs at work fell in love with it and asked for their own.

   

Reddit Gets Drawn

I recently joined Reddit (woohoo, time waster!) and discovered a subreddit in which people around the world post photos in the hopes that one of the artists in the community will draw them. It’s a surprisingly good drawing prompt. I wish people posted more pet pictures though.

Dat Town, Tho

 

Check it out! I made a giant (slightly accurate) watercolor map of Portland!

Warm-Up Doodle

La la la, I haven’t drawn in forever… la la la…

#whatiworetoday

Sketch Dump

Ethan

When you spend time with an illustrator, you become a de facto muse.

Character Portrait

This is a piece I’ve been working with off and on since classes got out. The characters are played by my friend J. Blaze Ward on the MUD Armageddon, which I’ve been playing and loving since 2006.  It’s a text-based online roleplaying game with no bells and whistles and visuals, just pure creative writing backed up by advanced DIKU code.  It blows my mind continually, you should totallytry it out.

 

Catching Up

The aforementioned prints and sketches, ladies and gentlemen.

This was a two-color woodblock print that I made for my printmaking class.  The little red heart was a rubber stamp I carved and added afterward.  Because it’s a bit of a tradition at PNCA for graduation seniors, my idea with this piece was to create a gift for the three-person faculty panel that will be overseeing my thesis presentation defense in a few short weeks.  They’re about 20×20″.

I’m in the process of finishing a series of 20 of these silkscreens, my first attempt with the medium.  It’s so much fun!  I printed these 3-color sock puppets on blank greeting cards, mostly because I wanted to thank the folks at Bent Image Lab for the awesome internship by leaving one there on my last day.  The Latin translates to “life is short, but art is forever.”  Thanks to my lovely twin sister Robyn for the sock puppet idea, too.  ❤

And this was something I scrawled in my sketchbook during class in between taking notes.

Quick side note… I’ve been meddling quite a bit with the format and routing of my blog and website lately, in preparation or graduatin’ and looking for clients.  For now, my blog will stay at the WordPress address, but I’ve finally got a simple working portfolio site up at samalacoffey.com, but .  Check it out!

Illustration Friday

An illustration I whipped out for IllustrationFriday‘s theme of “Sweater” this week.