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.

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ArtStudio

I’ve been working a lot in watercolor since my GMac died last spring. I found myself getting a little bored with it, so I decided to explore the drawing app ArtStudio on my iPad. I’ve owned it forever and never did anything serious with it. I took a photo and opened it in the app, which does almost everything that I use Photoshop for. I have a $10 stylus that I picked up at Walgreens, and I just dug in. I’m pretty impressed with the software. The tools are intuitive, and I like that you can rotate your drawing just like a sketchbook. This is just a work in progress that I’ll be playing with for awhile, but it’s been fun to get back into digital painting.

Background Color Studies

Good:a Gallery in North Portland’s historic Mississippi District recently asked me to do the flyer art for their Star Wars-themed group show in May. I think it turned out pretty good, considering the six-day deadline.  I’ve been trying to think of a piece to do for the show itself and I’m really into ewoks right now.  Even though I’m still not sure what I want to do with them specifically, I tried out some color studies and backgrounds on my ArtStudio iPad app with a new stylus I picked up at Walgreens for fifteen bucks. Damn things work great!

And then this happened…

I should have listened to Facebook when I asked it how to spice the owl up.  Facebook always has great ideas.

Process

Belatedly…

Wow, I’ve been horrible at updating this blawg since summer started.  I’m waiting for my Mac to come back from the shop to post my sketch dump, but in the meantime, here are some work-in-progress photos of a piece I did for a group show at work with the theme of “Ghosts.”

Puppet Swarm!

A random selection of paper puppets, backgrounds, and props from my stop-motion thesis film, “Caesura.”

Thesis Film Backgrounds

Here’s a small sample of the backgrounds I’ve been painting feverously for my thesis stop-motion film.  It’s a staggering amount of work and I have to keep reminding myself that the backgrounds don’t have to be perfect; it’s the animated puppets that will really carry the plot.  Some elements of the scenery are missing here — like arms and heads — because I’ve drawn those separately to be animated on another layer.  More to come!

 

Thesis Rabbit Walk Cycle

Some process notes I’ve done in preparation for my upcoming thesis proposal at school.

 

 

Iranon Grey

Some work in progress shots for a triptych piece intended for use as the interior of a trifold CD cover.  The album is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Quest of Iranon,” and I borrowed inspiration for the graphics from Art Nouveau’s best-kept secret, Max Benirschke.

This was my first experiment with patterning.  Click to see it bigger.  It looks sooo much better that way.

 

And here’s a rough, pre-color layout of the final image.