How to Train Your Dragon

What can I say, I was inspired. I'm trying to draw every day.

Lord of the Rings

I'm reading the Lord of the Rings after reading The Hobbit, and I thought it would be fun to illustrate along with it somewhat because it has no pictures and I haven't seen any movies or fanart yet. I figured the characters could be all mine for a while.

After meeting Goldberry, looking towards the back door as the hobbits entered the house:

 

How I picture Goldberry:

 

And I completely adore Tom Bombadil:

Caricatures

I was just doodling and thought I might as well keep up with showing my work online throughout the summer. I didn't use any reference pictures, but that's because I've seen their faces everywhere, if I continue with presidents then I'll have to find something to refer to!

Yawn #5: Gran

This is the last installment on my yawn project! ...for now. This is my roommate's grandma - "Gran Gran" - and originally she had glasses, but they would be too distracting. I also made frames for this one, my self-portrait, and the baby for the Advanced Drawing student art show at the end of the semester.

UCD: Perspective

This was my perspective drawing for my UCD portfolio. I got accepted ^_^

Plan B: Graduate

The last Plan B of the semester:

Plan B: Ha!

This week's Plan B:

Yawn #4: Yours Truly

The most recent yawn, completed today in class. I feel like all of these pieces look better first hand rather than these photos, but oh well.

Plan B: Elsewhere

Many students at this university can identify with this week's comic:

ILY

This is just something I'd like to share, it spontaneously came to mind one day, and I put it together in Photoshop yesterday. I think it's cute ^_^

Plan B: Countdown

This week's Plan B:

(as of this Thursday's print)

Just your awesomely average news:

This semester has probably been the most stressful when it comes to art. This doesn't mean I'm not having fun, but I am getting more serious about doing things for portfolios, growing in skill, and doing some crazy things like airbrush and drawing pieces larger than my little sister.

I'm just here now to tell you that I have been recognized twice in the past week! [With framed proof hanging on the wall next to my bed because I said so.]

At TIPA, the editorial staff and I competed on-site in Fortworth and although it was the first time I legitimately drew an editorial for a story, I won third place! And in the competitions for previous work, I won second for the illustrations in the Halloween spread (scroll down and find Frankie).

Also, there's an annual student exhibition for the university art gallery where students may submit up to three pieces to be judged by a professional and to compete for scholarships in first, second, and third prizes. You only know if you're in when you see your work on the wall on opening night. The baby face - which I named Contagious - was on the wall, and won first prize!

Two more lines on the ole resume...feels good.

Plan B: Penny Pincher

This week's comic is admittedly a bit stupid, but I'm getting over it. I've got a busy week ahead of me!

Yawn #3: Dad

By the end of the semester I will need 5 of these yawn pieces, and this is the third, but technically it is only the second 3'x4' piece and I'd like to keep them all this large. That means, I'm only counting this as the second piece, and will need to complete three more in the coming five weeks to be done in time for the student show. Talk about stress! But I know I'll enjoy the actual drawing it entails, even if the time management needs working on.

Plan B: Waking Up

This week's comic! Brad and I are both creating weekly comics now, and they're presented together on page two of the newspaper, so no more my-week your-week going on now!

As always, click on it to see it larger:

UCD Portfolio: Self-Portrait

So far, I have the black and white photograph and the baby yawn as a print for my portfolio. I've also taken newspaper cutouts of all of my Plan B comics and used them as a free choice. There's three! The fourth of five? A self-portrait "with container," which I've chosen to be saran wrap. The fifth will hopefully be finished soon...two more weeks to go!

Plan B: Spring Break

And we're back! In body, but not in spirit. Here's the latest comic:

As always, be sure to click and view the larger image!
(making it extra-large makes it way too big for my page...)

Tattoo

One of my friends recently asked my to draw a tattoo for her; "recently" being about a month or two ago. My first permanent piece of art! I was inspired by a watercolor picture she already had, and I incorporated more of an inky fantastical style to it. She'll be getting it over the course of spring break!

This first image is black and white, because she wanted a specifically simplified and bold style applied to the original picture:

Once she was presented with this draft, she decided she would rather have a fully shaded  version that was still fairly circular to put on her shoulder. I have since completed this version and handed the original to her not too long ago. I had some difficulty deciding on what to do with the hair that just "disappears," but I finally sketched a way for it to seem to sway behind her head. It still incorporates the first ink draft, with added pencil shadings and a forehead. I like the final effect:

Yawn #2: Baby

The series continues! This piece is larger than my first yawn drawing, it's 3'x4', and the other four drawings in this portfolio will also be large. Thankfully, it also applies as one of the free choice pieces for my UCD portfolio, as long as it is printed to the right size for the matting specifications.

The layout of the image is actually horizontal like this in the photo that I used, but I actually drew it vertically. For some reason the image uploaded sideways and simply won't upload any other way. Then again, this is how it was originally supposed to be, so oh well.

UCD Portfolio: Black and White Photograph

I have been perusing my photographs from my introduction course last semester, and it was strange converting my favorites into black and white. It was like I took the life from them, because when I take a picture, I usually take it because of the color composition or contrast that I find appealing. Most of the pictures I take are because I naturally pay attention to colors...so this was a new beast to tame. I went downtown and took more pictures with black and white values specifically in mind, and I narrowed down my new and old options to five. With some help, I was convinced to print my favorite for my UCD portfolio, but I'll show you the top five options:

This is the one I'll be printing for my portfolio.

This is the original.

And the other four options:

Plan B: College Diet

This week's comic in the East Texan! You'll probably want to click on it to see it full size, the writing is very small.

UCD Portfolio

This coming fall semester will hopefully see me accepted into the Design Communications program in Dallas. I will have completed my two years of foundation courses and will spend my last three years of my Bachelor's degree at UCD learning all kinds of cool illustration doo-dads.

It's not an open invitation, though, I have to turn in a portfolio with specific requirements by April 8th to be reviewed and hopefully accepted. The first piece I want to work on is my self-portrait...the topic is "self-portrait with container." This container can be visually defined by us; meaning you can go from drawing yourself holding a cup to drawing your reflection in it, because technically it's still you with a container.

One of my first thoughts was saran wrap. I thought it would be cool to convey my face distorted by the wrap because it's clear and viewers will have to think about what it is that's changing my face, and it might even be portrayed as the paper itself being the "container" and me trying to get out.

The first picture posted is my...favorite? So far I have only had one small shoot to experiment with, and I may or may not shoot more because I feel like these pictures will do the piece justice. I just have to decide on one now.

Advanced Drawing Series

I'm taking Advanced Drawing this year, and the point of this class is to come away with a unified portfolio of five to seven pieces. Many art majors at this point - including me - have taken foundation classes, but have studied technique more that worrying about the outcome of pieces. By the time we're sophomores, and even juniors, we surely have some quality pieces, but as a whole our portfolios are weakened by the extreme variety. For this class, we came up with a solid "theme" to our portfolios, with proposals and everything.

Mine consists of six to seven huge pieces (about 38"x48") of people yawning.

I hope to get a variety of people's faces yawning and draw them with vine charcoal, and the size will hopefully give a more powerful impression upon my audience...because there will be an audience. We hope to have a student show of everyone's portfolios by the end of the year!

The East Texan: Christmas

Just as I drew a series for Halloween, I drew a series of six when Christmas rolled around. I got to use one color, so it was either going to be green or red. I chose red because I like red better and I thought it would print well. I also had to be thinking of other religions' celebrations during December; there were columns explaining traditions involving Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as well as the Christian Christmas, so I drew both of the representative menorahs.

 Hanukkah

Kwanzaa

Other than those, I had a jolly good time drawing other toons involving the Christmas spirit and I hope you enjoy them!

 

Putting this into context...we live in Texas. Even though we're getting a cold front with snow and ice (!) now, in December this last one was pretty witty, I thought.

The East Texan: Halloween

As staff cartoonist, I also get to enjoy drawing for holidays and editorial cartoons. My first big assignment was our Halloween spread, and I completed six drawings for it, three of which appeared in print. I really loved drawing these and I explored the more squiggly style, just because I wanted to I guess. I just thought it would be fun at the time, really.

 Frankie here appeared down the middle crease of the spread.

I have two colored versions that I did in Photoshop one day when I was bored, and I plan on practicing on the rest of them, too. It's good exercise with the shading tools and everything, and I like how they turned out!

The East Texan: Plan B

We're getting up to speed with my actual works-in-progress!

I have been dubbed the Staff Cartoonist of the East Texan school newspaper as of October, and as such I get to draw editorial cartoons as well as a weekly comic strip collaboration with my fellow comic artist, Bradley "Death" Ray. By "collaboration," I mean that Brad draws comics all the time and yet when he heard of the position on the paper he...told me about it. I was confused, because whereas I'm an art major and all, he's the one who is constantly drawing his little demonic doodles and toons in class. So, when I talked to the editor, I suggested we both work on the comic strip and go every other week.

Technically, I have a bi-monthly comic strip if you look at it that way. So does Bradley "Death" Ray.  We call it Plan B. To keep it unified week by week between our different drawing styles, we decided upon a central theme: the average life and events of a college student. Fairly unoriginal concept in general, and I think of it as our version of the comic strip Zits (look it up), but that doesn't make it boring or we wouldn't do it. Although it is proving difficult for me to stay away from puns.

I will be updated my comic strip every other week, but here are my comic strips that have been published in the paper thus far in my blossoming career move, in chronological order. They're in black and white because 1) that's what the newspaper says because 2) our color printing sucks anyways.

Click on them to view them larger! (and to be able to read them...)

 This one may need a bit of explaining. It wasn't published, because the week after Halloween was Brad's week to post, so by the time mine came around costumes would be a delayed reaction in...November. But I made this anyways because I enjoyed it. The first costume is Lindsay Lohan in her notorious ETSU (East Texas State University) t-shirt. This shirt caused a huge uprising from alumni from the current TAMU-Commerce University, and they didn't want her being a "role model" of their alma mater. It's easy to take their side, if they hadn't kept constantly telling her to take her shirt off and give it back.

This is for this week's issue of the East Texan. To put it in context, we have been hit with a cold front and consequently we have had ice and snow everywhere (which is a miracle in Texas), no school for three days, and rolling blackouts. This is a reaction to the latter.