The 35th Humana Festival of New American Plays

A poster I designed will be displayed at the 35th Humana Festival from February 21 to March 28. So if any of you guys are planning to go to Louisville, Kentucky around that time, then...yeah.

But this poster was a lot of work. I basically did little paintings of characters from famous plays.
Plays I used for inspiration include, Inherit the Wind, the Man Who Came to Dinner, Recent Tragic Events, Death of a Salesman and All My Sons. I pretty much did every painting in one sitting, took about 18 hours. Phew. (They're all Gouache on 4-ply bristol vellum, 5 x 5)













and here is the final poster!



Another productive week! hells yeah!

work from THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

Here's some stuff from this week. The one below is a personal work I did this thanksgiving weekend. I'm trying to create fun characters and put them in cool surroundings. I need to work on lighting.
This is the PLANSPONSORS bells and whistles piece that I did for SooJin Buzelli's Class. It came out okay. Tad bit Chaotic. (ooh, try saying that five times. tad bit chaotic tad bit chaotic tab dit taotic dab tit taotic tab...DAMN!)


An Oil painting I'm working on...so different from my gouache stuff. wowzers!

THE NEW YORKER!

For Tomer Hanuka's portfolio class, he wanted us to do a cover for the New Yorker, which was really fun. So I did one regarding New York's high tourist populous, but I kept it from being too cynical. It's just happy and fun.

I really love how it turned out. I think I found my artistic medium soul mate because I'm in love with gouache. Hopefully I'll submit it to "the New Yorker" but after I figure out how. hmm...

Thy Self-Portrait

here's a little avatar I painted for my business card, which should be finished real soon!

Notice how I painted myself with my trademark tumbleweed hair,my plaid shirts, and my gleeful smile of gleefulness.

GOUACHE DARN IT PART DEUX: lots and lots of work

Here is everything I did from Sunday to Tuesday. Phew, I've been busy. But I'm also having tons of fun, and that's what really matters.

These first two pieces are for Soojin Buzelli's class, my favorite class this semester (right up there with portfolio class with Tomer Hanuka's class). The third piece I did for fun and possibly as a promotional piece. The fourth one, was also for fun. The last one is for Tomer's portfolio class. They're all gouache on 4-ply bristol.

THE PROCESS

Here's a quick run through of my process. And I am going to use my most recent project as an example.

So I had to do an illustration for Soojin Buzelli's class and we had to illustrate something for this thing called "HOT OFF THE PRESSES" that's always featured on PLANADVISER magazine. So I sent the teacher four sketches. (Below)



The fourth sketch (the tiki-running on hot coal) got approved but she "art-directed" me and e-mailed me saying she wanted more tiki-men (and tiki-women) and she wanted them to be dancing on fire rather than running on hot coal looking like they're in excruciating pain, which makes sense. So after I read her e-mail, I did a sketch right away, and e-mailed her back in an hour with this.


I then did a quick color study (will post soon)

Then I went and did the final. The piece was supposed to 8.25 by 2.5 with bleed. But I needed to work larger for the small detail, so I increased the size by 1.4 (11.9 by 3.85 inches) and then I did the gouache painting in that size and made it the correct size on photoshop. The painting took about 8 hours, and here's the final below.



I'm very happy with it, overall a success. I used more pure colors and mixed less. I even used the cadium red and some yellows straight out of the tube, so I can keep the bright fun colors.

R.I.P. OLD HEADER! July 2009 - November 2009

I will truly miss you, old blog header.
and I will post a picture a picture of you so I will never forget.

Goodbye.

But let's not be too sad. For I have a cool new one.

PATTON OSWALT AND OTHER WORKS!

Here's a portrait I did of PATTON OSWALT, My favorite stand-up comedian of all time. I'm a big fan of "comedy through word choice" as I call it, and Patton is a masterful magician of word choice, garnishes every joke with delectable vocabulary. This is a terrible description. But anyways, you can tell he was an English major. So, I based the illustration off of one of his jokes from his recent "MY WEAKNESS IS STRONG" where he talks about how he has become such a negative sarcastic person that it's really difficult for him to be around happy little children who admire his Ratatouille work. It's done on Acrylic on bristol mounted on masonite. It was fun drawing these little Linguini's and Remy's.

Here's a piece I did for Tomer's class. It's based off of Sloth, one of the deadly sins. The guy is drowning in his bed. Gouache on 4-ply bristol.

GOING DIGITAL!

So I finally started working on digital art, and the transition from my traditional approach of illustrating has been much much smoother than I expected. All those times I messed with photoshop to place photos of my friends in embarrassing situations and funny backgrounds worked out; it kept my photoshop skills from deteriorating! hurrah! The first piece here was done earlier this week for Tomer Hanuka's class and I consider it a success except it deviates away from my usual style. The illustration is about Capgras Syndrome: a disorder that causes a person to think that his/her loved ones are actually identical looking imposters. That's no fun.


Ok, so I did this work below to experiment with digital coloring. (and it's totally my style!) I only use the "polygonal lasso tool" to make these random color shapes. It looks rough at first but once these shapes blend with the other shapes, it starts to smooth out and it gives it a real original look that I'm very happy with. This technique is kind of how I oil paint or do watercolors; let colors overlap and build up to create depth and shape...it's like two-dimensional sculpting.

I HEART TYPOGRAPHY!

oops...will post soon. I need to take some photos of things first...

ALIEN INVASION SKETCH

PIZZA BOY OF THE FUTURE!!

This is a piece that I did for fun. However, the acrylic finish was disappointing. It was a little too muddled. I'm considering using the computer next time. I really enjoyed doing the sketches though and it was really fun designing the pizza boy's flying scooter.

OWL!

I LIKE IT!!!

So here is a self portrait that I haven't finished yet...
but for now...I LIKE IT!

GOUACHE DARN IT!! (get it? it's a pun.)

So this past school year (my junior year) I really got into Gouache. My dream job is to work at Pixar Animation Studios, and my favorite artist from Pixar is Lou Romano and he's really my main inspiration for gouache. So these works were all done last semester. Enjoy!

JUNIOR THESIS WORKS AND ETC.

The following four images here are the oil paintings that I did for the Junior Thesis Show at the School of Visual Arts. It was risky to try a new medium for such a large project but I thought it would be a fun learning process. I was unsure about continuing with Oil Paintings but my teacher Eric White really pushed me to get back into it. And I plan to continue oil painting even for my Senior portfolio.

I also accumulated a lot of unfinished oil paintings during the last semester. I did a lot of paintings to practice technique and I also tried to finish many paintings in one sitting, which prevented me from working on parts of paintings that were really wet. So I ended up with a pile of canvases with 50% finished paintings. But I loved these paintings sometimes even more than my completed paintings.

The thing that I miss most about oil painting is how messy my studio space got...