Ian Mayhew

Overdoing it.

2012-01-27T05:52:00.000-08:00

I really shouldn't be spending so much time with these concepts...After I finish the female version, I'll start some creatures sketches and refrain from finishing them up anywhere close to this.

A little bit here and there...

2012-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Here's the first 'official' artwork for Project: Foster, a rendering of the planet the story takes place on/around, Sero 387c. It has two moons that may come into play in the story...

And here's my final entry into a contest held at Runic Games Forums-- to design an armor set for upcoming game, Torchlight II.The Crystalform GuardThe winner will be announced shortly. I like to think I've got a chance, but I've since moved on to other things. Definitely a good learning piece, and I'll be throwing up more concepts here and there as practice.P.S. Sorry I haven't changed my banner since the reformatting... I'll get to it eventually...

Project: Foster

2012-01-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

I have just finished starting a tumblr for Project: Foster, a sci-fi story/premise I gave myself nearly 2 years ago to inspire me to do concept art. Inetead, I gave myself a massive headache with the daunting task of creating an entire world, starting with the most minuscule organism, up to a greater sentience known as the Foster.

Please read, become involved, and help save me from myself!

PROJECT: FOSTER

I wish I didn't have to sleep.

2011-12-19T02:38:00.000-08:00

Started doing some art again. I was going to make it my new years resolution to paint more, but I got started early.This was for conceptart.org's Illustration of the Week #12, themed "Sci-fi Gladiator Ring".

I'm going to try to do more activities and competitions to keep my motivated. Got something else coming up so hopefully it'll end up here too.

Busy busy

2011-08-08T22:36:00.000-07:00

So life on my own is getting in the way of my art... but I'm getting used to it. I just gotta wake up at a reasonable time, work enough to pay rent, and put the time into my portfolio...
That being said, I'm finally calling this one done, and moving on to something new. Much thanks for Kyle for telling me I wasn't done when I thought I was. I ended up learning a lot.
*Click to enlarge*

'Grappler sharks' live near the surface and use the eyes on the tops of their heads as light meters to camouflague their bodies to prey that swims beneath them. Though fast on their own, they prefer to sneak up on prey and latch onto it with their pharyngeal jaws before reeling it in. In this illustration it's attacking a human in an uncharacteristic fashion, adding to the many accounts of bizarre or aggressive behavior the planet's animals exhibit in the presence of humans...

Process animation.

And some concept sketches that lead to the final painting:

GOGOGOGOGO

2011-07-17T00:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a few shots of me at my Senior Industrial Design show, with my lamp.

The show was a lot of fun. Just wish I would have taken some pictures after the sun went down...
So I've been busy trying to pay rent and get a portfolio ready before PAX this year...Here's something I "finished" a while ago. Learned a lot from it but I'm feeling pretty "meh" about it now.Life Colossus
And something I'm working on at the moment:
Grappler Shark for Project: Foster

Lamp zombie...

2011-05-22T12:16:00.001-07:00

In the works:
Getting my 1/2" glass resized so it'll fit in the waterjet machine...
Get my glass tabletop cut in the waterjet...
To be CNC'd:
-Lamp index plate (it sits under the lamp in the middle of the glass table)
-Top lamp plate
-New battery cap finger tabs
Still need to fashion the copper ring to mount the LEDs, as well as the rest of the carousel. I as least got the internal plastic pieces FDM'd.
Bondo up a mysterious gouge in my pedestal, and send it off to be painted in the middle of the week.
Polish up my shiny aluminumunimums.

Surface Tension

2011-05-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Here's the final result of the project with Kohler's Ken Hanna. Fixed up the geometry and did some fancy new renders with water, and the touch-control details on the sides of the bowl.

In case you're curious (or dubious), this is a photo of one of many experiments I did in the sink that ended up driving the form:

All of the water is wrapping around the outside of the metal, thanks to surface tension, even with a high flow of water.

Now... To finish that lamp... Just less than 3 weeks to go!

Where's the ID huh?

2011-05-10T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here are some quick renderings of the faucet/sink I'm designing...

A sensor at the bottom of the slide activates the water flow when hands are in the basin. Instead of the water spilling over the top of the slide, the water's surface tension makes it wrap down the underside before falling into the customer's hands.

I'll be investigating how to take the sink a little further (specifically adding a touch control for temperature) as well as the shape of the drain and drain stopper controls.

Hopefully not going to regret this...

2011-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

Super, super, super busy, but made myself go to figure drawing this morning. This model was a juggler. Probably the most fun I've had in a session yet.

Tried going for some realistic color this time. Definitely slowed me down, but I'll probably keep trying it.

Dammit!

2011-02-10T00:29:00.000-08:00

I want to do some art SOOO bad.

This doesn't feel right.

It was like A Beautiful Mind meets Crank...

2011-01-28T09:17:00.000-08:00

I promise not to make a habit of posting my every day life on here... Just haven't been doing any worthwhile art recently, huh?

As my alarm clock shattered the reality I had created myself in my slumber, the first thoughts in my head were: How many people did I hurt, and what happened to the girl I was just making out with?

I'll explain:

I find myself at a large social gathering of sorts, amongst friends/colleagues, and possibly family. Not exactly sure what it was for, but it seemed like we all had a mutual friend whose birthday it was. I think I was going to have to give a speech for this unknown person everyone was there to honor, but for some reason I was enthralled with these flyers scattered on all over the table. They were trifolds covered in intricate ink line drawings of a medieval town, with handwritten words (I think they were shop names...). Anyways, I become absorbed in them, and the drawings are somehow coming alive. I guess I snapped out of it and decided to get up. As I walk around the largest table in the room, I notice a girl drawing, with a stack of other doodles on the side. She was exceptionally pretty, with her blonde hair up in a wild, but classy knot of sorts. She was a very talented artist (and I think I wanted to assume she was the artist of the enchanting ink drawings on the trifolds, but didn't inquire) and I struck up conversation with her. Apparently she was a friend of a friend.

I move on into the hall, and for some reason there is a TV playing a small bit about a world-class figure-drawing model. She was posing nude in a well-lit, studio full of white drapery, with what seemed to be many geometric cardboard sculptures scattered throughout the room. She's laughing and having fun as she takes directions, trying out different poses. She crouches low to the floor and briefly looks up, and I notice it's the blonde girl from earlier. I'm spellbound (wow, Ian, an artist AND a model? surprise, surprise >___<).

Eventually I make my way back to my seat, and someone taps me on the shoulder and I see that everyone is looking at me, waiting for me to say something. I don’t know what to do, so, naturally, I laugh, and then mumble "Uhh... what the fuck am I supposed to say?" This didn't go over very well, and my profanity seemed to offend a lot of people. For some reason, I continued to curse, as if I literally had nothing else to say, and people continued to get angrier and ridicule me. I’m getting angry myself, (because, you know, all the sudden I had Tourette's) and just as things start to get violent all the sudden I begin to feel dizzy, and the walls started coming in as I stumble out of my chair and everything fades to white.

Next thing I know, I'm in a house in a small suburb cul de sac. All pretty much the same guests from the previous party, but more kids. Seems like everyone was surprised to see me after my first outburst. I feel ashamed. Nonetheless, very quickly I find myself feeling loopy, start seeing weird distortions in my vision, and the cursing fits come back. People have even less patience this time around, and begin screaming at me, and even start pushing me around. That’s when I completely lose it and start a fistfight with everyone around me. I’m in an absolute panic, throwing punches and kicking and screaming until I find myself cornered against a window. My shirt’s off and bunched in my right hand at this point (as crazy people tend to do in psychosis, right?), and I wrap it around my arm before lunging out of the window to escape. I hit the ground running (in my socks, where are my shoes?) and just book it down the road. I run until I can feel the soles of my feet hitting the asphalt after I’ve worn away the fabric on the bottom of my socks. Everything fades out again.

I’m back at what appears to be my parent’s house. That artist/model girl is there with me (maybe my sister’s friend? Haha not likely…), and she seems to be really caring, and miraculously, not judging of me based on my random-ass tantrums from earlier. We make our way back to my bedroom (not the guest bedroom I sleep in now, the one I grew up in, that still looks exactly the same since the days I played with Legos and drew Pokemon all day. We lie down on my bed with the cowboys and Indians sheets, and make out.

Then my alarm on my phone sounds and I wake up. FFFFUUUUUUUUU.

So, basically I dreamed that I lost my mind. I wasn't aware that I was crazy, but everyone else was. I met the ‘girl of my dreams’, and out of the kindness of her heart, she pulls me out of my schizophrenia, and we fall in love... dawww
Who knew she’d be a blonde?

Oh, and this is what I looked like when I woke up:

Rise and shine!

New Year

2011-01-04T12:58:00.001-08:00

My sketchbook's turned into more of a diary recently. Not sure how I feel about that.
Lots of things have happened since winter break... Just glad that school's started again and I can comfortably fall into the usual, stressful, daily grind.

A few highlights of yesterday's figure drawing session:

I think next time I'm going to take a more expressive/exaggerated approach to figure drawing. We'll see how that goes.

More Portraits

2010-12-20T01:49:00.000-08:00

You know? I have a really good-looking bunch of friends...

Rocking the boat

2010-12-14T21:15:00.000-08:00

I've been taking my tablet to my weekly figure-drawing sessions. Started out a bit rough but it's totally freeing being able to move a bit of color around and keep myself moving fast on the tablet.

Hopefully after doing these for a while I'll finally and get bored and convince myself to take watercolors with me. But, for now, I'm pretty happy with the results.

Been a year huh?

2010-12-13T16:14:00.001-08:00

A year ago I went home for winter break and immediately found myself bored out of my mind, and decided to ask all of my friends on facebook to send me photos of themselves for me to practice speed painting. I cranked about a good 16 or 17 of them in a month, and learned a lot...
I feel like doing that again this year, but I'll probably move a bit slower and not do so many... I'm taking my tablet to figure drawing to get faster. Pics of those studies will be up shortly.

The first of my 2010 batch: Spencer and Brad

First post of my last year in school

2010-11-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

... 7 or so weeks into the quarter, I finally take a breather and post here.
For a while now I've been lucky to get 7 hours of sleep in a 4-day school week. Definitely been working harder than last year... but I'm not as stressed out, somehow. If I had to guess as to why, I'd say it's because I'm really happy with my professor, and though he's an extremely intimidating individual, I think we finally have a clear and mutual respect for each other. Also, now that I'm 21 I can go out for a drink or two with my friends and colleagues, shoot the shit, and yap for hours and hours about school because that's just about all we can do.

Anyways, for those of you I am ever-neglecting to update, my lamp project has evolved since the summer. We now have a "pedestal" to go with the lamp, which sounds like a strange accompaniment to a desk lamp, but has become quite an interesting problem. We have fairly free-reign over what the purpose of the pedestal is (as long as their IS a purpose).
So this is what it looks like after working all night in the CAD lab. These were rendered in a pretty sub-par program but they pop out fast so I can render changing concepts as I go.

The top of the lamp rotates, and the lamp is only lit when the edges are aligned. Tiny magnets offer a little feedback as well. When the lamp is sitting in its tiny index in the pedestal's table, the form is continued down to the base. This way, the user is encouraged to turn on the lamp by "normalizing" its shape, and hence its purpose: to be a light.

So now is the scary part-- where we have to build it. I'm looking for an aluminum sculptor/welder, or a commercial/industrial specialist who isn't afraid to tackle something of such small scale. The top diffuser will be SLA'd or FDM'd, depending on the properties of samples I have yet to acquire.

And for those of you that could care less about ID and weren't impressed by the pictures, this is a teaser to a painting I've been working on in my little spare time for the sketchgroup:

Girlies

2010-10-06T18:00:00.001-07:00

More figure drawing. Been going almost every week for a few months now... All of these are done with Prismacolor Pencils with Prisma Markers (for the longer poses).

There's one set I need to photograph and stick in here.
Be sure to check out the sketchgroup! It finally got somewhere (it only took all summer...).

Bunch of naked dudes

2010-08-04T16:16:00.000-07:00

Something (Starcraft 2) has gotten in the way of finishing my last painting. Change of plans:

Now that I'm teaching I have some cash to spend on weekly figure drawing sessions!
Having a blast with these. I'll try to branch out into more other media when I get more comfortable. I'd say I'm at an 80% success rate now. Sorry for the stupid pixel-junk. I my some reasons to keep this PG. You'll just have to assume I'm really good at drawing genitalia.

Wow. They're always looking to the right. I'll make sure to let the model know next time.
And yeah, this censoring square looks really really stupid, but I gotta keep this blog PG-13 at least.

R & R

2010-07-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling quite rejuvenated this summer. The sun is out all through the week and I've worked myself into an art-craze. I haven't managed to get many of my other friends to contribute to the Summer Sketch Group with the same vigor, but oh well. I'm making my own fun.

I started teaching art privately several weeks ago. I'm liking it a lot, and I'm hoping to pick up more students in the future. I'm pretty sure I'd be able to handle teaching classes even after school starts up again.

Just a quick loose doodle.

This was my submission to the Summer Sketch Group's Draw My Character Activity... I wanted to let the next artist choose to show what might be in the bag she's hauling around through the desert.

Started as a doodle and eventually turned into a late-nighter. I worked up some nostalgic feelings watching Castle in the Sky and Naussica, so the theme of flying and adventure has been on my mind lately.

This one I started out a LOOONG time ago. It went a lot of different directions over the many months I tweaked it off and on... I don't usually do this kind of linework.. Not sure I'll do this kind of style very much, but it was fun to paint a quick cityscape and take a crack at rendering with multiple light sources.

So I've definitely got to do more observational drawing... All of my people look the same. Bugs the hell out of me...

... That shouldn't be a problem in my next post, coming up soon!

So this is awkward...

2010-05-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

This has probably been the longest blog post-drought ever. For a laundry lists of excuses and legitimate reasons.
A lot's happened since my last post, both good and bad. It's been almost two full quarters of school, and within those a relationship, spring break, a breakup, a trip to Denver, my 21st birthday, a breakdown, random adventures, and a general reevaluation of myself and where I am and where I want to go.

I'm not really sure what I think of these. My work hasn't been getting better or going anywhere. Probably due to the fact that I haven't been doing much art at all. It's been a very discouraging cycle. But, I'm planning on spending this summer doing a lot of art and getting back on track...

I got a new tiny Moleskine, for stealthy life drawing. It's small enough to fit in my back pocket, which helps counter the offset my gigantic wallet creates in the other pocket ((mostly full of punch cards, not cash.)
Something tells me I need a subject change. Maybe I'll spend some time getting back into real paints and watercolors, and try out a landscape. Or several. My life needs some color now. Bellingham's back to it's dreary old gray self again...

Scaling it up

2010-01-16T14:40:00.000-08:00

This is my project from my first quarter as a junior. The assignment was to design and construct a privacy screen or room divider. Easy enough right?
Actually, it was really, really hard. As an exercise is simplistic design, we were urged not to make up an excuse for our design by giving it multifunctionality; shouldn't have to justify its existence by serving another purpose. The challenge was to display this minimalist philosophy in an elegant way.
My design ended up being heavily inspired by my graphic design courses, as I became interested in the simple mathematical aesthetic about typographic compositions. In essence, letters, the basic visual and structural building blocks of verbal and written language served the same purposes, physically, for my screen. I used .125 anodized aluminum, laser-cut from 3 patterns designed in Rhino.
Though some may find the 3-panel screen design safe and conventional, I think it is simple and appropriate, and at the same time flat panels speak to the 2D geometry of typography. As well, a screen need not be an obstruction, but it should enhance the environment, or create a new one altogether.
This brings me to the biggest challenge-- the joinery. I needed twist, an example of engineering that was neatly integrated into the overall design. I ended up building magnetic hinges from 3" cow magnets, folded my own aluminum brackets over them, and used aluminum binder posts to fasten them. These magnets allow a user to rearrange and construct a screen of whatever length or composition they desire. The polarity of the magnets permit a vertical flip of any module (similar to certain letters: b/d, a/g, etc). The polarity denies the user a horizontal flip, and to avoid confusion in this case the user only needs to match up the joinery on both sides of the screen to ensure a magnetic bond.

This has been a very long description for what happens to be my most intuitive design yet. Funny how that works...

Boredom can be a beautiful thing.

2010-01-07T23:08:00.001-08:00

Within just a few days of returning home for the holidays, I found myself extremely bored. No more early wake-ups or firing on all cylinders through the night... Although I loved sleeping in every day and gorging myself on delicious home cooking (as well as plenty of holiday sweets). Many of my friends had not yet come back, or even finished school, so I decided I had to give myself some work to do. So, I asked all of my friends to send me good photographs of themselves for me to do a digital portrait for them. I flew out of the gates by cranking out 5 on the first day. Production quickly trailed off, and I still have a few more to do before I retire this project, but I'm happy with my progression. I learned a lot about discerning colors among tricky context differences, and rendering reflected light. I've done 16 of these since I started a few weeks back, and these are some of my favorites:

All of these portraits were first sketched free-handed and then painted from reference (no tracing, paintovers, or eyedropping). I used only 1 layer for the sketch and a second one for the paint. Took 40 to 90 minutes (if I got caught up tweaking brush options for the hair) each.

Thanks to all of my friends for helping me out and encouraging me!

Halloween: More important than you might think.

2009-11-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

For this year's Halloween I went all-out... First time I really bothered with it since I came to college, and boy, was I missing out...
So three weeks ahead I started to feel the pressure since I didn't have a costume yet, and eventually it hit me-- to make a Prawn from District 9. It's a new enough movie that only a select few will get it (which is fine by me), but also not have any better costumes done by others to compare it to. I knew it'd be an intense ordeal, but three weeks is long enough right?...
Barely. I worked all day every day whenever I could... which usually meant cutting far into my sleep time. It was definitely a struggle, and I'm glad it's over. But now I have some cool pics, and a $100 gift card I won at my school's costume contest!

(These two above were taken by Dieter Amick)

Anyways, the whole walkthrough can be found HERE
Special thanks goes out to Robert Espinosa, who happened to model a prawn in excellent 3D detail just prior to my construction. His image was my primary reference.

Here are a few samples from the set:

Been too long...

2009-10-03T00:48:00.000-07:00

No real heavy-hitting stuff right now but I thought it was about time to get some more of my sketches up here again. That and I've been hearing complaints/appeals

Most of this stuff is old, from just from before my review... The last two are very recent though. Sorry for the intense load time. I'm not a big web optimization kind of guy I guess...

This guy's a work in progress... Started him at DecibelFest in Seattle. You might be seeing more of him later.

I did it

2009-06-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

This morning I found out I will be continuing my studies in industrial design at Western in the fall.
I had my portfolio review yesterday afternoon and I wasn't sure how it went. I rushed through my 15 minutes and I didn't feel like I said everything that I wanted to say. I felt really numb after I came out and sat around for 2 hours with what felt like a hole in my brain.
Eventually I got my ass out of the building, bought a donut and a Sobe and took a nap to kill time. Because that night was going to be one of celebration for all of the hard work we did that year. It started with a movie with a handful of ID majors and then we hit the party put on by the juniors. It was Adobe themed, and it really kicked ass.

These are my presentation boards for the review. I was really self-conscious about how if I had taken away the second board, it would look like I was going into a review for illustration rather than industrial design... But I tried to get across that I have a specific set of skills that I can offer to a team of designers, and my experience with online artist communities have given me extra experience in giving and taking criticism (thanks, Eatpoo, C9, Conceptart, and apedogs!). I'm super-excited and I'm looking forward to working with my classmates next fall.

I'd like to thank my classmates for working so hard and sharing their discoveries, skills, and supplies; the juniors and seniors for helping so much and sharing their insights, my professors for putting together such an awesome program, and especially my friends and family for supporting me and keeping me sane and helping out in whatever way they knew how. It means a lot to me.

I promised

2009-05-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of my renderings I said I would put up last quarter. I started scanning things for my review and thought I'd put them up while I prep them for my presentation.

This assignment had us convert shipping containers into housing. I especially liked using the super-fine pens for this kind of drawing (though I smudge a lot).

This was for a backpack assignment my prof let me put my own spin on. Did lots of research and it was lots of fun to do. I'm still developing this one a little bit.

A couple more coming up soon.

I'm not as invincible as I thought...

2009-05-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

I'm really, really, really tired. And getting sick. And I'm either overdoing or underworking every project I do. So far I'm just not resonating well with my classes (so far being halfway through the quarter).
Anyways, I thought I'd put up the work I put way too much time into.

Shampoo and Conditioner Bottle REDOO

Process shots

1) Made custom tools out of foam with sandpaper glued to them to help me bore the "eye"s into the side. Hours and hours of tedious wristwork ensued.
2) Used an old speedball carving kit to create a recession, faking a part line.
3) Popped off the top which was glued with Super 77 (I made the cut on the table saw before sanding the whole shape so I wouldn't lose the foam subtracted by the blade.
4) Augured and smoothed out a channel for a piece of foam to slide along an embedded nail for the sliding cap mechanism.
5) Mask. Paint. Wait. Repeat.

Kiln Goddess

With her right arm she protects the pot, and with her left she destroys it. The face is blank-- emotionless, unaffected. She is a god of fate rather than one action or influence.

I'm going to slip into a coma now. Later.

2009-04-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here's most of my work from ID CAD Skills. They were all done in Photoshop, Illustrator, and or Rhino, or a combination of those. Some of this stuff will look VERY familiar, but with a few last-minute changed before the deadlines.

These next few were for my design project concerning a product that would aid someone with a brain injury. I call this the Urna, a high-tech piece of eyewear that uses a small camera to record and enhance one's vision, with a navigational detail overlay like a HUD (heads-up display) projected through two LCD screens on the inside of the goggles.

It's apparently impossible to find an image of a MAN in a GROCERY STORE. So for my context image I had to splice a bunch of images into one. I know it's goofy looking but it gets the point across, right?

Maybe by next weekend I'll have some of my sketches and renderings up.

2009-04-03T00:50:00.000-07:00

Apparently I didn't update very much last quarter... Now it's going to take me days to document everything I did, but I'll start by uploading everything that's already accounted for.
These are my final photos of my models from Sophomore ID 1. Almost right off the bat it became evident to me that I'm not as good at model-making as I thought I would be. I put a lot of time into projects that were flawed on a foundational level, and though I didn't have time to redo all of my mistakes, I feel like I can take a lot from what I learned here and apply it to the sequel class this spring. But really, I just need to start earlier on my assignments....

Foam core stool. Supports over 200 pounds (precariously-balanced, I might add...)

Fun foam "Wisp" beach shoe.

Polystyrene toothbrush.

Polyurethane shampoo and conditioner bottle set.

Aluminum tape dispenser

All of these pics were taken with a small Sony Cyber-shot, so nothing fancy here. It was nice to exercise those severely under-developed photograph muscles.

Stay posted for highlights from my CAD and hand-drawn rendering portfolios.

I'm not dead yet

2009-02-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more assignments from my ID skills class:

... And here;s one of my sophomore ID projects: a toothbrush made out of polystyrene sheets.

More coming up in a bit when I have time to photograph/upload. I've got a lot of renderings stocked up. And no I never did get around to part 2 of my fall quarter post. Oh well, old news now.

"I don't get it"

2009-01-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

I did this a while ago for a t-shirt challenge in my IDSA club, and just found out it was chosen to be printed along with 4 others here. Mine is named WWU Tee 3, so help me and WWU IDSA by buying these shirts!
Behind the design-- I've always been frustrated during shoe shopping because I see so many ridiculous designs, most of them looking something like this. It just looks like it's made out of a 100 different pieces of overlapping material, and it can't justify itself by serving any purpose than maybe cushioning your foot a little more if you happened to drop a bowling ball on it. I painted "Space Boots" because I don't get why that style sells, especially because if it's non-functionality. At the same time, people look at my shirt and say, "I don't get it".
So... I guess the real purpose of my design is to displace my confusion onto others.

Starting the New Year

2009-01-11T20:53:00.000-08:00

I have a feeling I'm going to be the busiest I've ever been this quarter.
One art history course and three for industrial design...
I still have to photograph my old marker renderings from last quarter. I keep telling myself that I'll do it on a sunny day where I can have natural lighting-- fat chance that'll happen anytime soon in Bellingham...
Anyways, here's my first project for ID CAD skills: A touch-screen cell phone, designed in Illustrator from scratch.

End of Fall Quarter Update: Part 1-Illustration

2008-12-21T15:02:00.000-08:00

I know, I'm waaaay behind on this blog...
I just finished a great fall quarter at Western-- I probably wouldn't have had it go any other way looking back on it (except for dropping microeconomics right off the bat). I took my first industrial design courses, and they were really challenging and a lot of work, but just as fun as any art class. On top of that, I learned a lot of new things. I'll upload photos of my ID work in a bit (apparently you should take your work out of the plastic cell portfolios before you photograph them...) so for now, here are just a few drawings from my beginning illustration class. I have to say, while I didn't learn much technique-wise, the time we spent on observational drawing is exactly what I needed to improve.

Black and white charcoal pencil

Vine charcoal

Graphite pencil

Graphite pencil

Compressed charcoal

Compressed charcoal

Graphite pencil

Graphite Pencil

Graphite Pencil

Black and white charcoal pencil

Close-up

Watercolor and ballpoint pen

Close-up

There is a lot more I could post, but they're all nudes will more detail than young eyes should see... I think most of those are my best work from the class, so if you're of a reasonable age and would like to see that work, take this link

That's all for now. Sit tight until I can take some reasonably decent photos of my industrial design stuff. As in, not crappy.

I like where this is going...

2008-11-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

So-
It's about halfway through the quarter so I thought it was a good time to update.
I actually haven't finished a ton of "artwork" yet. But I've been drawing a TON. And loving every second of it.
My industrial design class has me free-handing drawings in perspective in pen, designing page layouts, and writing instructions for a book that explains perspective and rendering. I have to say though, the instruction about perspective has been more of a review than anything, but I think my drawing style has become much more calculated and mathematical.
Some nights, this is what's going on in my dorm at 3:00 in the morning:

And this is my makeshift light-table. It's rickety, but get's the job done... if it doesn't blind me or give me a headache first.

I've yet to get any assignments from my drawing/illustration class (for graphic design majors?!) that require me to actually finish a drawing into a polished piece of art... On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of exercise in yet MORE perspective, and figure and portrait drawing. Those sketches might show up if I decide to make this blog "mature-rated"... But being a teacher to elementary school kids... that probably won't happen.

And I have some good news!!!

...

My terraform sculpture survived! Here are some shots of the bisque-fired piece. Yeah, it looks the same, but it's a bit smaller now and a different color. It's set to fire one last time, where it'll get a little smaller and more toasty looking.

And I went home during Halloween, but here's a shot of my 30-minute zombie makeup for my friend's birthday party the night before:

Pretty hot, huh?

That's it :/ By the end of the quarter I should have a ton of new stuff. Stay tuned...

Wrapping Up the Summer

2008-09-09T17:51:00.000-07:00

My summer's basically through now and I'll be registering for classes in a week. Hopefully during the school year, this blog will become more interesting as I show work in different media like wood, 3D design, or even metal. Until then, we'll have to make do with the classic drawings, digital painting, and ceramic sculpture...

Been rushing through my sketchbook in my excitement to start a new one with my new Prismacolors. Here are the less mediocre pages:

Final product of the sci-fi soldier painting from ages ago. Be sure to click for full-size.

Last pics of the terraform sculpture before firing. I sculpted over 50 trees 1-2cm tall. Let's hope my summer doesn't disintegrate in a catastrophic explosion in the kiln.

Cranking...

2008-08-27T15:32:00.001-07:00

Here's some progress shots of my (still untitled) city.

Not sure what kind of tree I want. I have very limited options working in this scale...

And if you're wondering, yes, I've started my will in case this thing explodes in the kiln.

A quick speedpaint:

This one still sees a little attention here and there. Almost done.

Here and There

2008-08-12T11:23:00.000-07:00

So, if you're wondering, my summer is going great.
Two weeks ago I finished working at the Palouse Art Camp, which consisted of three week-long sessions of drawing, painting, designing, and sculpting with kids of all ages. I wish there was something like this art camp when I was a kid, so it's pretty rewarding for me to teach kids the things I've learned on my own. And I get to take away some education (and mediation) experience.

I've always wondered what it'd be like to have a younger brother. I think Eric counts for 5.

I had a bit of time for my own art at the camp too. Here's my homage to the Palouse's landscape.

And now I'm running out of summer and still don't have a lot to show... Been working on several long-term projects little by little so don't rush me.

Here's a progress animation of something I wish I hadn't started. Almost finished though.

Been quite on-and-off with this one. Don't worry about it if you can't tell what's going on here.

Still can't think of a title for this one so maybe someone can help me out?

I'll wrap this up with a Ring Wraith for good measure.

P.S. For tradition's sake, I make this promise: I'll update soon, before summer's out.
Yeah, I don't think I will either.

Winding Down

2008-05-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Two more weeks until my first year of college is over with. I've had a lot of time to draw and paint since I have pretty much no homework to do... This is what I have to show for being the guy who is NOT stressing about his homework and finals:

WOW! A life drawing?!

Here's the finished armor suit design. It only took me, what, 21 more days to crank it out? I'm lucky I finished it at all...
Edit: Had to make some important changes...

Overdue

2008-05-05T20:49:00.000-07:00

Once again, I got distracted from my blog and didn't bother to post. I'm quite overdue, so today I have for you some pages from my sketchbook, those environment studies, and a work in progress at the end.

Let's get started.

The following are referenced environment studies.

This is a work in progress. Wanted to develop the suit design in one of my sketches above. Been working on it off and on, and hopefully I'll get around to finishing it.

Digital Sketching

2008-04-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Didn't think I'd be back here so fast. I think the break helped me a bit, as I've been spending a couple hours a day doodling. And since I haven't had art classes, I think I've been trying to keep myself busy...
These sketches were all done purely in photoshop CS3. Make sure to click on it to blow it up full size. And click again to make it bigger... It's quite a large file.

Obviously I got sucked into a few of the drawings, and had to render them. It was fun, but my hand is cramping and my back is aching, so I'm glad I filled up the whole page.
I have several sketchbook pages to scan and upload, but I think I want to practice drawing/painting environments next, so I'll wait till the next batch to upload them.

Winter Quarter

2008-04-01T23:46:00.000-07:00

This winter I was lucky enough to take two art classes at the same time. I took 2D Design and a form and content class that involved both drawing and painting (which gave me a nice head start in painting because otherwise I would have to wait until 200 level courses to paint). For this Spring quarter, I couldn't register early enough for any more art, so perhaps all you'll be seeing here for a while will be sketches and doodles :/

Enough chit-chat--

This design assignment was tricky, as we were restricted to using certain shapes. But I'm just glad it didn't have to be in color.

Details:

This is a stonehenge stamp design for another assignment. I probably spend more time coming up with the idea than painting it. The original is 11" x 11" and the fully reduced version is 1" x 1".

This was one of a couple of assignments given to my class by architect Larry Woodin. It is a 47.5" x 15.5" piece of foam core cut out as a window design. I first made the design in Adobe Illustrator scaled it to a pencil grid on the foam core, and the rest just took hours of exacto-knife carving. Inspiration came from Japanese Kabuto beetles.

Early process shot:

This painting was for a collaboration assignment, where we adopt the style and composition of a well-known portrait artist's work. I basically inserted an androgynous version of myself into Peyton's "Tony" piece.

Detail:

These next few were painted from a live model, but the last was painted only from references and memory. They were exercises in figurative abstraction, which was (and still is) quite new to me. The second turned out much better than the rest, but all of these were more fun to do than I thought they would be. The first two are oils on gessoed paper and the last is oil on 18" x 24" stretched canvas.

This is the last painting of my class. We were pretty free to paint whatever we wanted for this final assignment, so I wanted to do something in my own style. Painted mostly from memory and imagination, I don't think this piece is as strong as it could have been, but I struggled a lot with it and I think I learned a lot from it.

This is about 3/5 of the work I did last quarter, so I might post a few things I missed later. Otherwise, for the next several weeks I'll try to crank some sketches and a few digital paintings. Thanks for looking!

110 Final and First Oil Painting Ever!

2008-02-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

I took a slightly better photo of my final self portrait... Though I'm still and awful photographer and it's still a bit blurry...

These next few are from my first assignment in my Drawing/Painting class. We were to choose an object that is important to us, and make a drawing and painting of it. This is a sumi paint set I received from my Obaachan. I wouldn't dare use it because it's too fancy and pretty to mix all the colors up.
These are the drawings. They made a nice grayscale study with all those colors.

Detail:

And here's the final painting. It is the my first oil painting I've ever done. I'm enjoying how much easier it is to use oils than acrylics, though they make quite the (hazardous) mess.

Finished Drawings

2008-01-20T18:27:00.001-08:00

These are all of my in-class drawings and assignments from my first art class. We worked with live models, which was a lot less awkward than I imagined it being, but I am omitting the ones with full nudity so I can keep this blog public.

Phil and Geoff's dorm room:

Details:

This was my final assignment. The photo of the full version was blurry so I'll put it up later (I'm a terrible photographer, if you haven't come to that conclusion already)...

So that's all of it. It was nice to crank out some finished pieces for a change. Working with models a good experience to apply what I learned from books and such, though I still have some lop-sided heads and proportion issues.

I still feel like a dork when I'm sighting things with my pencil, but it's helped my work a lot I think.

Drawing Class Prelim Sketches

2008-01-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

I bought a sketchbook for homework sketching assignments. Some of them I spent more time and effort on than others, but here are the highlights.

First Quarter Sketchdump

2008-01-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

Here's most of my sketchbook since first moving to Bellingham. Enjoy!

Welcome!

2008-01-17T22:26:00.000-08:00

*New Blog*

Thanks to any returning viewers, and welcome to newcomers. My old blog had 3700+ views so I'm glad I have some of you interested.

I'm blogging here instead because Myspace is a designing and coding nightmare. It's been a long time since posting there, and my traffic has died anyway.

So-- now I've finished my first quarter of college. I took a drawing and composition class, and enjoyed every second of it. Hopefully you'll notice a big improvement in my work's quality (and quantity).