Burlesque!

A relatively new drawing, however, it's based on some life drawings I did a couple years ago at Dr. Sketchy's in San Francisco. The model was Flame Cynders, I wasn't really going for caricature here, but it's not a total unlikeness I suppose.

Kimono

I did this one a while back. Been meaning to post it.

Bananas For Process

I scanned this one in progress for your enjoyment.

First I "inked" the line art with acrylic.


Second I built up layers of acrylic wash. to create the forms and values. This is the underpainting.


Thirdly and finally, I lay down a transparent layer of concentrated watercolor.


The study is done simultaneous to test the colors.

Bananas From Heaven

Medium is my usual acrylic wash, concentrated watercolor combo.

SketchTraveling

A while back I made a post about SketchTravel to which I contributed a page. The published version is soon to be released and the actual book full of original art is soon to be auctioned.

Sketchtravel is a unique international charity project brainchild of my good friend Dice Tsutsumi and Gerald Guerlais. The idea is to benefit Room to Read, an international non-profit dedicated to increasing child literacy in developing countries. You can find all the wonderful details about the SketchTravel adventure and its final Art Auction coming on October 17th in Brussels at their brand new SketchTravel website. One of the important things SketchTravel has done is pull together a diverse and amazing community of artists from all around the world, even more importantly the project’s goal is to build one library ($20k) and sponsor one local children’s book publishing ($15k). I ask you kindly to support in anyway you can this wonderful project. There are different ways to give a hand:
1) Donate to Room to Read.
2) Visit and “like” SketchTravel’s Facebook page.
3) Re-share this information to spread the word.
Thank you for your support everyone!

Naree Pol Progression

I took photos of my Naree Pol piece in progress. I didn't photograph every single step but you can get a sense of how gradually I build the layers.
The black is ink, then most of the washes are acrylic up until the end, then there is some subtle concentrated water color. Finally some gouache for the highlights.

Throne of Blood

What's this? A post without a girl in it? Shocking!




Throne of Blood was the first Akira Kurosawa film I ever saw. I was in high school studying Macbeth in lit class and our teacher showed us this movie since it's considered to be one of (if not the) best film adaptation of the play. Admittedly it was pretty slow paced for my teenage self but the ending to that movie was burned into my brain forever. I've been a huge Kurosawa fan ever since.

Scott Morse asked me to contribute a piece to the Tr!ckster/Criterion Collection Akira Kurosawa one night only art auction benefit for Japan relief. At Tr!ckster in San Diego Friday, July 22, 2011.

Other contributing artist are:
Mike Allred, Scott C., Josh Cochran, Francesco Francavilla, Robert Goodin, Victor Kerlow, Ted Mathot, Scott Morse, Sho Murase, Yuko Shimizu, Jim Rugg, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Connor Willumsen.

Naree Pol

My Tr!ckster piece. I chose the Naree Pol (aka Makalee Pon) from Thai/Buddhist mythology. I learned about them many years ago on an episode of Ripley's Believe it or Not, and always wanted to do something with them. My (shoddy) memory of that episode described them as girl shaped fruit that come alive when they fall from the tree and lure men to their doom. Although in the research I managed to find they "distract monks from their meditations". Not as exciting.

It was actually very hard to find any information on them at all and much of what I found on the internet is written in Thai or some other language that I can't read. If anybody out there knows where I can learn more about this myth please let me know.



The original art will be up for sale at the Tr!ckster gallery show Saturday July 23rd.

Tr!ckster

Instead of attending the San Diego Comic con this year, I'll be going to Tr!ckster. You'll find it conveniently across the street from the San Diego convention center.



If you haven't heard about it, it's a retail space: specializing in creator owned wares including small run and limited edition books, fine art prints, toys, clothing, and more. As well as an art gallery space and a series of symposia focused on creator driven demonstrations and discussions.
Should be pretty neat-o.
I'll be there Friday and Saturday but it goes all the way from Tuesday JULY 19 to Sunday JULY 24, 2011.

Hosted at the San Diego Wine and Culinary Center
200 Harbor Drive, Suite 120
San Diego, CA 92101

If you're going to Comic con go across the street and say hi.

Here are a few detail shots from my contribution to the Trickster god themed gallery show and art book. The original will be for sale at the show.
For my subject I chose the Naree Pol (aka Makalee Pon) from Thai mythology. These girl shaped fruit are a bit more like Sirens than Tricksters per se, but what the heck.

Ebay Bikini Girl

So I found myself on the east coast recently. Whilst I was there I hung out with my former classmate/roommate Robert Smith aka "Sir Iguana" and we collaborated on this little piece to sell on Ebay for no particular reason. I drew, he painted. You can find the listing here.

Alex Woo's Gesture Drawing 101

I would like to take a moment to plug Alex Woo's new gesture drawing class. Alex is a good friend of mine, a fellow Pixarian and a heck of an artist. You may remember him as the director of the Rex Steele animated short.
Anyway, Alex has been teaching the gesture drawing class at Pixar for a while now and has decided to adapt his class into an 8 week curriculum that will be offered to the public for the first time.

Here are the details:

The course will consist of 8 classes over the course of 8 weeks. The curriculum will be as follows:

Week 1: Line - Distilling the pose to its essence
Week 2: Shape - Abstracting the pose
Week 3: Silhouette - A clear read
Week 4; Space - Creating depth and dynamics
Week 5: Exaggeration - Pushing and pulling a drawing
Week 6: Extrapolation - Seeing beyond the surface
Week 7: Story - Giving your drawings context
Week 8: Final Review

The class will meet on Thursdays from 7pm-9pm at 160 Folsom Street in San Francisco starting June 16th and ending August 4th, 2011.

Tuition will be $800 for the entire course (all materials will be provided).

Class size will be limited to 12 students.

If you're interested and/or would like more information, you can email Alex at alex@woohoopictures.com.

Valentine Sculpture Process

I thought I'd show you guys part of the process I went through with Michael Defeo when creating the valentine girl sculpture. Mike works in Z-Brush which is a digital sculpting tool, first he made an initial rough pass based on this art of mine. However, he made her in a neutral standing pose because we want to make a few different pose variations down the line, and it'll be easier for him just to pose one model a few times than sculpt from scratch each time.
So I drew over images of Mike's first pass and made notes on how I'd like him to change it. This first one was done in a pretty strict "turn around" method as this made clear most of the important information.







There was certainly a good amount of back and forth of notes and revisions but always to the progressing improvement of the piece. There were plenty of surprises for me, sometimes something looks great in a 2D drawing but when you bring it into 3D it doesn't work or it breaks something else. Definitely a great learning experience.





This video shows the final standing version, the fruit of the notes and revisions.

valentineFinalDefault from michael defeo on Vimeo.

Then Mike posed her and we continued the revision process a little longer.




And very soon we called her done.

valentineFinal from michael defeo on Vimeo.

You can see a bunch more of Mike's process videos here.

Valentine's Day at Wonder-Con

I'll be attending Wondercon at the Moscone Center in San Francisco April 1st to 3rd. You can find me at the Imaginism Studios table (AA86-87) with my good friends Kei Acedera and Bobby Chiu.
I'll be displaying this beautiful prototype of the Valentine Candy Girl statuette sculpted by Michael Defeo. Michael also hand painted this 3D print out of his Z-brush file. Check out this nifty video he made on his painting process for the piece on his blog.







Photos are by my good pal Juan Hernandez.
Thanks Juan!

Art Blocks for Ghana Part II

Just wanted to let you guys know the "Art Blocks for Ghana" charity auction is currently live on Ebay at the moment, including my own piece. The auction ends Sunday March 20th 4pm PST. 7pm EST.
There's lots of great art, so get while the gettin's good!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As an extra special Valentine treat, I thought I'd give a sneak peak at a statuette I'm planning to produce. I worked very closely with digital sculptor extraordinaire Michael Defeo, and I think he did a pretty bang up job. She's based on this Valentine piece I did last year . Right now she only exists as a ZBrush file. Whether she'll be cast in vinyl or resin, at this point I don't know. There is no release date in sight as well. So hold on tight, time will tell.

Mermaid Progression

I had some requests to see the progression on this one. Luckily I made a few scans as I went.

As usual, I start with a rough. As you can see I changed the hair in the final.



After transferring to the colored paper, the first step I took this time was to "ink" the line work with a brush. The black areas are actual ink, the rest of the lines are acrylic.



Then I built up the shading with acrylic washes.



And lastly I hit it with a transparent later of concentrated watercolor. That stuff can be really bright, I toned it down a lot on this one. I used a little gouache as well for the highlights and white areas.



Simultaneous to all that I like to make a color study, It's basically a guinea pig for the real thing.