My film is due in a week.

Uh oh!

Campus Progress T-Shirt Entry

Goooooooooooooal!

The first of two t-shirt designs to be completed (hopefully) by the close of this beautiful Memorial Day weekend. This was for Sydney, Winnie's sister, and her new soccer squadron "Team Typhoon".

Tree paintings from the past two days...

I've been trying to stay away from the computer, so my blogging frequency will suffer until June 9th. Apologies.

1-2-3 T-Shirt

Quick sketch on the G Train from Billyburgh to Cobble Hill. I guess my notes on the scanned page explain the high points of my thinking...high contrast (easy to reproduce), pump up the jams tag line, recognizable image...transformed with a college aged symbol and rocket-like lift off.

Took some shots of my model today...lots

Dig the groovy color activity...I'm not overly pleased with this thing, it has its merits, I suppose. I had big plans that were squashed by my deadline. I'm going to pull together the drawings and other stuff that I did and make a portfolio spread soon. At the presentation no one noticed that I sprayed every push pin on the wall behind me the maroon body color. Always point out shit like that or you won't get credit!

invitation

Today i am home, listening to Feist (and you should too because she is AWESOME! http://www.listentofeist.com/) and working on my friend's wedding invitation. This has been a long journey of learning my way around photoshop, printing methods, papers. I should finish the drawings today and hopefully they'll get printed up on Monday or Tuesday and mailed by next Friday or Saturday. I can't wait for it to be finished. It will feel good. Also, I found out yesterday that I got this curriculum planning gig at the Hebrew School for June and I think this income will allow me to put off getting a 9 to 5 job for the summer. Dimitri connected me (THANK YOU) to Marit Meisler who is an industrial designer and teacher at Pratt. Check out her website: http://cemment.com/. Assuming she can still use my help, I will work with her this summer and see where that leads. I am trying to have a little faith and not worry too much about what I'll do the pay the rent after September comes. This picture is actually not the invitation, but the reception card. It's what I'm working on at the moment.

frozen string poster

Well guys, I'm honored to be a part of the gang. I must admit, I am feeling very blocked in the art-making department right now. I am really busy but not with anything that is feeling particularly fufilling in a creative way. This is a postcard that I made for a friend's band. It's the third one I've done for him. They are kind of silly and were basically an exercise for me to learn how to use the computer to draw. I have learned how to simplify in order to speed up the process. It still takes me about four hours to do this, believe it or not. So it's not really worth the $100, but it's fun to see my postcards get passed around. They are going to make an album soon and I have been asked to do the artwork for the album. I'm thinking I'd like to actually paint them with *real* paint but I wonder how much that would change the look.

Landscapes Sketches at the Botanical Garden

I did these this morning at the Botanical Garden. Then I went to to Arthur Ave. to get San Marzano tomatoes and cheeses from Teitel Bros. for my pizza tonight! I plan on doing a lot of landscapes this summer...these are my second and third. The first one I did a week ago in Central Park. I'm going to do that same drawing again, on the same page like these, for comparison. I learned that I can only sit for about 45 minutes before I get anxious, so I know I have to work faster now. I need to focus on value...I start doing details and for get about value, which is more important. These compositions aren't that interesting, its surprisingly hard to find a place to sit at this place, next time I'll bring a folding stool.

Night & Day At My Summer Home, Upstate

I had to get back into the high contrast mindset, as Winnie and I are working on a couple new T-shirt designs for various acquaintances. I felt compelled to add the color, though I'm not sure why...I should of just left it as it was.

4 New BGs

Some quick experimentation... might do some more tomorrow. I'm doing the same scene with markers now.

My little purple man--third painting

I chose this thing from my sketchbook and tried to color it up with watercolor paints:

My idea was to take this guy, make him do something, and make a backgorund color. So I did this:

Its called "Feed the Meter". The color on the character and the meter were ok, but the scorching background was bad. I noticed that the gradient looked better against the meter than it did against the character's purples and greens:


Removing the background was an improvement:



Now I can experiment with several different bgs, pick the best one, then add some details. I want to do some more watercolorish stuff in the bgs. What do you guys think?

Some acrylic paintings...

Baby's First Painting!

don't laugh... I've got the whole summer to improve. I should be able to master this stuff in three months, right?

ok, here are my first two paintings. I got pissed off and quit halfway through the first, and i got pissed off and quit three quarters of the way throught the second. I wish I had developed the value range more in the second apple--the entire left side should be darker. There was some nice core(ha) shadow action going on that I totally ignored. Anyway, warm-up time is over, on to bigger and better things. I need major amounts of helpful hints at this point...

Me too!

Some little doodles:

I bought a set of watercolors and I'm trying to figure out how to use them. Any suggestions/references? I'll post some stuff(terrible, terrible, stuff) soon...

Sketchbook Pages

Dots, dots, who likes dots?

It doesn't look like it, but this took me a long time.

I love punching!

Paul, got your message, I'm totally available to see "the condemned" during you lunch break tomorrow...isn't it great that we're both so into punching? I was just talking to someone about punching and then this movie comes out! Weird!

Some Snowy Paintings

^^^GRATUITOUS HANS BACHER COPIES
www.mad-t-party.blogspot.com
www.bilderfabrik.blogspot.com
www.twelvefield.blogspot.com

In contemporary animation, it's rare to leave out detail in backgrounds, but they used to do it all the time. I'm copying a trick they used in Bambi here--they used oil and just smeared into the distance. Very atmospheric!

My summer has started

I just finished school. Here is shot of my model during the finishing stage:

I'll post more shots when I take more...

Contact: Architecture

Amazing.

From the book: Notan

"Tension is created by opposition. In this case a curved surface bulges toward the straight line blocking its path. A still stronger feeling of tension is between the arrow and the perpendicular line."

Equal masses pressing towards each other force the space to flow around them. This kind of relationship we sense as tension. The opposition between the two arrows is easily felt.



When these forms touched the straight line, the sense of tension was lost. Although the rounded part of the shape is fixed to the straight line, they seem to be trying to move away from it. The arrows, however, seem to have their points embedded in the line.


Does anyone want to go through this book and do the exercises? Or Abstraction in Art and Nature?
These are the two best "advanced design thinking" books I've seen (that I can understand, at least).

Google Earth to offer most Popular American Architecture in 3D

You've probably seen this already, Paul.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=59&t=489530