Dr. Sketchys Drawing Jam

Every month in Atlanta there is an event called “Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School.” From what I understand, it’s all around the country and I’m happy that there is a chapter here in Atlanta. 

Basically Dr. Sketchy’s is made up of a model, a lot of drinking and time to commune with other artists.  This month’s artists were awesome and I’m always amazed at the work they produce. 

Below are some of the sketches I did of the model.  Since I’m not very good at traditional life drawing, I tend to over exaggerate and heavily stylize the model.  So my pictures never look like the person, just what I see them as in a stylized way. 

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Pardon our progress

Hi and welcome to sThig.com, pardon the dust as I put on the finishing touches of my illustration site!

Watch Gary Basemen sketch

If you don’t know who Gary Basemen is, then you’ve been missing out.  He’s an awesome artist whose work has been all over the world.  The blog “Drawn” posted a link of him sketching and I’m posting it again, here.

Almost done!

My website is near completion.  I’ve worked out all the bugs in the coding (Thanks, Mike) and made sure it was optimized for search engines (Thanks, Chris).  All that’s left is for my wife and I to comb over the entries and correct all the grammar and spelling issues (and there are a lot...I’m terrible at grammar.  I sometimes wondered how I graduated college!).

The Monster Within: Near Final

I sent this update off to the art director for him to make any last minute tweaks.  I added a shadow and some definition to the vamp’s fingers.  I think it looks much more foreboding now. 

The Monster Within: Update

I’m working on a picture for a client and it’s called “The Monster Within” which talks about the monster within all of us.  The art director chose a vampire to be displayed back in the mirror (which is odd because vampires don’t have reflections) and we went through a few sketches before we nailed something down.  This is my first work in progress with the color.  I’m not completely satisfied with it but am waiting on feedback from the director before I moved forward with it.

Finished!

And here is the finished version of my Zombie Tiki! What a fun project

Zombie Tiki Color

I’m done for the time being, I’m going to let this get cold and catch all the errors I’ve got.  I may do an bit of highlights, color changes and such, but not bad for a night’s worth of work.

Zombie Tiki color

And here’s our lady in green.  Now to add the background and all the trimmings.

Zombie TIki linework

Here is my zombie tiki in her line work glory.  This is all done in Adobe Illustrator and it’s the stage right before I place the color in.

Zombie TIki update

I did a little update on the body of my girl, this looks much better however I’m going to let it get “cold” and see if there are any other errors I missed.

Zombie Tiki

Every so often in the Drawing Board, they have what’s called a “Drawing Jam.” It’s one of my favorite things to participate in.  It gives me a chance to flex my muscles and do some lowbrow art.  This month’s model is a tattooed vixen that I don’t much care for (drawing all those tattoos would get really tedious).  So instead I’m going to go in a different direction and do a tiki scene called ”Zombie Tiki.”

I’m envisioning this picture to be a lot of deep purples, lava orange/red and a blood red sky with the girl being green-ish.  This is my first draft, I’m sure it’s subject to change (like I really need to take care of that neck! Yowza!)

Edit: Upon further notice, there’s something funky going on with her arms, I’ll need to address that.

The monster within

One of my oldest clients contacted me with a fun job.  It’s called “The monster within” which talks about the dark side of all of us.  It’s just ripe for halloween as the art director wants a guy looking in a mirror and his reflection is Dracula (which actually doesn’t make 100% sense since Dracula doesn’t really cast a reflection, but oh well, we’re not going for monster accuracy here, just illustrating an article).  This is my first submission sketch to him and we’ll see what he thinks.  Revisions may come.

Site near completion

My site is near completion, I have a few odds and ends to snip up, but I think I’ve got it.  I entered in 130+ images and I’m going to contract my wife out to make sure there are no grammar or spelling errors (because I’m infamous for those).

Brandon Ragnar

One of my all time favorite artists is Brandon Ragnar.  While I consider myself a decent artist, he blows me completely away.  When I’m drawing, I sometimes set him in my mind as a way to “Set the bar” to the level of art I’d like to be at.  Most of the time I never obtain it, he’s truly amazing.