Here's the final panel for the ad series. This one's about a guy with a mutated right arm who crushes melons at a factory... I mean obviously, right?

boobs and butts and thighs! oh my!

Here's a meaty torso... probably took a half hour in total. Seeing big shapes has never come naturally to me, and doing these tiny and quick sculpts force me to do it. It's really helping I think!

I brought a pound of sculpey to work, and whenever there's a spare moment I'll tear off a hunk and make something. If it's decent, I'll boil it for all of prosperity to enjoy. If not... back to the hunk it goes.

If you have anxiety about starting a sculpt, or you tend to over plan like I do, it's a great way to get used to just grabbing some clay and having fun.

I made these for my friend Eli, who works as an ad creative. The ad is for these energy drinks, and he came up with some clever 'legend-of-the-energy-drink' stories. You know, like one flavor has the essence of kung foo ass kicking, and another has the essence of Amazonian jungle afros... that sort of thing. Can't wait to see what he does with them!

here's the finished ecorche

His name is Napoleon... Boneapart.

hahahahahaaahaha!!

*cough*

He's not perfect (odd-simian forearms, goofy hands) but he's done, and he makes a wonderful Wacom pen holder.

sculpey updates

I boiled and mounted my poor-man's Remmy on a hork of Sculpey III, and roughed in the first group of muscles on the ecorche.

Here's a tip: If you can, BOIL sculpey instead of baking it. I burned the hell out of my ecorche, and not only did I have to paint it, it also released some pretty noxious fumes when it was baking. Yikes!

The left side (the one that stays skeletal) is pretty much done at this point. Gotta fix a couple things, and by next saturday he'll be fired and painted. After that we start on the musculature. Good times!

When I first went to art school, the teachers really encouraged us to work quickly. Like really quickly... like so fast that you can't even think consciously about what you're drawing. The idea was that quick marks were inherently more graceful than slow noodly marks, and all the rest of it would come if you drew a zillion drawings a day.

Since I've been down here, I've been exposed to some really talented folks from some really excellent schools, and I'm realizing that a lot of what I was taught in school was... well it was crap.

Taking Rey's class has been like driving down the same road I've gone down before, but instead of whizzing by 10 miles of it, we're combing carefully through just the first mile.

My buddy Izzy gave me some other good advice last week: concentrate on the smallest nugget of skill that you can, and you'll improve quickly. For example, don't practice "anatomy"... concentrate on just the shoulders, or just on getting the basic masses down. That's what I've been trying to do lately, and I feel like I'm learning and retaining much more quickly than before.

Good times!

the unintentionally spooky-bot.

Way too often I try to make something cute, and because I can't leave the poor thing alone, it turns out spooky. It happened with this poor guy, and so out of respect I made a little scenario about how he's actually very sweet, and nobody will hang out with him because I made him look so scary.

Sorry lil' guy.

Super Sculpey Sunday!

Ami and I had a Super Sculpey Sunday!!! (tm) tonight. I made a muppet-ish mouse and some cheese, and it totally ended up looking like Remy from Rattatouille. Could have been worse... could have looked like Rizzo!

Ami made this sweet monkfish-dragon. Notice the superb uvula detail! He also has a sweet Fonz-like greaser curl. Watch out you crazy pups! That fish is gonna EAT you!

Parle vous écorché?

I wish I could show what I've been doing at work (spoiler alert: It's sweet!), but in the interest of keeping my job, take a look at this instead!

I'm taking a class from Rey Bustos at LAAFA. The classes are stupid-small and Rey is about the best anatomy teacher you could ask for.

Bascially, his ecorche class takes you through building an anatomically correct man out of wire and sculpy. This guy knows more about anatomy than just about anyone I've met, and he's genuinely interested in sharing what he knows. It's a just plain awesome class, and if you want to be awesome, you have to take this class. It's a rule. Everyone who doesn't take Rey's class is a jerk. I'm totally serious.

Anyhoo, check out the work in progress! His left side will be skeletal, and the right side will be covered in muscle. Needless to say we haven't covered the skull yet, but I think I pretty much nailed it.

Finally got some painting done this weekend.

Work has been keeping me extremely busy lately, and I haven't had the chance to get away to paint until this weekend. We went to the super awesome Will Rogers state park, Ami read a book and I painted. Yes, we are that exciting!

Anyhoo, new quick paint. I'm learning to rely less on an under drawing, and it's helping things look a lot more lively. The end.

Paint for lunch

Whupped this one up in 40 minutes or so. I think I'm slowly getting better at seeing colors... the waters a lot better than I've done before.

I'm starting to understand why the impressionists were so obsessed over water.... seems if you understand how/why color in water works, then you can apply that concept to anything else, just more subtly and your stuff will rock probably like 43% more.

Comicon!

Ami and I went to Comicon this weekend in San Diego! It was our first time ever going to a convention like that, and we had loads of fun. We even got these sweet badges that said "PROFESSIONAL" in big block print! Hooray! we're important!

I also got to meet some cool artists I read about, and got turned to some new ones too. Nearly all of the artists I met were super friendly and loved yapping about how they do what they do. Good times!

Anyhoo, here's a list of some new-to-me artists that I thought were pretty sweet (in no particular order). Enjoy!

Dustin Nguyen (Awesomely cute watercolors!)
alessandro carloni (ridiculous ink drawings!)
Ashley Wood (incredible blocky paints!)
Eric Powell (neat meaty style!)
Doug Sneyd (super fun drawings, and a super nice guy!)
Chris Sanders (one of my favorite animation-ey artists ever, ever!)

More gouache studies

Here's a couple studies I did this week during my lunch hour. One hour apiece from start to finish.