Bryan K's Sketchblog

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:49:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:14:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:58:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:34:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:02:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:54:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 08:23:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:43:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:50:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:19:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:38:00 +0000

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.

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:42:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:56:00 +0000

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!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:23:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:07:00 +0000

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

five lessons from one bad painting.

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:56:00 +0000

I tried a quick paint during lunch for the first time, and made lots of useful mistakes. Here's what I learned:

1) I need some sort of table and chair. Working on the ground sucks. You can't control your brush, your paints get all sorts of dirt and crap in them, and you're uncomfortable so you're not focusing completely on the painting. Bad times.

2) I need to keep away from the elements as much as possible. Like a tard, I set up in windy spot right next to a fountain. So on top of the wind flipping around all of my supplies, I got an intermittent spray of chlorine water all over my painting. Argh! Again, this shit takes so much concentration for me that any little annoyance takes away from the end product.

3) I need to block in big areas with a big brush and lots of paint. The huge water and building shapes caught me off guard here, and I ended up hatching away at it with watered down goauche strokes rather than globbing down a bunch of bold strokes like I should have.

4) I picked too complex of a scene for the amount of time I had. 45 minutes to block in and paint this scene was totally overwhelming for me. I need to pick simpler stuff for lunch studies and get more into how the light and shadow colors work on just a couple things.

and most of all:

5) I rushed the painting. I started putting down marks without fully considering what they'd look like. That's a very bad habit I have in general that I need to break.

I'll try something else tomorrow... maybe a simple still life?

Oh my gouache!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:23:00 +0000

Ami and I spent the weekend in Santa Barbara, and each morning I snuck out to do a one hour painting.

A lot of people say gouche is tough to work with, but I took right to it! It's an easy transition from digital paint I guess.

You know, I never would have figured it but the hardest part was figuring out how to organize the paints! After a bunch of trial and error, the best way for me is like this:

...red yellow blue tints, and red yellow blue shades. I have a hunch I'm over complicating things.. I'll have to keep trying.

Undercover

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:30:00 +0000

Another cafe portrait I painted up. I'm pretty sure she was a real secret agent and not just some lady on her bluetooth.

Books...GOOD!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Sun, 11 May 2008 02:30:00 +0000

Sukru (a super talented artist and even nicer guy) recommended a couple traditional art books he had to read back at Art Center. I feel pretty lucky that so many of these guys have gone to top art schools like that, and that they're so willing to share what they know to chumps like me.

This book in particular has been by my side pretty much constantly for the past month. It's a dense read, full of a lifetime's worth of trial and error from a brilliant painter. I'm so enamoured with this book that it's been in my pack for over a month, reading chapters over and over until the concepts sink in. Here's some tidbits that stuck with me so far:

Never knowingly leave something bad in your work; fix it, don't abandon it.

If you're working so quickly that you aren't fully considering the marks you're putting down, then slow down. There is nothing wrong with working slowly and carefully if that's what you have to do to understand what you're trying to draw.

You don't need to slash wildly around on the canvas to make work that looks lively and dynamic. On the contrary, you need to be very careful and premeditated about the marks you put down, and your controlled, economic strokes will make more impact than a bunch of wonky-random strokes ever will.

Maybe that stuff is "yeah duh" to you the seasoned artist, but for me it was farking gold dripping from the page! I did my best to use what I learned on this last one... I like it a lot more!

14th and Montana

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:22:00 +0000

Ok, this is much better.

I set up camp for a couple hours around the neighborhood and just tried to copy down the shapes as best I could without distracting myself with anything fancy. Doing this felt a lot like flexing a muscle: easy to do for a moment or two, but very difficult to maintain for minutes at a time.

It didn't seem like I was doing any better while I was drawing, but the result was a drawing that had real life shapes that I could paint from... which, I mean that's always a help for sure. :)

Watercolors!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:35:00 +0000

I finally took the jump with watercolors!

It's good practice for me because... well... I tend to get so concerned with theories and concepts that I forget that the most important thing is just to make something I think looks sweet. Watercolor is good for me; there's not much to do except to try, try and learn.

Also, ants LOVE whatever the hell is in Mars Black pigment. Those little bastards kept swimming around in my wash when I wasn't looking!

New number

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:53:00 +0000

If you call my old number, and I answer and try to pretend like I'm an old Greek guy with a ridiculous accent, and you tell me to shut up and stop goofing around... I think it's important to note that It is not actually me playing a joke on you, and that you actually are talking to an old Greek guy.

I switched my number to a new area code, so if you need the new one just throw me an email, or text or smoke signal or whatevs. Unless you want to talk to the old Greek guy, in which case you know where to reach him.

Fake watercolors

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:43:00 +0000

Three months into making fancy PS3 art, and I'm right back to screwing up because I don't understand basic color and value. Traditional painters know this stuff better than anyone, so I really need to get back in the habit of doing daily master studies like I did before the new job.

I found Nathan Fowkes' blog today, and I feel like a huge tool for not finding it earlier. His art is pretty much dead on to how I'd like my stuff to look. I especially love his charcoal portraits.

As luck has it, he teaches classes in Van Nuys! I'm super excited for the chance to get slapped around by such a knowledgeable guy, but I want to glean as much as I can on my own first before dumping money on a class I can't keep up with.

Anyhoo, I did the quick paint above as a copy of his own most recent post. I tried to do it the way he would do a watercolor: everything's made using only 4 basic colors, and all of the strokes multiply on eachother rather than overlay. The result feels eerily like working with real watercolors, with all the same concerns about things turning to muddy crap if you overwork it. Fascinating!

line theft

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:18:00 +0000

Here's another tiny step in my arduous blister-encrusted journey to Drawinglessassyland!

I haven't posted any studies in a while because my sketchbook has been really lousy lately. So tonight -- rather than do something boring like sleep --I did some good concentrated work.

Spacial-perceptivey skills don't come naturally to me, so it was a pretty big deal that I could make a natural drawing with usable volume. You know what the trick was? I checked out a half dozen painters and totally stole the lines they use: stuff like that contour from your eye to the ridge of your cheek, or that tiny silhouette that happens under the bottom lip at 3/4 view.

Pretty neat! I love ~~stealing~~ finding common little tricks like that.

We're here!

noreply@blogger.com (BryanK) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:27:00 +0000

It's official: we're here in Santa Monica! The weather is mild and breezy, the food is healthy and tasty, and people in general are way more friendly than I've experienced in Seattle. And there's a beach! A real beach! And work is less than two miles from it!

And the entertainment industry people? They really do look like what you'd expect! Mod-bohemians yapping about film theory, and glam girls in giant sunglasses who are either legitimately hiding their identity, or at least attempting to look as if they have to.

And the hair! people really do have unique hair here... like the guy I doodled above. Such volume! Cafe drawing is going to be a hoot here.

Whelp, that's it for now. The past few weeks have been all about the move, and I can't wait to get back to my steady diet of art, excercise, food, and of course, blogging.