Sketching on the Border

Today I finished my storyboard roughs and sent them off to Porchlight, then Echo and I decided to get out of the house. I needed to get out and get away from the grind of boarding. So we had a nice lunch at the diner, and headed over to Borders in Bryn Mawr to browse and sketch in the new Seattles Best coffee bar upstairs. I wouldn't say these are all great drawings, but I had fun anyway. While I'm cleaning up the board this week I'll be back painting...heck, I might even go to figure drawing tomorrow at DCAD. Echo posed her drawings on her blog.

Busy Week

Unlike everyone else it seems, I am not attending the annual "Running of the Babymen" AKA The Annual Comicon International in san Diego. I chose to go to China this year instead of the con, though I miss seeing some of the folks I only see once a year or so, especially the folks in animation who live on the west coast. Speaking of animation I've been pounding away on my storyboard for Secret Saturday's which will premiere in April on Cartoon Network. That means I didn't do too many personal things this week reguarding art, but when my board is done next week I'll be back into the drawing and painting for myself full-time. In the meantime here are a few sketches done in the last week or so.

Sunday Paint Out-Germantown 2

Today Echo and I went back to paint with Elana at her studio in Germantown, the same place we painted last time. This time I painted the houses I almost painted the last time. Of course after about 90 minutes the sun shifted pretty hard so i then woked on the little spots where the sun had not changed yet. You can see Echo's effort on her blog, she's got a great tight little composition going on.

To avoid getting trapped by detail, which is easy for me, I used a huge brush to lay in the big masses. Elana offered a few helpful crits too. I don't know when I'll get back to finish this since I'm going to Michigan next weekend and when I get back I have to finish my Secret Saturday's sstoryboard and keep on with the monster paintings. So I may finish this one in the studio like the last one, from the shot I snapped with my camera. Afterwards we had lunch with Elana and her hubby Ari at the Macaroni Grille--yum!

Fake Creepy Cover

Here is my fake Creepy cover...I thought this would be fun to do. I miss those old mags, they were fun and had a lot of great art in them.

Wolfman Final

here is the final painting done, with the moon added in and I darkend down his body a bit to throw more accent on his face. This was fun, and i have 2 more images in mind to try and paint over the next two weeks, time is running out and I need to keep up the pace to have the work I'd like finished for the show at the Axd Gallery.

Wolfman Step-3

I hopped back on the painting wagon this AM and tickled the Wolfman a bit more. I was all over him, adjusting one spot against another and really working on the mouth a lot more. Lots of glazing small washes of color an dtone to push something up or down in value and I also tried to tighten up some shapes too, especially the mouth. I also painted in the sky, but I'll have to wait for the final pass, adding the moon etc., until another day or so. It really helps to shoot a pic too and see what the painting looks like smaller.

Wolfie step-2

This is the second pass at the wolfman-monster painting. I'll let it rest for a time as I hop back on the storyboard today. I basically glazed in some more color and tightened up things a bit on the face. I think I'll add the moon in the background. I might make it bigger, I'll wait and see how I feel about it as I move along.

The Next Monster

Here is the next Monster for the show, or not. It's the rough in stage and I'll have to wait to work on it for a few days as I work on my storyboard for Secret Saturdays and catch up with things around here. This is oil on board. I will try and do as many things for the show as I can and then pic from the best. This is based on a sketch I did the other day, in ink. I started this one by doing a drawing a bit tighter on the board, much tighter than the Frankenstien one and I think this one has better drawing as a result.

Final Frank

This is it for now I think, my brother Marc is coming to shoot a good pic of it, my Canon A80 can't really match the whites and the colors well here so things are still getting blown out. On to the next Monster.

Frank part 5

The colors are still off, but I'm closer to being done.

Frank-Middle step

I was able to get a better shot this morning of the painting. I'll have to leave it for a day or so because of work, but I'll finish it up this weekend.

Monstershow

Above are two shots of a Frankie piece i have in works for the September show. I was going for a sort of Freud/Fectin feel to the finish. It's still got a wways to go, and the color is really off here. I'll post the finished piece.

Wednesday's Doodles

A few from last night's Starbuck's Venti Ice Soy Chai suckdown.

If It's Tuesday It Must be BBWW day

Here is a drawing I did late last night as I couldn't sleep, so I doodled for a while, maybahps I will send it to Poobah's BBWW Blog...

I got my schedule for classes yesterday and put in for the classes i want at PAFA. it seems I'll be going to school 2 1/2 days a week, Monday to Wednesday, and I plan to teach again at DCAD, but now only one class as I'll still have a heavy workload between school and freelance.

Below are afew more quickies from Starbucks the other day. After a while I switched to drawing in marker, a Zig, the one with the thin point and the fat point on the same pen. I was skecthing fast, fast as some people were now coming and going fast, and pencil sometimes makes me want to be picky, and a pen makes a bold statement fast. I hope to get some more sketching in this week, maybe even today--it's freaking hot out again!

Weekend Sketching

This was a good weekend. Nice and relaxing. I saw RATATOUILLE which was great, another triumph for Bird, his fantastic team and Pixar.

I also did some cleaning, writing and some sketching at both the diner and at the usual Starbucks hang. I was gonna cut the grass but it was just too dang hot!! Summer has arrived in Philty!

Today's sketching was pretty good, I have a lot more skecthes that I didn't scan that I might post later this week. It was slow at first, but soon there were little waves of ice coffee and specialty drink drinkers. Some teenage girls who ran in for a bit, the suddenly noticed that I had a sketchpad. They all tried to hide so I couldn't draw them. Silly Grrls. I was already busy drawing and old guy--but I did record every bit or girl meat on display, like the Terminator. Is there anything more vien than a suburban teenage female?




This SB is cool because you get pretty interetsting looking old guys, and let's face it, cute girls are great to look at,(and do other things too) but old guys are more fun to draw. There are also sometimes just strange or weird looking people who come in and stroll through like the big shaggy lady or the huge guy eating a cup cake thingie. All of these are at original size drawn in 2B. I always start tight, then loosen up as I go along.

The Big Purging.

Well it's finally begun, starting with the spare bedroom--the often mention, always delayed big purge. Like all artists I collect things, but mabe more than fine artists comic artists and animation artists collect book and comics and each job generates a ton of paper and references, especially storyboards. Each show has model packs, designs and usually spare boards for reference. I get several phone books thickness worth on every job. my rough boards and xeroxes etc. Add that up over the 11 years I've been doing boards--it all adds up.

So I am sorting the wheat from the chaff and having to bite the bullet and rent a storage space to park all the excess in. But in order to make it efficient I need to sort the good so I won't store the bad, and I can find out what is in the good when I go to look for it. No sense in having 50 boxes of stuff you have no idea what's inside.

The end result will be a cleaner house, but also a cleaned-out attic that will be turned into a painting studio for Echo and myself.

I'm also working on a few commissions and I think I'll start another painting--a still life later this evening.

Tower Beach Monday

Yesterday Echo, myself and a few friends drove down to Tower Beach in Delaware and spent the day. It was just an awesome day, about 80, slight breeze and it was just perfect. Now I'm not a big beach guy, I like the water in the carribean better, where you can see stuff, not the brimey atlantic, so I didn't frolic in the waves, I painted some watercolors and relaxed, people watched. I hadn't been to a beach in 12 years.

here are some of the watercolors I did. One I gave away to a family visiting from Montreal. I was painting the father and his wife noticed and asked for the painting, so I signed it and gave it to them, I had a very nice chat with them. The daughter who had cystic fibrosis had just had a lung transplant and had been down to this beach before her operation a few years back, so they were returning as a celebration along with the two Chinese girls she had adopted.

Watercolor can be a challenge, it's also a challenge to paint in the wind and the sand, as sand gets everywhere hahaha. but it was fun, I haven't messed with watercolors in a bit, since the last time I was out west I think.

I think Echo and I will go back, make a few more day trips down that way before summer is over.

Germantown House

Today Echo and I went out to paint with some friends and recent grads from PAFA, Andrew and Elana and her husband Ari over at Elana's studio in the Germantown section of Philly. Elana rents a studio space in an old row house.
We had to get up at the very crak of morning and get over there by 7:30. We were out by about 8:30 painting. each of us walked around to find a spot that struck us.

It's been since last summer since I painted outside, or mabe last fall, but it's been a long time. I chose my spot and started painting away, the sun was already on the move. I am always atracted to painting with strong contrasts in them and so I picked a shot that would give me good contrast.

As I painted many nieghborhood folks stopped by to watch myself and the others, including the owner of the house I was painting...and he asked if it was for sale, so maybe I have a sale with this one? I gave him my card.
hard to get a good shot as it's still wet and glaring. I finished it up back in the studio from a photo I snapped as I wasn't going to be going back this week to finish it on the spot. I actually wipped a fair amount out and restated it as I was getting too picky too early and needed to get more masses first...

It was great fun and I look forward to painting again with the gang.