Character Portrait in Progress

Using Pixarra Twisted Brush.

Squeaky Scribbles (from yester year)

Back in 2004 when I taught as an art teacher at a private Christian school for one year, I used many marker board illustrations to inspire the young aspiring minds into drawing creative, wacky and far-out funny things for their assignments.  I captured some with a fairly crappy, miniature pocket spy camera from the early digital camera era of the early new millennium...so I had to clean these up a bit to bring out the details.

The white board in the art classroom.

Whatever I could draw spontaneously to make the students laugh and have a good time, I would do, because I knew the principle of laughter and freedom relaxes the mind and encourages creativity.  I also know that the "joy of the Lord is our strength."  So together, we had funny but studious class times.



Funny faces were always popular and I loved to draw something exaggerated.







 

 Also, I liked to draw simplistically to show the students that simple contour lines can be very easy and powerful. 

 

Caricatures in my style helped me to bring out the styles laying dormant in my young artists.  In the other various academics the students participated in before entering my classroom, the seriousness and drudgery would likely follow them and I wanted to shake all those burdens off their minds so they could enter a new world of expressing and experimenting in imagination through art.

A rocket-ship seemed comfortable and commonplace in the playground.

I also had the challenge of helping the students perceive and interpret the empirical world around them.  Their young brain development was rapidly changing and certain concepts were difficult to grasp.  I attempted illustrations that would easily demonstrate concepts like depth with foreground and background and showing how things appear large or small depending on location on the 2-dimensional page.  The light bulbs went off with a satisfying sound of 'Ahh!'

Making up funny creatures and silly monsters was my favorite thing to do.  I had to teach a wide over view of curriculum with different sorts of mediums like paints - but painting with real paint is not really my talent or interest, I just liked getting out something to draw and design characters with.

I even went crazy one week and started drawing and drawing and kept drawing parts of a crazy scene of a urban area under siege of rampaging monsters and aliens with people running around screaming.  Every class session would reveal new parts of the evolving mosaic, compelling students who had already attended my class back again throughout the day to see what new mayhem was drawn.

Of course, adults might thing that would scare kids, but kids usually saw themselves as the rampaging BIG funny monster having fun and playing.











I think it gave them a sense of empowerment that their little bodies and personalities couldn't have in real life.

And then there were the familiar characters, especially seasonal/holiday well-known celebs like Santa Clause. It was a picture to say goodbye and Merry Christmas to everyone who was about to enjoy 3 weeks of holiday vacation time with their family and loved ones.

...and boy, does Santa look tired.

The kids really got a kick out of Santa. (this also reminds me of my recent idea of the Santa Clones and some crazy tangent of a wild idea that will never go any where but I got a good chuckle to myself...as most of my wayward wacky thoughts end up achieving - a chuckle and a sigh.)

Here Santa on his Santamobile.
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na San-ta!

And then there's the Snorp-B'looga who lives on an alien planet with his alien friends in their Dr. Suessian-like space surroundings.  Who knows what I was thinking that day.

And with that, I'll zap on out of here with an Olympian THunder Cloud wearing a Greek Parthenon for a cap.  Zapoooowwww!!!!

She's So High Above Me

This is a logo design I touched-up in 2009 that an aviator friend of mine designed for his airplane transport services company in my hometown.  He knew I did some art stuff and thought to check out my portfolio, and then thought I could help him out.  He said he liked it, so I hope he was able to use it as he hoped.  (Of course, if he's reading this and would like any adjustments like the ones I've put up on this blog, then just let me know.)

Logo against green matte to bring out the contrasting details.  Minus the matte background, this is the logo delivered.

This is the original design concept submitted to me.  For no graphic design experience, its a pretty decent concept.  I wanted to maintain the original vision but just give everything those tweaks and adjustments to empower it.  Especially the "A" in Aerial.  It needed that The Jetsons/Airlines feel to it.  Typeface fonts were not used, everything was traced and created with Pen tool.

I thought an easy, clean and sharp illustration would serve best for printing purposes on various materials.  Also, the image can be scaled up indefinitely without any loss of information, keeping its sleek edges. 

The submitted photo to work from.  I over-traced with pen tool in Photoshop until I needed to make manual adjustments and decisions.

Love your art.

Know it.  Love it. Do it.  Love your art.  Just a reminder I drew up quickly last week on the white marker board in my Basic Design class after having graded +80 projects and seeing poor, poor efforts on behalf of my students.  (Less than 10% had well done works)  The skills of design and art, I am certain, lie dormant within them ready to be awoken and exercised - but what also lay dormant are the skills of following instructions and presenting a clean, well-prepared piece of work.

As you can see in the upper right hand corner, I had translated 'clean' and 'messy' into Korean to discuss with my students my expectations for their work.  I remember my first year classes when I went through school, I felt compelled to present the best that I could offer in the variables of time and talent I had available.  Most of my students had procrastinated and gave me disappointing pieces.  It is my job not only to lead them in instruction, but coach them to give their heart in what they do.  If they can put their love and care into what their minds and hands do, they will have done well.  As their professor in this Basic Design class, these core basic values of best effort and personal care is what Basic Design is really about.  In my eyes, these are more important than the basic design theories themselves.

Students had been working on demonstrating creative designs utilizing basic geometry in the form of a point, line or plane, while simultaneously composing constructions of balance in symmetry and asymmetry.  The white board scribbles above show my explanations of point, line, plane, with introductions into texture, and positive versus negative colored fields, as well as, object/shape cropping.  The pizza slice on the right side was to encourage laughter in class as I suggested combining points and lines and planes as 'combo' because they are familiar with this English word being linked to ordering pizza.

I love my students, and I love to teach them something about art.  I hope they will learn to love this for themselves, too, and be the ones who develop something useful, or pass it on to the next generation.

An Intimate Portrait

Easter 2010 is at the door. Today is Good Friday - the day to remember that God's only Son took up His cross and died to purchase men for God. When remembering about this Easter holiday and what it means for me and for the entire existing populace of man from the beginning, I remembered that I had done this inspired portrait while still a high school student in 1996. That would have put my age at about 17.

To be honest, this is only one of several random portraits of Jesus Christ I did at that time. This one in particular stared at me from the blank page. It is hard to explain, but I could see this in the sketch book page and I filled it in as I saw it. I have had this experience on occasion and this one was quite compelling for me to finish in spite of my artistic nature to never finish anything I start. Much is left undone.
This is the original scan and not my final finish which included digital enhancements. I was fortunate to find this one: evidently, with the change of data storage technologies art files become obsolete as programs become outmoded and storage devices are continually updated and replaced. I may have lost the final finish forever, but I will 'immortalize' the original scan of this pencil portrait here on this blog.

I remember a fellow friend and classmate mentioned that my Jesus was too much of a body builder. I agreed, but I over exaggerated his muscular form in an attempt to express the agony and pain of death by crucifixion. Obviously, that is secondary to his contorted expression.
To be honest, I surprise myself now, even after years more of practice and having gone through formal training after this portrait, that I had done this. In some aspects I think it is better than I do things nowadays. Perhaps my patience was greater, my eye sight sharper, and body could better endure slaving bent over a pad of paper.What I love about Jesus and the Cross, is that He was in control the entire time: "No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father," (John 10:18). He did not die as a sinner but for other sinners. And rose again.
People throughout history and now want to ignore Jesus or debunk him. All other religious divinities can be incorporated, absorbed, exchanged and interchanged, but at the face of Jesus the Christ a soul is sifted to the left or the right. He claims the highest position above all gods and authorities. Either he will be betrayed or beloved. There is no in between.

God bless you with His grace and gospel this Easter. Thanks for letting me share this portrait with you.

Slinger

Pulled this golden nugget out of my treasure chest of oldies but goodies. This 2:10 black and white short was a video class project from college back in 2001 (The Illinois Institute of Art - Schaumburg).

My friends, Edgar and Jonathan graciously volunteered as actors one Saturday morning. Beyond our friendship and availability, I chose them for their unique contrasting styles that yet would fit into this genre of the Western Gunsling'n Shoot'em up.

Inspired by the independent film, Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp and directed by Jim Jarmusch, I unabashedly intended to imitate Dead Man's style. I chose a monochromatic palette with characters that have great light/dark contrast in that format. Edgar had stylish, black Mexicana hair and Jonathan had light hair, wore a black vest that he had among his other costumes (as he was an avid period costumer and member of a renaissance reinactment group). In the picture below, you can see they fit together like the squares on a chess/checker board.

Also, I wanted to capture the pace. Dead Man is a film that moves slowly...or rather, it kind of drifts, like a stick floating down a stream. With this in mind, I wanted to capture the pacing of two dueling gunmen taking their steps - step by step to finality...only one moves on, and his stride is unbroken. Jonathan did well to keep in step with my idea. In the editing process, I cut the pieces to match the music track, which is from the Dead Man film, created by the famous Neil Young.

I prepared with storyboards before filming. They still exist somewhere hidden within ancient and dusty sketchbooks stashed away somewhere. Too bad I can't show them here. I like how the terrain at the location (which was very near to my apartment at the time where the students lived) aided this film. There was enough foliage and two trees were well placed to frame the wide camera shot of the 'shoot'.

A successional just for Edgar to get some spotlight.

In the final 'scene' as Jonathan walks away, the camera is canted giving a nice diagonal division of the screen - the tree anchors the scene with immobility as Jonathan shrinks toward the horizon.

It was a fun project, and definitely a memorable piece of my past.

Swash Buckling Galore

With Don Quixote, it's more galley s'washin buckets than true heroism at the tip of a lance or foil.

I recently remembered that I had done a couple Don Quixote and mighty steed character designs from a few years ago lost somewhere in the various sketch books I have lying around.

Here, Donny is naked and so is his faithful animal companion. I was confused, because, I thought Don was the one riding a donkey in Cervantes' story. So I drew a donkey for him. However, I learned later that his friend, Sancho, rode this and Don, a horse. This sketch was made in the summer of 2006 (or 07?) when I was still ambitious enough to make some new 3D projects whilst working a split shift job as an English conversationalist for adults in Suwon. I remember going to a wooded park near my home for some peace and quiet, sitting on a park bench under the canopy of tall trees where interesting shapes of light littered the ground round about me on the sunny, breezy day. Some older Korean ladies approached me with some religious tracks while I was indeed in a trance-like state of focus bent over my sketch pad with portable cd player headphone buds in my ears. They were from a local church. However, one of the many heretical and cultic churches that exist in Korea. I politely accepted the literature but declined any conversations.


To be true, I have never read the novel (even though I do have it available to read as a digital book) or seen much media about Don Quixote, but through cultural impressions I developed my own conceptions of how an old dreamer might appear as he followed his follied calling of Revivalist of the old Spanish chivalric ethics and heart of romance.

Having recalled my old sketches from 2006 and 07, I recently decided to watch a film or two about it rather than indulging a truly rich experience of reading the original. I don't give much time for the luxury of reading these days. Actually, I only got round to watching Orson Welles' Don Quixote. Orson said of his work, "My Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are exactly and traditonally drawn from Cervantes, but are nonetheless contemporary."

However, never before being visually exposed directly to this character before, I am surprised how similar my concept and Orson's concept [visually] are.

This sketch was started prior to the other while in my first year in Korea. In my first private academy job, I had a small sketch book that I would pull out now and then. He was unfinished, so while viewing Orson's interpretation, I cleaned this one up ready for posting.


Anyway, just like Orson's film project which was never really completed, so is this random project and so many others that start and stop with one or two pages of idea sketches. The busy-ness of life just takes over and I forget to go anywhere with what I start, and begin again with some new fascination, leaving the old ones for a visit much later on. Just as I am doing now.