Tyler Schatz Illustration!

ESTEBAN AT IT AGAIN!!

2011-06-14T05:55:00.001-07:00

holy sheesh lookit em' go!

Update!

2011-03-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

howdy folks! heres some new things, iron man and bats were done at megacon sitting at the booth and the justice league image was something i was fooling around with on my free time.

a doodle i turned into a mockup cover;

and a goofy 2 page story

hope all is swell!

tyler

s'more ladies

2011-02-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

goofin around, had fun with these

comic update coming I PROMISE INTERNETS, I PROMISE

Esteban comic update, gearing up for Megacon! Thesis! gahh

2011-02-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

Howdy folks, I've recently been apart of a publication held by my school (Ringling College of Art) called "Meanwhile", where the chosen few attending Megacon on the schools behalf were asked to make 2 comic pages. These pages are laid out one after another with the tag line 'Meanwhile...' setting up each persons story. Pretty fun! I'm throwing together the whole shabang (total of 28 pages) on InDesign to be sent off to print, the schools graced us with 3,000 (three thousand!!) copies as a first run! Should be exciting, we're going to be handing them out at our Megacon booth later in March.

Here's my contribution, I decided to give Esteban, my story I've been adapting here and there, a little moment in time for everyone to see

I'll be expanding on my Esteban 'franchise' for a part of my thesis in a short 6 page adventure, so I'm super stoked!

I was doing some warmup drawings the other night and became particularly fond of how one turned out also and tuned it up some! charcoal ink and digital

On the topic of thesis, here's a sneak at another comic story I've been adapting in the shadows, which will later be combined with the other stories I'm creating to be bound into one anthology book.

I'm really excited about this one too! It's been in the back of my head wherever I go and I'm thrilled to have the time to breathe life into it! I'll eventually unveil the characters and story synopsis soon

I'll try to make a bigger stride in keeping this updated during the last months of my time in school, but these are the last months of my time in school. heh

tell me what you think!

Tyler

woah hey, more big news, semesters over! collaborations and stuff!

2010-12-11T15:58:00.001-08:00

woah jeez another crazy month, but I've got a ton to show!

first some great news I was told recently!

I'll be in the next issue of CMYK on sale January!! Chris Buzelli was the judge and chose my Donuts piece created earlier this year, huge thanks goes out to him for judging this year and really honored to have such a talented artist look at my work!

Also, I've been working collaboratively with a number of artists, earlier in the month I was involved with a comic pitch with my great friend Eric Bonhomme who handled all of the inking while I did the coloring, they seemed to love it tremendously, so hopefully I'll be on board with that project in the coming months!

next up!

MOTE marine laboratories here in Sarasota also commissioned a couple of students at Ringling to come up with some sort of project to make people more aware of Red Tide, fortunately I had the chance to work with Vanesa Del Rey before she blows up into a mega comic book star! She handled the inking while i did the coloring. It was a great turnout! the local news showed up at the unveiling and we had our own little booth setup, we had color copies of the comic printed and black and whites to hand out, as well as stickers I designed and huge posters!

we made a cover together also, once again I did the coloring/designing while she inked

here are the first four pages, inks by vanesa, colors by me

i designed some stickers also, people seemed to love them at the show!

it seems like i'm slowly turning into a colorist haha, im fine with it actually. it's such an honor being able to work so closely with my friends and create something thats beyond what we're each capable of doing, whether for the sake of time or talent - regardless, a huge honor to be working with these people before their careers explode!

my great friend and instructor George Pratt also asked me to come up with some designs for his show! He'll be flying to Europe soon for a signing and attending one of the openings. I'm really honored he chose this to drag along with him, its the first time something I've created has left the country and I'm fortunate its apart of something so mighty like a gallery show George Pratt is having. Here's the result! Good luck George!

Finally between all of that going on I was able to pump out a couple pieces of my own, two comic stories, one thats still progressing, and the other that I recently finished.

This first one is called Taquiner, which is french for 'tease' I believe (i hope?), it's to be a 3 page story, involving sex, lies, and assassinations!

My instructor Joe Thiel gave us a final assignment for his class, he chose 3 stories for people to create some kind of imagery to go along with. He handed me "The Loser's Club" from Michael Chabons book Manhood for Amateurs and told me he chose this story with me in mind, so instantly I knew I had to make something special.

this was a sketch I did of the main character at different stages of his life

and the final

I'm pretty happy with it, a couple panels I might edit later to stick in my portfolio, but overall I had a blast making it!

That's all I got for now OH WAIT HOLY SHIATZU

let me know what you think! have a great holiday everybody!

tyler

Updates! Great month! MONSTER ATTACK!

2010-11-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

What a long, great difficult month its been! phew.

First off got to give a huge thanks to Josh Cochran for coming down and giving a really dope workshop, presentation and judging the illest of ill show!

The show was great! Huge turnout and everyone had a great time!

Also hugely honored and extremely fortunate to say he chose my Oil Spill illustration I made earlier as the 'Best in Show'! It's not everyday you get to meet people who push you creatively and have them give merit to your work! Really really honored, thanks man!!!!

Here's some things ive been doing between other things, a little bit of everything, just experimenting and learning as much as i can before crunch time next semester!

I finished this the other day and was pretty happy with it! I love me some monsters ! mixed media and digital

Anyway more updates to come !

Enjoy!

newer things!

2010-10-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

i've been experimenting some more painting digitally just to broaden my horizons (hopefully) and just went for it, had a lot of fun making these guys and i can feel myself learning more and more after each experiment!

I was also tasked to come up with something for La Musica again this year, and i wanted to keep it as simple as possible by forming some 'Sarasota-y' buildings in the form of an instrument, so this was my end result of that decision.

more to come! let me know what you think!

tyler

thor and weirdo warmups

2010-09-27T20:56:00.000-07:00

have a good one!

tyler

Illustration for a book of poetry

2010-09-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

My instructor tasked us on creating an illustration for a book of poetry written by one of his close friends, which may or may not be used in his book being published soon, depending on the publisher. However, that's neither here nor there, this was just an assignment! We were to choose a poem and do an illustration to accompany it,

I wanted to do something simple and subtle, and i'm pretty happy with how it came out !

Its a purely black and white image if it's chosen to accompany the book, but I also wanted to add a slight subtle tone over some parts, so here's a variation

more to come,

///HUGE EDIT!!!

i forgot to mention that my tshirt design for illest of ill (posted below) was chosen as this years design for the mens tshirts! my good friend and fellow mark maker Vanesa Del Rey had her design for the women's tshirt chosen as well! they'll be on sale in a couple of weeks!! save your pennies!

hope you enjoy!

tyler

Spidey and Luchadores

2010-09-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

I've been taking the time to find a more enjoyable way of working digitally for myself, these are the results of some fooling around! more to come

figure drawing and some warmups

2010-09-13T13:27:00.000-07:00

got around to scanning some things in the other day, here's a little handful of warm-ups and drawing;

and these were some of the 15-20min poses that i enjoyed. came across a happy mistake while scanning, the computer picked up the brown paper as that golden orange color, never bothered to color correct it because i liked it heh :)

have a good one!

tyler

Op-ed piece about 'Fat Tax'

2010-09-09T16:07:00.001-07:00

I was given an article about 'Fat Tax', where a doctor believes obese people should be taxed more, while some others mentioned this is a problem that's spouting at a much younger age than adulthood, and should look at the underlying problem of children substituting fast food for a healthier dinner.

I wasn't sure if pointing the finger at McDonalds was the best route to take objectively, but I felt their image was the most iconic to be used in a situation like this

graphite, charcoal and digital

hope you enjoy,

tyler

I'm in deep.

2010-09-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

first 2 weeks down, its been pretty busy!

I just finished this one here, of my loyal and trusty friend Esteban traveling around the world warning folks what spots to avoid since theres an invasion of giant animals and monsters right! RIGHT! who knows maybe next issue Esteban might have to do some pest control on a couple of spiders with some sticks of dynamite and strong wit? who knows...

the words are quite big, it's to be reproduced at 4x6, so any smaller and it might be too hard to read. but hey, i had a blast drawing some of this though and learned quite a bit about designing comics and text and what not - still learning though (as you can see. im sure!) not giving up though.

Illest of Ill, our student run show here at ringling is underway, they held submissions for tshirts and posters and whatever else, they wanted to keep the topic geared towards its theme 'Pulp' this year, so I decided to include as much zanny crap i could without it being too much of a clusterpie. robot using shark as projectile weapon is the proudest point of the drawing for me!

morphed into tshirt design also, im probably going to have to make an edit on this if they decide to use it for a shirt and use a limited color pallette.

and some figure drawing from class, luckily ive got 6 hours of straight figure drawing with the mighty George Pratt on fridays, it's been pretty fun so far!

2 day ill assignment on my menu and continuing that silly Esteban story up next!

have a good one

tyler

stuff updated

2010-08-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

howdy

here's some warmup drawings and digicoloring

this is the pencil sketch i finished today for a tshirt design, ive got some ways to go on it

that should be finished by the end of the week along with another illustration on the subject of 'travel'...so we'll see where that goes.

cheerios

tyler

Final night at TAD

2010-08-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

Whew what a week! Had a blast, hope to get back to Austin soon. Big shout out to Jason Manley and Francis Vallejo for letting me sit in on some figure sessions in their studio and also the students for having me - some real stand up scholars and gentlemen they are!

A couple of photos from the final model sessions;

oh. my last year at ringling is starting tomorrow...

Cheers,

Tyler

TAD Austin,TX

2010-08-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

The Art Department, Austin, TX

A lot of great things happening at the TAD Austin pod!

My homies Orlando Sanchez and Francis Vallejo are watching over the studio while Jason Manley heads it - past few days have been a blast hanging with everyone and meeting these young and eager illustrators! lots to come! So much going on, tons and tons of figure drawing going on around... I'm almost envious of what these kids have available to them. Anyway, heres some little photos of a few of the better ones I've done while there. A couple more sessions left, so more to come.

Juggling is a Hustle

-tyler

new doodles

2010-08-10T11:50:00.001-07:00

2010-07-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

ive been on a little journey, which explains the lack of updates.

lots of stuff to scan whenever i get the opportunity however!

some photographs of my travels thus far... next and final stop is texas

take care,
tyler

Motivation, Inspiration

2010-06-26T01:30:00.000-07:00

a buddy of mine and fellow student told me he's been getting distracted recently and finding it hard to stay motivated to keep drawing. it's always a struggle for everyone. it was originally going to be a response on twitter, but this topic has been on my mind a lot recently and went on a little rant through email.

i thought i would share it here also if anyone is interested, maybe there's something in it for you

Q:
hey tyler, question for you, how do you go about staying motivated to draw? any particular exercises? im finding myself getting distracted.

A:
A couple of ways really - first and foremost, and I cannot stress the importance of this; avoid the internet, and if you're not capable of doing this, surround yourself somewhere that makes it a chore for you to walk across your house / apartment to check your email or youtube or whatever. Do whatever it takes, no sacrifices. Drawing is fun, but it's also work, you have to work hard to keep going, and giving it all you've got is the only way to take your ability to the next level.

Another way I've found myself appreciating is the time away from drawing. Being able to sincerely, purely appreciate that time has increased my work ethic tremendously. I've realized that having any hobby outside of Illustration, whether it be a jog when you wake up, or when you devote half a day to watching movies you like, or reading a book you enjoy an afternoon will impact your work for the better. I truly believe this, and I've found myself being inspired by the things I come across when I'm out having 'me time' that I can bring back and apply to my ideas later.

A handful of people I know have it much easier, all it takes is looking at a couple of pictures of paintings or illustrations and they're set - this is how I used to be. However, given the resources we now have, I find it to be more like a black hole. There's just too much information... I feel like I'm sending my creativity into a whirlpool to be something it's not when I'm forced to stand in front of an unlimited supply of images and knowledge that, albeit wealthy to know, will be never ending and unlimited in influence.

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good art book as much as anyone else, but right now I feel content with my direction, and although I am always open to new things, I'm not about to go and spend hours upon days upon weeks worth of time (and work) to go about hunting this 'new' thing down - instead I'm going to keep creating and let 'it' come to me. I believe one day, 'it' will.

It's a dangerous slope not knowing what you want your work to be and what message you want to say with your drawings - being sucked into so much knowledge without seriously asking yourself; "what am I trying to say with this?" is dangerous I've found. You get inspired by something that your mind tells you is a good place to start, but what you really should be looking for, is a better place to start, and the only way you can find that is by looking at yourself objectively and critically, and asking yourself "what am I trying to say?".

My best friend, (and fellow illustrator) told me once when I asked 'What should I do when I'm not motivated enough to keep drawing the things I currently am?', the answer was obvious to me (to stop), but I wanted to hear it for the sake of curiosity, he said to sit down and ask yourself what do you define as enjoyable, as true unadulterated fun ? I sat down, made a list of things that I truly truly love and find unlimited enjoyment in, and whenever I get personal time to sit and draw I unload my imagination onto the paper without any care in the world about line quality, color, whether its good or not, what have you. It's time for me to have fun, and I dont limit myself by worrying about such nonsense like that.

Sometimes that's all it takes for me, when I'm working on something that I'm not too excited about, I put it aside for a bit and have fun drawing while I warm up. Everything from funky architecture, to mutant animal combination's, to Superman and Batman or famous musicians or what have you. Other times I find it motivating to take whatever I'm trying to draw and make it interesting for me, the way I do this is by making it more challenging. Every solution has an idea that everyone has thought of already, and it's easy to go that route, but challenging yourself to 'figure it out' is fairly addicting (to me), it stretches your creativity and could produce something that you once thought was utterly beyond your potential.

Distractions are one of my enemies as an Illustrator-to-be, it's a relentless cold hearted bitch with no compassion or morality, but its something we all need to conquer eventually. I'm still fighting the good fight man, I think all of us are.

Figure out what you want to say with your drawings, figure it out enough to fall in love with it, and when you've gotten there, you'll never want to put the pencil down.

So anyway man, I hope some of this helps. If it doesn't I'm sorry, but it's what I do.

Good luck

new new new black&white

2010-06-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

hello again

here's an illustration for an op-ed article in a local publication. the article was essentially about how Obama has lacked the authority in handling the oil spill situation.

this task was a challenge for me, to be transparent i didn't think i was going to go through with it because of the content of the article wasn't something I agreed on completely (i dont like to point fingers). however after looking at it objectively i wanted to test my ability to create an image that would A) please the client and B) give a clear message without showering anyone in a negative light

i feel pretty happy with it! i really wanted to add a goopey pelican in there somewhere but in the end we decided it would defer from the message. maybe one day i'll be able to draw a goopey pelican though.

so im going to include some process and give a little impromptu step by step for anyone that cares

this was a very very short deadline, my hand was working faster than my mind at some points -

after fooling around with ideas, we decided on a general direction. i then started figuring out the design/composition, here are a couple thumbnails

the final approved thumbnail

i was happy with the direction, originally my idea was to include some wildlife from the gulf within the oil, but in the end i thought it complicated things too much and wanted the message to be as clear as possible to the clients liking

here's an in progress shot of it coming along. at this stage i was using ink and charcoal, doing my initial drawing in red pencil so when i scan it in i can just dilute all of the red from the file and continue working.

this was as far as i took it traditionally. drawing reflections of the capital building was a challenge though, i hope people can tell what it is hah - the few ive shown it to have gotten it though, so that makes me happy

i intended this piece to be finished digitally, and whenever i do something digitally i usually take about 10-15 minutes fooling around with whatever leftover supplies i have laying around and make some brushes for photoshop. here's what i created, theyre white for clarity purposes.

brushed around crushed charcoal and dripped ink down newsprint and smudged around black acrylic - just simple fun things without any clear intention, usually you'll get some nice results after you scan them in and tweak the levels

a traditional monotype probably would have sufficed to get a similar look, but time was thin.

i woke up from a power nap and took a quick look at it and thought his legs could really use some hair on it though

so i made some stubbly hair for the legs and scanned it in

'im a man of my word'

after using the brushes i created to give the piece more personality, i got to a point where i felt happy with it, im sure if you look closely you can see some of the imprints of those brush shapes, but for the most part all i did was select certain aspects of the drawing and lay the textured brush ontop of it

the final result;

- 'oil wake' mixed media

hope you enjoyed the impromptu step by step, as always if theres any questions feel free to ask!

some words of encouragement from a friend in my sketchbook before i send this post off

cheers,
tyler

sketchblog

2010-06-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

hope you enjoy them

cheers,
tyler

another sketch dump

2010-06-02T10:10:00.001-07:00

just a few this time

cheers

sketchblog post

2010-05-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

hey folks,

got myself a new sketchbook for the summer, its real fun getting my nose back in one of these things - here's what i've been doing the past couple of days!

////edit////

forgot, i'll throw a couple of these up here;

pages 1-3

dialogue isnt in and some things im still not happy with, theres more but not happy with it

cheers!
tyler

2010-05-11T13:32:00.000-07:00

hey all - summertime is officially here but the brush has not stopped, im going to try and update as much as possible, but this summer i'm going to be doing a lot of bouncing around so there may be a nice chunk of time between updates

still getting situated on living arrangements and such, etc etc - i havent figured out what i've done to deserve the best of friends, but im very fortunate!

anyway here's some of the things i've done in the past day - i hope photographs suffice, no scanner around me at the moment!

hope those on vacation have a good one, dont forget to keep drawing!

cheers,
tyler

stuffs

2010-04-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

procrastination is a disease

heres a drawing i did today that i liked

and a color comp test for the comic ive been working on

not the final, the colors are likely going to be tweaked a bit, but just wanted to throw something up from it

another quick figure update

2010-04-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

the top was done today, while the bottom were done last week

still trying to explore a new technique - its a really fun and different way of approaching something for me. what i've realized so far;

- mid tones do a lot more of the work than i originally thought

- i jump into lights too quickly without any real thought or planning, being more selective and limited is proving to be more successful

- the power of the silhouette is still unmatched

the realization about being selective with lights was told by my instructor George Pratt after he gave me a couple demo's of 'academy style drawing'. one his way, and the other he picked up from Mark English, he watched over my shoulder as i attempted to duplicate his teachings.

it's funny how someone teaches you something that you just dont quite grasp right then and there, but later on, either the following day or the following month, it hits you like a bus. its a continuous "ooohh thats what he was talking about" moment for me whenever i try and draw this way after he gave me a little demo.

its proving to be a well met challenge for me and i'm having an enormous amount of fun exploring.

cheers, tyler

blam pow zap

2010-04-12T17:44:00.001-07:00

my buddy let me use his camera for some reference shoots and ive just been going photo crazy the past couple of days! anyway - heres some stuff i documented during a figure drawing session today

cheerios
tyler

end of the year blues and awards

2010-04-10T23:24:00.000-07:00

end of the school year soon approaching, i need to figure out what im going to do with myself. i know i want to create some work this time without that many interuptions, i just dont know where yet. physically i mean, as in i have no where to go haha

anyway im taking advantage of my time as much as possible here, and i think ive learned more these past 3 or so weeks of working i have in a very, very, very long time.

here's some doodling to start off;

this first illustration was done for a liberal class of mine actually, the assignment was to illustrate 'what psychology meant to me'. i think its a pretty literal portrayal, but i wanted to try and make it interesting for me to execute, so i played around a lot and had some fun, learned a few things.

the 3 hour assignments i did in the beginning of the year are really starting to come in handy with all of these short deadlines ive been getting - it felt good to get my idea out on paper as quickly as possible and just jump into it

Illest of Ill starting up yet again at the ringling campus, early this time around, some big plans are in store for the show later on this year!

this was done on short notice in one sitting the other night for the illest fundraiser thing. i didnt really know what to do when i walked into the door, so a babe was what usually comes to my mind first.

it was fun, someone came up and suggested text would go nice with this, i think i agree

busy week it was though, thursday i went out to Myaka State Park with George Pratt and some bud's to go throw some paint around, and that we did. we were out there for about 4-5 hours just painting, learning, teaching, drawing - all kinds of great fun!

i felt really confident out there painting with the mighty GP in our presence, let me just say - that man can PAINT! jeez, just watching him lay down these marks with his palette knife were incredible to witness. He's posted photos, and always updates his Twitter, i should be peeking around some of the shots somewhere.

anyway here's the two i got out of the little adventure

detail shot

i had fun to say the least, and hope to get out there again soon!

///

also, pleased to announce Ringling College of Art and Design along with Irene Gallo and Greg Manchess graciously gave me the 'Junior of the Year' award during the Best of Ringling weekend exhibition - what an honor! I -must- thank them for coming to judge and give an excellent talk / demo to the students - what a great time that was! I'd also like to thank my friends, family and faculty for pushing me to make more and more images, your hard work, determination and honesty are my inspiration, so keep it up !!!

///

anyway, comic book is coming along great, expect an update sometime this upcoming week.

cheers,
tyler

figure stuff and a comic book update

2010-03-27T01:09:00.000-07:00

busy busy busy

two gouache / ink studies

and jumping into oils again, did this quick block in the other day, happy with it so far i think - i might have jumped into the lights too quickly though, its looking chalky. and just random temperature stuff is bugging me. ive got another class session on the pose, so im looking forward to it

here's the start of my 12 page comic that i've been tasked to do. its an adaptation of liam o'flaherty's 'the sniper' - looking forward to finally taking a story to finish, i'll throw up the first round of my roughs - but most of these pages have changed dramatically since i first scanned this in.

below is just some sketching - i had an idea of what i wanted the main character to look like before i began, so some of them look really similar

i decided to go with this direction, but more drawing is being done since i'm still in these planning stages - so small changes may occur

anyway, more to come - ive got 2 days to do a star wars illustration - i hope i wake up tommorow amped and ready to go

cheers,
tyler

Yeesh

2010-03-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

What a crazy month that was? Being loaded up with rubbish classes(non studio ones) is putting a damper on things for me creatively I think - ah well, gota move forward!

Here's what I've been up to the past couple of weeks, in no particular order

here's an album cover for Donuts by J Dilla! i had so much fun here!!

i listened to the album a couple of times on loop to get a general feel for it all and noticed how fun the whole album was, and all i could think of was back in the day when i was sitting either in church or at school, all i loved to do was draw these silly scenes of buildings being destroyed by godzilla while being attacked by ninjas! and although this one doesnt have any ninjas or godzilla, it does have a really fun monster i came up with (more on that later) eating some giant donuts while a couple of rad tanks are about to fire on him if he causes anymore chaos!

the illustrations is finished for the most part, i'm going to add text and such later(along with some scans of process and monster design)

figure/life studies - been exploring other mediums and approaches during a couple of sessions which I doodled, painted, experimented, etc.. these are the ones I thought were more successful. the model was posed for 2 class sessions, and to be honest, im starting to learn how much i dont enjoy long poses - it always feels like such a time dump and the longer i stand infront of it the more and more i feel like wiping it off with a towel and starting fresh. i see the purpose and direction of a long pose, ive experienced them first hand, but lately ive just been wanting to do what i feel is fun.

anyway, mediums used in this order, pastel..watercolor/coloredpencil..watercolor/gouache...gouache

moving onto some illustrations

here's one ive done about Pat Robertson, the old senile man who spouts ridiculous things dealing with religion. i thought the only way to balance that ridiculousness was to have him playing puppet master with a little Jesus doll

heres some process

and the final

theres some things i like and somethings im frustrated and fed up with haha - but it was a fun one to do

and just some more randomness; sketchbook pages and media experiments

anyway, this weekend i'll be at MegaCon in Orlando, FL at the Ringling College of Art booth , come on by and say hi if youre in the area!!

cheers,
tyler

pastel drawing /painting

2010-02-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

ive been opening up a lot with pastels lately, especially in terms of color, its been difficult for me since ive been noticing i tend to mute a lot of my color - heres some of the more successful ones i came out of it with, along with detail shots. hope you enjoy!

forgot to mention this one im still tweaking even though the session has ended - a couple values and temperatures are bugging me

degas has been keeping me up at night

cheers,
tyler

megacon sneak peak

2010-01-31T19:37:00.001-08:00

heres an image i was asked to do for our annual megacon poster thats going to be hung up at the schools booth - i had oodles of fun!

pratt, thiel and perez about to put the beating on an a random anime character

buildings

2010-01-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

the other day i was asked to draw some buildings!

its weird though, i get so lost drawing architecture. my mind goes blank and before i know it the paper is covered with all kinds of nonsense. anyway, heres a little update;

ink / gouache

and a montage test of them all thrown together

oddly enough i had fun doing these and hope to have the chance to do more soon.

more updates coming, ive been fiddling around with pastels a lot recently.

cheers,
tyler

Lawrence of Arabia...an artventure!

2010-01-25T12:34:00.000-08:00

well,

this was an adventure all in itself for me! i kind of documented my process on this one for a change, so here we go;

first, and most obviously - i watched the movie again! i started taking notes and throwing ideas that came to me during the film, and once i narrowed down some concepts, i began super rough thumbnails for a composition

i was pretty happy with the designs on the upper right.

normally at this stage, i'd jump into a photo reference shoot - but luckily i just grabbed some people and had them pose for me and did drawing on the spot

from here i started to begin doing the final. i kind of have a rule i give myself for each assignment, some say it could be a good or bad thing, but for now, as a student, i think it's a good thing - always try something new.

ive been raving about this soft acrylic gel medium to my friends lately because it just such fun to use - i used it before to layer ink and gouache over eachother for fun times previously - but i had no idea it could ALSO be used to transfer imagery (!!) i had to investigate this, so a simple search on google led me to a couple of nice step by steps and i immediately hopped aboard. this was the start of the ink drawing i did of lawrence on the bike

after it dried, i scanned him in and printed out and prepped my things for the transfer test

basically it came down to these steps

1. print out the image with it flipped horizontally

2. lather the image with the acrylic gel medium

3. lay face down on board / paper and let it dry (at this point they said to let it stand for a day or two...i just hit it with a hair dryer hah)

and finally,

4. get cloth towel and soak it in water, then rub the paper until it starts to shrivel up and becomes brushed away, as documented here;

voila! it was a success! so here on out i was ready to go! i transfered it to the paper (rives BFK):

you may ask what the reason for doing the transfer was when i already did the drawing itself? well, let me explain simply. i believe no matter what type of imagery you work on, there should always be a sense of history to it. not the way you may be thinking as weathered or torn though, but rather the time spent on the creation of it. the end results of spending that time usually yield greater results.

the black mass of his jacket was given a great effect where some of the paper that i washed off was left behind, and the fibers seeped through the gel and gave it a cloudy look - it was a suprise when i washed it away to say the least!

from here i kept trucking;

at that point i brought out my pin roller and masked off all of the positive space, mixed some paint and rolled over the background. this photo doesnt pick it up, but the paint was really close to the undercoat of paint i used which led to some issues later on

initially the camel was done with oils and a galkyd / wax medium i mixed to give a nice gummy effect to the paint (and quickened the drying time). once the paint began to dry i mixed up more of that acrylic gel and some cad red (acrylic) and lathered it ontop of the already gummy surface. it resulted with some nice textures youll see below

here was the first draft of the final, the one i put up for critique in class

i got some great crits from my instructor george pratt about the background color being too close in value to lawrence and especially about the text used, which i will admit, is bland and lifeless in this version. he also suggested i explore more color's for the camel, so that was one of the first things i did. also while i was on the computer fooling with it, i tried lightening up the background to seperate the two and found a good solution for that.

also began thinking of new ideas for the type

in the end though, i thought the red held its weight. the others i liked equally, but the red had a certain gravitas to it that i thought worked well with the subject matter.

anyways i knew what i had to do now and that was to go back into it traditionally and lighten up the background with an off-white color and figure out more approaches for the typography.

i hit the paper again and came up with more typography (hand made) to be used later on

im sure you can tell some of these words dont make sense. well i get lazy sometimes and realize 'oh, i already made that letter, i can just clone it in photoshop'.. which is exactly what i did

anyways, after great guidance and great crits from my fellow artists and designers alike, i finally came to a version i liked and felt happy with

some detail shots:

(^this version, i believe, was printed out and hung up on campus somewhere... not sure though!)

there we have it, that was my artventure, i had fun, hope you did too~

till next time!

cheers,
tyler

art dump

2010-01-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

i posted these on DAS couple days ago, but thought i'd dump them on here too! these are some pages from my recent sketchbook - digital color thrown in afterwards.

also started doing some more gesture drawing in figure which has been a nice change of pace and a great warm up.

hectic couple of weeks, excuse the slow updates please! heh

cheers,
tyler

Great big art dump from the past 3 weeks of working!

2009-12-14T14:11:00.000-08:00

So I told myself I was going to scan stuff in as time went by but when I started scanning, I didn't want to come back - so I scanned it all !

I'll walk through this one first because it opened my eyes to a bigger world of picture making.

My Illustration instructor, George Pratt, was gracious enough to give us a version of the first assignment in the Illustration Academy and I jumped all over it!

Above was a little process on my ideation and composition thumbnails, the final is below. I find myself really enjoying this assignment after I was through - while doing it though I became burnt out on the subject matter, but I made it into something that I could learn from. Although there are things here that I like I still think there's more work to be done (as always)

Basically the assignment bottle necked what we had available to us - certain shapes had certain amounts of temperature , value and color shifts available and that led me into really concentrating on how to make a successful illustration with such little available. It forced me to really dig deep and put emphasis on things like the overall shape of an object and what kind of silhouette it makes.

I learned a lot from it and really hope to keep exploring it!

Moving on, this was the final assignment in Digital Illustration. Lately I've been completely flabbergasted by two things - Richard Solomon's 'Art On A Grand Scale' and a heavy influence by Josh Cochran and Pietari Posti ( which I'm sure are evident in these following images ). I really like how these guys tackle digital color, it reminds me in some part of the old Simplisccimus art where flat color and very fun, whimsikle drawing was key - but very contemporary and focused on design. I'm still trying to make it my own though, which has been a struggle all to itself

The assignment was simple, we are to do a personal illustration and treat it like some type of job (basically give it an application).

Anyway, my pitch was simple too. Our computer labs feel like a prison sometimes because the walls are always so dreadful, and I wanted to see how much it would liven the room up if there were something on the walls - so Art on a Grand scale was what I went with!

And here's the application, with the old image of the labs on the right.

Anyway, big props to Josh Cochran and Pietari Posti for having such a unique look to your art. As a student, it's really influential to see stuff like this!

Moving on, these are a couple oil sketches from figure class. the first was about a 4-5 hour and the others are all 1.5-3 hours

I feel like I've been growing which is nice, especially when I look back on the first oil painting I did. I've also found that I'm much more confident with the paint when I'm given a time limit - most of these were done in one class session and had a sense of urgency to capture what I see.

I'm going to start my first oil painting illustration over this holiday break also, so I cant wait to see how that goes hah!

Finishin up, these are some pastel character doodling;

And a Fechin mastercopy;

Anyway, it's been a long 2.5 weeks to say the least - but there's no rest in sight for me. I'm starting a couple of illustrations over the break (movie posters) and hope to have them done by the time school begins again!

I'll have more stuff up as soon as possible, sheesh

cheers,
tyler

End of the semester

2009-12-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

It's settling down some, and I've been rummaging through all of my papers trying to find stuff. I'll be scanning a lot in so posts will be rolling in more frequently, to jump things off here's some ink doodling;

much more to come tommorow

cheers,
tyler

experimental experiments?!

2009-12-02T00:13:00.000-08:00

sheesh *yawn*

long week and its only half over! found a little time inbetween stuff to get out of the studio and sit infront of a scanner for a bit, so heres some stuff!

first one is referenced from shorpy.com;
ink, gouache and acrylic soft gel

i was watching some movie with morgan freeman at an odd hour of the night and stumbled on a nice photo of him, thought i'd try and reference it for kicks (his new film, invictus, looks superb by the way!)
ink, soft acrylic gel

and a figure painting i tweaked out and had some fun with
oil, wax on masonite

anyway hope to get some more up asap, only a week and a half left in the semester so its D-day for me.

more to come when the battles won!

cheers,
tyler

ya-ha!

2009-11-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

things have been going good on my end, past week has been brutal but i tried to get through it the best i could -

one great thing though is i was chosen along with some other great people to represent my school, Ringling College of Art and Design at the 2010 Megacon Convention in Orlando, woo!! not sure of the details yet, but i'll be sure to update in the coming months - be on the lookout for some more comic inspired art also ;)

heres some of what ive been up to the past week

oil on masonite

heres a quick phone camera grab of things im still tweaking

the left is another painting from life, and the right is an illustration thats almost but not quite finished - a lot of the values are still being adjusted so be on the lookout for a final version of it to be posted monday

and lastly, an ink drawing for a comic that will be uploaded soon, just trying to find the time to scan everything in - most likely a hefty update on the rest of the stuff ive been up to during my holiday break

till then,
cheers

tyler

character designs

2009-11-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

these were fun! heres the final character designs for a story im doing pre-pro concept work for in class

ill start with some ideation process on where i wanted these to go as far as looks went

the little shape scribbles next to each face is what i start out with, i find putting down the overall shape down on paper instead winging it from my head helped alot here - kind of acting as a map on this little trip

from there i went straight to final line art and jumped straight into the finals

i proudly would like to introduce to you;

Brock

Brunsen

and Bingo

these are 3 cavemen brothers out to find out why their food is mysteriously being stolen!

maybe Beefy has something to do with it?!

its a side-take on the story of the 3 little pigs, as assigned from my instructor.

ive still got some other things to do - character turn arounds and a few emotion tests - which ill have updated by monday!

hope you enjoy,

till then!

cheers,
tyler

another oil portrait and a doodle

2009-11-08T13:08:00.001-08:00

as the title says!

cheers,
tyler

portrait and a mastercopy!

2009-11-07T12:13:00.000-08:00

ive been flipping out over the work of Eduard Thony for about a year now - everytime i look at his illustrations i get all googly eyed and just lose any previous thoughts i once had

my instructor, george pratt, brought in one of his books of his work that have photographs of all his original work in them and thought jeez, maybe its time i do a mastercopy or two of this guys work

heres the end result of that thought

what ive learned was priceless, im looking and approaching drawing differently now, the power of negative space and the strength of a strong shape(powershapes!) are things im realizing and is so abundant in all of his old illustrations. i've since realized that a lot of those key ideas, i feel, have been missing in my work all across the board and am going to try and fix that with the next assignments i give myself

for some examples of his, and the other great great simplicissimus guys hit up this link for some quality stuff (click the images on the left for gallery)

also included is a portrait from class a few weeks ago that i later fooled around and experimented with

oil, pastel, wax on masonite

drawing is a little hokey, but i had fun!

ill have another oil painting uploaded in the next day or so - a couple globs of paint are still wet

till then,
cheers

tyler

early mornin art again

2009-11-03T05:31:00.001-08:00

found some time to scan some sketching / doodling before class

got some more stuff coming!

cheers,
tyler

la musica posters

2009-10-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

here are the final posters, the fisherman was done a whim really, but i had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot painting it!

anyway, got some more stuff to scan in tommorow, so i'll update again then

cheers
tyler

Rocketeer yes!!!

2009-10-22T07:36:00.001-07:00

had so much fun on this one, sheesh!

here's some process for once and the final below it;

i started out with a pencil sketch, scanned her in and started to pick out the image with flats for quick and easy selecting later on - and from there just slowly building up things

and the final

##edit##

i made some revisions to it after a couple comments from the peers, here's my revised edition - i think i like this one better

cheers,
tyler

new things and more thangs to come!

2009-10-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

been a crazy crazy couple of weeks, sheesh - so much going on - and so much more to do

jump right into it;

here's the poster ive been meaning to scan in for awhile!

woodblock ink on rives bfk

i had oodles of fun doing this media wise - the poster eh came out a little fun too i guess! ive got another line of information to ink out, but i'll wait till i get the correct info first heh! next one is gona be a doozy though im hoping, much more 'illustrative' and conceptual - cant wait!!

and heres a figure painting i yet again, struggled my ass off with;

oils, of course, on canvas board

one of the things i keep being told from my illustration teacher is the value of knowing temperature. its something that ive been trying to see for a long time and everytime i look for it, i often times dont feel like i know the difference between a cool shadow and how it can transition into a warm one. it comes naturally for me to differeniate a cool color and a warm one, as it does for everyone - but seeing and knowing which of my shadow shapes to add the appropriate temperature to becomes a puzzle! its a fun puzzle for sure, though.

regardless, i feel like ive made some great improvements over the week on my painting ability heh, kind of silly saying that in a week's time i feel an improvement - but i feel what i see, and i see improvements. im really excited about the portrait ive got going on in figure at the moment - which should be up when it dries

more updates to come...till then,

cheers,
tyler

sketch book and illest of ill with andrew hem

2009-10-12T12:36:00.001-07:00

big shout out to Andrew Hem for coming to campus and giving us all a demo / presentation on his work and where he began - was really insightful!

he was also the judge for this years 'Illest of Ill' gallery show and I was fortunate enough to get a piece I did a couple weeks ago into the show - word up!

and heres a quick doodle i did as he was preparing his board with a drawing

i'll try to find a picture of his finished piece sometime

cool beans though!

cheers,
tyler

new stuff

2009-10-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

theres a 3rd one, but im going to throw it back on the burner and see what else i can come up with

cheers
tyler

sneak of whats in the oven

2009-10-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

heres a tiny screen grab of whats going on in my world right now

ive been tasked to create 3 digital illustrations that somehow incorporate some form of traditional media - which is totally fun! something i care heavily about and lose many nights over trying to find that common ground between the two. the teacher gave us a choice to do turnarounds for a character we come up with, or place a character in 3 environments. i chose the environments because it gave me room to turn these into full on illustrations

i forgot to scan in my poster from the other post or two before - so thatll be up next time im in the labs

but for now, a little sneak at the character my 3 digital illos are gona be revolving around, ive named him 'left handed willy jackson'

new new new newwwww!!

2009-09-24T14:54:00.001-07:00

so i redesigned my banner thingy, that was fun! ive been playing around with HTML on the blog and scouting around for a website, so thats gona be up and coming soon too!

some new work, ive been having so much fun today doing art of all varieties

ive been doing a lot of drawing out of my head lately, usually im a sucker for some fun photograph in a book somewhere, but i decided to dust off the ol noggin when it comes to me just fooling around and experimenting with media / techniques and save the more 'serious' and 'traditional' type of drawing for my illustrations; here are some results

its so odd looking at what i was capable of drawing from my head 2 years ago and what i'm capable of now - just really mind blowing!

the first image was all ink and a digital color-overlay

the second image i actually fell in love with doing, so i'm going to add more to it and try to pull an illustration out of it heh! be on the look out for that

a sketchbook page; (more to come)

and some cellphone camera pictures of some figure studies - all apart of my journey trying to figure out how to paint well!

i feel like ive definately made progress on the easel, i think if i keep at it and start tackling more painting outside of class i could get to a point where i'm happy with myself - but as of right now its a struggle!

right now i think my problem is i cant grasp the idea of treating the canvas like a drawing and not a painting, i forget all of the fundamentals ive learned in drawing the figure and it just feels like ive gone into battle with nothing but a potato gun and a wooden spoon when i lay those first strokes down

practice is what i need though, lots of it i presume

anyway, time to go get some eats and find some jams

ill have another update tommorow !

cheers
tyler

adobe illustrator portrait

2009-09-21T08:46:00.001-07:00

comin along i guess

its what i turned in, but wasnt finished (teacher didnt know that!) - theres more i wanted to do to it but i think im just going to move on

sneak artsy photo peak

2009-09-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

waiting on some stuff to dry (lost my hair dryer) and took a couple photos of an in progress assignment while i wait

i'll have the final scanned / photographed friday

cheers,
tyler

moleskine and media experiment

2009-09-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

page from the ol moleskin;

and a media experiment for a poster i'll be doing

ink /prismacolor marker / ballpoint pen on rives bfk

i think i want to redesign this blog

cheers,
tyler

3 stooges

2009-09-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

havent fully quite figured out how to prepare an AI file for the web, but eh, thisll work

assignment in computer ill class to create 3 vector 'icons', the only 3 icons in my book are moe curly and larry ya see! WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOP

cheers,
tyler

late night juke

2009-09-11T21:20:00.001-07:00

here's a little piece i did to throw off doodles and shit relaunching their topics of the day;

henry 'gip' gipson

cheers,
tyler

prelim

2009-09-08T19:36:00.001-07:00

testing out a couple things, this is a prelim study for an assignment in - OH NO! illustrator! yikes. we'll see how it goes again?!

one of the three stooges

cheers
tyler

art dump

2009-09-05T00:04:00.001-07:00

i got my computer from IT after having it in 'the shop' for a couple weeks, so heres an update

heres some new stuff;

first illustration in pratts class, it was one of his 'one day assignments'

the story deals with peace baskets in rwanda and the woman who have to forgive the horrible things done in the past to their families

a nice figure update, ive been exploring ways of gesturing lately - these are all 1 minute gestures. i think ive grown a lot in the realm of gesturing, i love getting warmed up before a long pose and i always try to 'capture' as much as possible, with as little as possible (if that makes any sense)

these are longer poses, ranging from 20-60min

these were done the few weeks before school for doodles and shit, but never posted on my blog - so i figured i'd throw them up for whatever reason! these were also one day topics started and finished in 24hrs - had a lot of fun, and an excellent warm up for school

i've got a lot on my plate, so i'll have some more updates soon

cheers,
tyler

early mornin update

2009-08-31T05:41:00.000-07:00

yawn

heres a quick gouache doodle i did last night during portrait night

more to come

first back to school mini project

2009-08-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

my (traditional) ink drawing;

i took the liberty to color it while there was some technical difficulties in class;

and heres the 'digitally inked' version of it;

the assignment was to find a drawing by someone or do one yourself of a cartoon / comic book character and trace a digitally inked version of it in illustrator.

learned a little bit

had some fun

cheers,
tyler

sketchbook

2009-08-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

heres what ive been doing in my own sketchbook - just fooling around

george pratt is instructing 2 of my classes - graphic novels and illustration2, he requires seperate sketchbooks for each class and oodles and oodles amount of life drawing in each, which should be awesome!! expect lots of updates on that in the coming days / weeks

ill get around to throwing up some stuff up here i did over the summer when i get my laptop back from IT, heh...

cheers, tyler

iron man

2009-07-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

this was for an iron man challenge at http://doodlefukshit.blogspot.com/

a lot of talented people there for sure

star wars stuff coming along in the next day or two!!?!

cheers,
tyler

sheeeessh!!! its too hot in florida, art update

2009-07-15T11:15:00.000-07:00

got back from a nice little adventure in north carolina yesterday! heres some sketching and doodling i did while i wasnt enjoying the sights and adventuring with my art!

i'll have some plein air paintings and photography updated in the next couple of days

cheers,
tyler

sketchbook and uncle fester doodle

2009-06-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

couple little things

ill be in the smokey mountains thursday for 2 weeks! should be a fun adventure, i've got every intention to do some painting up there. . . i duno if i'll have the resources to bring all of my oils, but i'm totally going to give it my all - gouahce / arcylic / watercolor plein airs are sure to be a given though!!! stay tuned for a whole truck load of pictures and scans of the scenery up there

cheers,
tyler

voodoo dood

2009-06-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

fooling around with some materials

cheers,
tyler

new pages in the mole skin

2009-06-21T19:14:00.000-07:00

i went out on a boat today and took my moley with me and did some doodling

'never thought id be on a boat'

aaaaand heres a quick experiment

bottom is colored in painter x

more to come, i'm working on a couple illo's that i plan to unleash soon also

cheers,
tyler

one trick pony

2009-06-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

doodle in the ol mole-skin, exploring and experimenting some

overlapping drawings is an addiction for me at the moment

cheer
tyler

couple new things

2009-06-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

i made a couple illo projects for myself, and im constructing my website also, till then i'll throw up whatever i do in my sketch book , spare time

i added some color to that pinnochio drawing below, i'm much happier with it in this form and had oodles of fun!! photoshoping with a mouse ive found is always a challenge, but it forces me not to use the brush tool that often and try to retain some of my traditional thoughts of the original idea i had in my head. one day i can see myself gettin a tablet for fooling around, but i feel like i've gotten used to the mouse and dont know how i'd react to that leap. . . after all adam hughes does it and his work is bangerang!

so here we go, final pinno;

as you can see, i cropped it some, i liked it better this way, set more emphasis on pinnochio i thought

oh, and bought a new sketchbook and threw down some paint and ink on the first couple of pages

i'll have a new update soon!

cheers!
tyler

slight update, back from the dead?

2009-06-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

heh, its been a minute or two since i've updated! since the last post ive moved off campus back to the east coast for the summer and have been trying to set up a comfortable working area and get back into some illustration! i've just got things set up how i want i think, so look for some new work soon!!

this was something that i never got a chance to scan in, so i had to dust off this old scanner / printer combo in the office to get it uploaded

anyway, i've got some urging inspiration to do some illustratin, which is great because lately ive been a little...i duno, not uneasy - but cloudy minded i guess is the best way to put it. it seems everyone goes through this at some point from the people i've talked to, which makes me pretty reassured that i'm in good shape.

i've also been dabbling in after-effects and started to teach myself the ins and outs of it - its tough to grasp at first, but i've been focusing on the small stuff first to get a hand of it all. so who knows... maybe i'll get some motiondesign stuff up !?

also i'm pretty late on this but better late than never i guess!

THE FIND

THE FIND ISSUE THREE

the entire magazine was designed and illustrated by a group of friends and i, and it turned out great i think!! THE FIND is an online editorial magazine about true meaningful hip-hop and the greatness which follows it!!

it was such a fun project, i'd like to take the time to give a big shoutout to Dustin D'Arnault, Francis Vallejo, Orlando Sanchez, Oliver Dominguez and Eric Bonhomme !!! you guys are always ontop of the game and it was a pleasure working with you all as always... truly and inspiration!

be on the lookout for more stuff from us in the future!!

i'm in the midst of putting together some kind of formal website, so be on the lookout for that soon as well!

i'll have some fresh art up soon!

cheers,
tyler

end of semester update part 1 of 2

2009-05-04T16:39:00.001-07:00

howdy folks, busy time around here but its all wrapped up - im done!!

as promised i got to scanning in some of the paintings from a couple posts below. i only got around to scanning 8 of them in, so here it goes;

media: oil, tar, acrylic

and tommorow i'll have my pinnochio pieces back, so thatll be the last update of the semester

till tommorow

cheers!
tyler

last figure update for this semester

2009-04-27T01:32:00.000-07:00

late couple nights, trying to kick myself in gear to finish this last project that i'm not too excited about - but i'm trying my hardest to syke myself into loving it, heh

anyway, i'll have more on that in the coming days (sneak peak below)

i got aggravated by an illo so i went to go scan stuff and browse the web at the labs, these are the last figure drawings i'll be doing for this semester - im really going to be in a bad mood this summer if i dont get time to paint and explore more with the medium - so heres to hoping i can find time to be the better artist i want to be! *gulp*

AND SHEESH!! classes are almost over

onto some work, these are pastel on toned paper;

i liked these a lot, i love it when i surprise myself with a drawing - one of the best feelings ever in my opinion

also, heres a sneak peak at the last illo project i was talking about;

character design for pinnochio

the assignment is 3 (kinda) sequential illos of pinnochio. i was gona do 3 others, but heh, naaaaah.

id be more excited about it if there were more time to do more painting, but a one week deadline isnt gona let me do that

i'd also like to take a moment to point out the illustration academy's new website;

http://www.illustrationacademy.com/new/index.html

its pretty great, and i hope they stay at ringling for the next couple years so i can save some dollars by not flying to wherever theyre going to be!! heh

anyway
happy arting to all

cheers,
tyler

sneaky

2009-04-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

snapped a photo of my lil work in progress

theres some portraits that i, along with my instructor wanted me to keep working on so she can display them somewhere - but heres the jist of it;

HIP HOP!

i'll have nice scans of them once they finish drying haha

till then though,

cheers,
tyler

head study

2009-04-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

wanted to throw this up here, i liked how this turned out - had oodles and oodles of fun with it!!

promising a huge huge huge post next week!!

cheers,
tyler

couple new stuffs

2009-04-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

hey thurrr!

lacking in the updates i know, so busy tho - end of the year is arriving and i'm swarming all over multiple projects. i need to slow down and take it one step at a time - i think thats the key to success - baby steps, then one big leap!

so heres some stuff to pass the time, 2 figure studies; one long pose, one color gestural study. below is a quick watercolor / gouache plein air - about 30/40 min

had a rough week last week, a lot of the things i was doing didnt come out the way i wanted, then i started feeling a little under the weather, but couldnt afford any medicine! cambels chicken noodle soup saved me i think

anyway, till next time

cheers,
tyler

yet another update!?! its a biggins too

2009-03-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

couple new things here include some; figure arts, sketchbook arts, plein air watercolor study arts and a magazine layout arts!

so here we go!

figurin:

sketchin:

plein airin study, about 3 inches by 18 inches

layout:

couple things to note. . . the layout is comin along i think, its for an assignment in french's illustration class, dealing with phosphate mining in florida. i chose an editorial / magazine illo out of the few choices. im still playing with it, now im gona haul butt all weekend to get my illustration done and drop it in that peachy colored box to complete it - so thatll be up by next week

ive grown a new fascination with plein air painting of subject matter that i like - just being out there in the world and trying to capture a moment in time is just so mindblowingly difficult and amazing - i wana get better at it!!!

its time for a new sketchbook, ive had my eye on this snazzy one for awhile, but its pretty pricey (like all are). . .also thinking of making my own, so who knows...

OH! big big shout out to Shawn Barber for stopping back by the Ringling campus and doing a rad demo for us all lowly students - fortunately, he was also judging 'The Best of Ringling' gallery show and chose my 'Mali Music' piece to be apart of it!!!

snap shot of the demo;

also, one last thing;
I CANT FLIPPIN WAIT FOR WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE!!! ive got a good feeling about it, the trailer looks great!!

Link to the trailer

i used to read this book so much when i was a kid, love it!!

cheers,
tyler

woah an update!?!?

2009-03-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

just a little one, have some GREAT projects in the oven that im looking forward to seeing how they come out, those will be flowing through here within the next couple of weeks

heres some sketching and what not!

anyway, i'll get more stuff up here soon

till then

cheers,
tyler

new arts!

2009-03-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

been a empty couple weeks, but heres some love. . . starting with some doodling in the sketchbook

its just about filled up, time to invest in a moleskine i thinks!

heres a couple spot illustrations i was assigned to do they all had to incorporate a metaphor and the image had to have a literal depiction of it. . .i tried to make it as enjoyable as possible

the first one is 'blowing your top'. the first idea i had was of how crazy lewis black gets when he does his back in black segment on the daily show, so i figured it was a perfect fit. not really happy with this one. ahh well, live and ya learn!

this next one is 'going in circles', tried depicting how nader is always on the race to presidency but never gets anywhere

finally, this was a fun ink drawing i did, the metaphor is 'running on empty'. trying to show how we art students practically run on fumes at an 8:30 am figure drawing class

thats that

spring break is next week apparently but im going to spend it working on a series of 12, 12x12 paintings that im actually stoked to get rolling. ive also got to put my graphic design shoes on an start thumbnailing a layout for our next assignment

maybe a sketchbook update or two next week

cheers,
tyler

couple new figure works

2009-03-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

howdy yall, did some pretty fun drawinz today

i didnt come thinking i was gona paint but it just happened and it felt pretty good, this was about 70 minutes, gouache;

and these were 5 minute warm ups each;

thursday i'll have a series of 3 or 4 (depending on how much i get done) editorial illo's up here

cheers,
tyler

skiby sketchbook and some figure stuff

2009-02-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

howdy yall!

been busy, working on 3 editorial illo's that are more or less in the final stages - i'll have them up next time i go to the labs

but for now, heres some sketchin and figurin!

more SKB'in, love these pens!

heres some new stuff i did in figure and a couple gestures from last week

i want to do some figure painting in oils like a crazy person, gona start soon!

hope all is well,

cheers,
tyler

uno figure update

2009-02-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

aye

big update coming soon me thinks

cheers,
tyler

quick update

2009-02-19T15:17:00.001-08:00

heres two things i did today

there was a printout of one of jason shawn alexanders figure hanging on the class wall and i got inspired. gouache ink and white acrylic

and heres a sketchbook page

reaaallly tired, so im gona get some Zz's

cheers,
tyler

more arting!

2009-02-17T17:15:00.000-08:00

howdy, its been a good week thus far, hoping this flow keeps going

i finished this early in the morning, i learned a bit from it, had a moderate crit during class, kind of what i expected. i really didnt like how she set this assignment up, it didnt feel right. live and you learn though. . .

90% traditional. that 10% was only a layer duplicate and balance / sfx adjustment.

i scanned in some more sketchbook pages but the files were corrupt so i'll get those in on thursday along with thumbs for a new assignment; EDITORIAL ILLO'IN! WOOP WOOP cant wait to get started tonight

illustration academy presentation was amazing, its everything everyone ever told me it is and more - i cant wait to join up in those ranks next year.

cheers,
tyler

early morning update

2009-02-16T02:50:00.000-08:00

*yawn*

woke up early again (3am) and got straight to work

cant wait to get some coffee . . .ive got no milk though, guess i'll have to tough it up with some straight black

heres some new pictures

sketchbook. . .too lazy to scan in more, i'll do it later

portrait

and this is a WIP for an illustration im working on now

the optimist in me says its almost done. but the realist in me says im exactly 29% complete. ah well, ive got 2 whole days to finish and ive been workin pretty hard on it thus far. . . trying to get values right is pretty tedious

the plan for it is as follows:
finish ink washes. pop out details where needed
spots of color (either thin acrylic or watercolor) in certain places

if i get those two done with time to spare, i might try doing a wash over the entire image and heightening some more values with acrylic

anyway, ill update tommorow with the finished piece and more sketches / figure stuff

cheers
tyler

Society of Illustrators!!

2009-02-14T15:25:00.000-08:00

howdy! GREAT news!!

i was fortunate enough to get TWO(!) pieces into the Society of Illustrators student scholarship competition! these are the two winners;

id just like to give thanks to my mom for all the support and guidance, and my friends especially for the continuous inspiration!! dustin, francis (also in the show, grats to you sir!!), eric, oliver, orlando javi jihad - you guys are what keep me at it!

congrats to the other winners at ringling too, we tore it up this year again!! WOOP WOOP!

for more information on the society competetion and the show, head to the link below!

Society of Illustrators

cheers!
tyler

lemons = lemonade?

2009-02-13T00:38:00.000-08:00

ive been on a weird schedule lately. . .i need to get my act straight, but ive tried everything! i get to bed by around 11pm, and wake up between the hours of 2am and 4am. whats up with that?! i cant go back to bed afterwards either. . so, for the time being, im going to take advantage of the extra time my body is giving me.

heres some process for an illo i'm doing. i compiled all of the serious stages, the only thing not up there are the studies ive done and all of my photo reference

the assignment was to illustrate an exert from a novel thats given to us by our instructor - mine was billy phelans greatest game. the exert i received was the moment where billy (central figure) meets his father (figure over centrals shoulder) for the first time in a very long while - his father left him and his mother when he was just a wee lad, and since became a 'hobo' during the depression. so theres my attempt at trying to tackle it. ive heard bad things about central figure compositions but whatever, it feels right to me. some of it i like, some of it im not happy with, but i dont hate any of it!

i wish the assignment was a book cover for our novels - i had a really fun design for it. . . ah well.

im really looking forward to jumping into the rendering of it, ive got until tuesday to finish it, which im super stoked about - i think i work better on short deadlines.

anyway, i'll have some updates during the weekend before the final - im going to be doing this sucker completely traditionally, as my homie said, 'your art chest will have a lot of hair on it afterwards'. so we'll see how it goes

i bought a sheet of rives bfk for the final - man what an intimidating sheet of paper haha, i love it so far, the studies i did on a piece of scrap came out pretty fun

ive been looking at the following heroes for inspiration on this piece; robert fawcett, austin briggs, jc leyendecker and a little james jean.

cheers
tyler

yo yo yo new doodles!

2009-02-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

fresh works in the sketchbook, im getting used to the mighty SKB - super amounts of fun! i want to try and render something with it one day

pleasant surprise today!

2009-02-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

had a pretty good morning, walked into class to see a custode masterpiece on the chalkboard haha, i had to snap some photos of it;

i love his randomness, - really - who else would do a badass drawing like that on a flippin chalkboard?! love em!

and heres a doodle of mine i did;

i'll update tommorow with some pages of my sketchbook and whatever ive got around

cheers,
tyler

some figure stuff and some exploration! [sketchbook edit]

2009-02-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

howdy howdy, been a minute since i've updated, so here we go!

i jumped into this illustration one night when i couldnt sleep, started looking at some of leroy neemans earlier ink drawings for playboy and have since played around with it a lot! had tremendous amounts of fun making it too!!! ink, gouache, digital on watercolor board

i realized i hardly ever post any of my gestural work from figure, theres a reason for that though - i feel that gestures have and always will be a 'warm up' for me. . . its that period of time where i realize how much i cant draw and need to keep improving!

these are some pages from the ol' sketchbook, just doodlin and texture studyin'

i'll have another update sometime soon with an illustration im doing for class

till then,

cheers!
tyler

holy moly

2009-02-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

juggling a couple projects at the same time, i've been short on time and sleep - BUT! i promise to update soon!

cheers,
tyler

lil update!

2009-01-29T15:48:00.000-08:00

well, started out good and its ending good - so no complaints!

i got to finally play around with some gouache today in my life drawing class, i really like it! i'm going to keep it up till i feel comfortable using it more often for sheez!

what a day its been!

only one though, i think around 40 minutes or so? i did some gestures but meh, gestures were always a way to get my hand in the groove more and dont really consider them to be 'showable'

off to eat and enter my works in the show

cheers,
tyler

student show

2009-01-28T11:30:00.000-08:00

i'll be updating this post with my entry ideas for the SI show as time goes by tonight

cheers,
tyler

Hello

2009-01-26T15:15:00.000-08:00

This is done.

Malian Music; Watercolor, Acrylic, Digital

i likes it. i need a good print of it though, maybe i can smooch one off valley-hoe. . .

next assignment sounds nifty, book cover for a story - right up my alley i hopes. i think i know what methods i want to render it in if my idea gets approved (ill probably do it the way i want anyhow), ive been looking at how leyendecker and wyeth used a simple charcoal drawing and an even simpler color palette to just blow out work, pretty evident in a lot of james jeans previous stuff too (only digital).

anyway, dinner time

cheers,
tyler

CHUGGIN ALONG, last WIP update, round 4

2009-01-26T08:26:00.000-08:00

howdy folks, just got back from a pretty fun class. fun in the sense that i was half asleep and the only thing keeping me up were my tunes, this was the end result; i like it!!

also, my illo will be finished this evening for sheez, so heres the last WIP;

skipped some of my 'plans'. . . WIP, round 3

2009-01-26T00:04:00.001-08:00

yeah so.

i just went and scanned it in. i got really burnt out of painting it, but im not ready to call it a night yet, so i scanned her in and started on some other things that i was going to do.

the tightening up of the instruments isnt in - this i'll get to later on and map it ontop

my only favorite part yet?

i did a couple victory laps in my apartment after that hand - so pleased with myself haha

man i hate drawing hands

cheers,
tyler

WIP update, round 2

2009-01-25T11:58:00.001-08:00

i dumped a good chunk of time into that face, cant wait to throw it on a scanner!

my plans for this piece,

finish some heavy rendering on the other face and hands
eat dinner
throw in a tree
do a quick wash on instruments and the patterning around them
scan it in and finish digitally!

i had a personal deadline of 8pm tonight set up with a couple peers of mine in class but, last night a dear friend of mine was down from chicago to see us all, so i had to attend to this. . .

that, and i'm actually enjoying this pacing! ive been pushing myself with this piece as far as painting goes - ive never considered myself to ever be a 'painter', and i feel pretty accomplished so far.

anyway, chip chip cheerio
tyler

WIP update, round 1

2009-01-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

I just got started on this, ill throw more updates as i go;

im still working on 'spicing' up a couple previous assignments / projects on my downtime like i posted before, namly my obama piece(clarity) and the exploding can piece(monkey see monkey do)

i keep noodling with this, and i think im just gona say its done now. old on the left, new on the right

i wanted more color, the mahogany color palette was really getting on my nerves, to the point that i couldnt look at it, i like the newer rendition much more.

anyway, got some grub cookin,

OH! i want to start throwing some good tunes on my blog, so here it goes. i like promoting good music;

El Ten Elevn
http://www.elteneleven.com/

their self titled album is a MUST hear, perfect for working!!

cheers,
tyler

quick study for my illo

2009-01-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

im in the 'tight sketch' phase now, i'll have that up later. . .its goin good though - had a good day full of arting!!

cheers,
tyler

some new figure work!

2009-01-22T08:32:00.001-08:00

ive been playing around a lot with arbitrary color and its been pretty enjoyable!!

heres some stuff from today and last week 20-60min poses

like i said ive been having a lot of fun with these!!

ill have an update tommorow hopefully on my illo!

cheers,
tyler

words are underrated

2009-01-21T03:39:00.000-08:00

kind of lacking in the production department on my blog lately - ah well. it'll pick up again

ive been busy at work though to say the least. on the first ship is an illustration for french's class - she played 4 types of music in class and we had to choose one of the 4 to try and 'capture' the essence of the music by doing free-association word lists / research of the music / etc.

i chose contemporary music from Mali (africa) as it was the only one i felt had any real substance (from a musical standpoint) - upon further research i grew to love it, although they sing in a foreign language, i can understand what their message is all about from the style / rhythm / pacing. contemporary Malian music sounds a lot like old delta blues (john lee hooker, etc) and one of the most talented was ali farka toure, who sings just like john lee hooker consequently and his songs are about a lot of the same things. . . watching an interview of ali farka, he said 'everybody is equal and connected, the only thing separating us is the land in between ourselves' and his music deals with a lot of the spiritual aspects of that ideal

so here we go;

i wish i had scanned in my other process page but, ill try to explain. what i wanted to capture was the connection between delta blues and malian influences - i looked at a lot of old photographs of john lee hooker and decided to try and keep the same pose / expression only have everything else inspired by malian culture. ali farka believes his music is 'spiritually connected' with the land, air, water surrounding him. so i wanted to try and capture that by an african-styled pattern of 'light' emitting from their instruments and influencing the land by his music

its going alright, i got my prelim stuff approved yesterday so ill be jumping right into the final (traditional - ink, watercolor, gouache) today with a tight sketch - ill keep it updated.

another project im working on, which i havent been able to spend much attention to is a personal piece for the SI student show - i'll have an update on that hopefully by the end of next week

besides that. . .been alright! busy - reading, arting, conversing, arting, eating and sleeping has been my daily schedule for the past week and i really like it!

oh

heres some sketchbook dumping;

cheers,
and happy obamas
tyler

howdy folks

2009-01-18T16:52:00.000-08:00

testing out my new cellphones camera on a doodle i just did;

pretty good for a cellphone i guess!

anyway, ive been doing swell - working on a couple illo's that ill throw up soon

i had some downtime this weekend and went back into an illustration i did before break that i wasnt too happy about in the way i colored it, so ive been experimenting with it more and more;

i think its going to be one of my entries into the society student show if i get it to how i want

anyway,

TWEACE,
tyler

rest in peace andrew wyeth

2009-01-16T13:01:00.000-08:00

truly a - master - of his trade, although he may be gone, his work will be remembered forever

all the best,
tyler