October Projects

Hey guys, I haven't posted here in a while, so I thought I'd share some of my recent works with you. The first one is a Scratchboard I did for a class, and the other three are personal projects I did for fun and learning. I hope you enjoy them.

Crow on Scratchboard

Acrylic over homemade stencils

Digital

Digital

"Strange Graveyard" Gig Poster

Hey Guys! How are you? This one hour sketch was for a club at my school where we meet and compete while watching a demo. The challenge was to draw something unexpected in a graveyard, however later the woman who was doing the demo said the phrase "Strange Graveyard" a little while later and that really stuck with me, so I combined that with a llama and a zombie. I was thinking about Kevin Dart's work while doing this sketch. 

Also if you guys are interested I have a tumblr. 

Just finished my latest sketchbook

Hey guys, so I just finished the sketchbook I've been using for the past few weeks, so I posted some of my favorite pages on my tumblr. You can check them out here . I hope you enjoy them.

Breakfast in the hurricane

This project was for my Illustration I class. I had to illustrate breakfast in a graphic style. I chose to represent a bright, warm breakfast while a hurricane thundered outside. I painted in in acrylic over a series of 34 different stencils that I made for the project. My hand and wrist were killing me after sitting there cutting out all those shapes, but it was totally worth it. I was fairly happy with the result, especially the tablecloth and window.

The Long Drive Home

Due to the potential dangers of Hurricane Isaac my school evacuated this weekend. Sarasota, the area where my school is located got very little of the storm, but the area where I was got heavy flooding. On the way home today we drove through some deep pools of water, and saw immense beautiful clouds floating above the huge flat landscape of miles and miles of sugarcane fields. I did this palette knife painting in my sketchbook with one of those clouds in my memory.

Silly Sharpie Sketchbook Faces

 These are a few Sharpie faces I've made the past few days. I was listening to one of Chris Oatley's podcasts, and he recommended putting away the medium that you usually sketch in and try something different for a week, so I picked up the sharpie and absolutely fell in love with it. My favorite of these drawings is the woman with dark hair and the patterned shirt. 

Summer figure Drawings 2012

 I put in a lot of hours drawing the human figure this summer. See some of my favorites from the past few weeks after the jump

July 2012 Figure Painting

A figure painting drawn from life in two sessions, July 2012. I'm fairly happy with it, and I had fun painting with it. The model was great. He held the pose perfectly over the sessions. He was also an illustrator himself, and has made several comic books about teen African-American superheroes. I wish I could remember the name of his comic so I could link you guys to it, but I can't remember. 

It's painted on all five sides

Pastel Landscapes

I recently visited my grandparent's house for American Independence Day. While I was there I took out my hard pastels and did these two drawings. This here on the left was done in about 50 minuets.

The second drawing was done in an hour and a half.

Woman with Hat

Hey guys, Sorry for not posting anything in a while, I've been working more than full time and so I haven't done as much work as I would like the past few weeks. But I did this little sketch today and liked it, so I decided to share.
-Ben

The Dilemma of an Anti-Social Witch

People always want to ask for your help.

So this was my final for 3D this semester. I had to create a humanoid character and put him or her into an environment. My character is this witch, who lives alone and doesn’t want anyone around. However, this girl in the boat wants to ask the witch for help. In order to keep her away the witch is summoning a water-spout underneath the boat. 

I had a lot of fun and spent a lot of time on this project. I learned a lot, and I’m really glad I did it. I’m proud of all the effort I put into the environment, when I put it in the sun for these photographs  it just lit me up and made me smile. 

My teacher requested that I alter one of the photos in photoshop to make the magic look more evident. This is why the purple has that effect in the first image. 

 

Self Portrait: Update

I posted an earlier version of this self-portrait last week, but after critiques from my professor and from a trusted friend I have updated it. I like it a lot more now, and I hope my professor will too when I turn it in tomorrow.

Animal studies for Drawing II Final

These animal studies were done for my Drawing II final. My assignment is to take three or more species that I drew from life at Sarasota Jungle Gardens (a small zoo in town) and combine them into a fantasy creature. I am doing a take on flying fish by combining two birds with two fish.

I am using Catalina Macaws, Violet Turacos, Common Koi, and an Albino Catfish to combine into this creature (although the eye study on bottom right is from a Blue and Gold Macaw. These were done with ballpoint pen sketches with colored pencil on top.

I am presenting my final project of this as though it is a page from a Victorian British Explorer's travel log. I'm really excited about doing this project, but I need to get my concept completely fleshed out soon, so I've been putting a lot of time into it recently.

Bird Skeleton studies

These are some bird skeleton studies I did yesterday. The two wings, the leg, and the skull with vertebrae were drawn from a chicken skeleton. The other three skulls were drawn from reference photos found on skullsite.com. They are each labeled with the bird they came from.

The text is a collection of various notes on parrots I found from books and the internet while drawing these. I am aware that the Macaw list is incomplete.

This is an additional Macaw skull that I did later that same day in a different sketchbook.

Sketchbook (Day 24)

Today I have the second part of my Queen of Hearts sequences from Alice in Wonderland. This time we have Miranda Richardson as the Queen of Hearts from the 1999 Alice in wonderland staring Tina Majorino. I chose to recreate the same scene as yesterday's sketch, but a little later on in the scene. 

Sketchbook (Day 23)

Today's double page sketch is an action sequence of the Queen of Hearts from the 1951 Disney animated Alice in Wonderland. I used a sumi brush with india ink to create this two-page drawing. Part Two comes tomorrow.

Sketchbook (Day 22)

Today's piece is another face painting. Sorry for posting late, I just got back from seeing the Hunger Games midnight premier! It was awesome!

Sketchbook (Day 21)

This is a page I personally really enjoyed making and that I am happy with. These are some imagined trees I drew with ballpoint pen and colored pencil on an old book. On my sketchbook page here I had a bad drawing which I covered up with some extra paint that was left on my palette knife from something else. I then covered the blank parts of the page. I finished up by pasting down the tree drawings. 

Sketchbook (Day 20)

I have two pages of my sketchbook for you today. On the left is a hummingbird drawn based off of a random line made by one of my friends. On the right is another experiment with palette knives. 

Sketchbook (Day 19)

I know I'm a few days behind, don't worry. I'll catch up. These are some hand studies from the other day.

Sketchbook (Day 18)

I have something a little different for you today. Instead of a regular sketch from my little sketchbook, I found a re-useable page in my old Moleskine from high-school and made a one page ink comic with my new sumi brushes. And I had a lot of fun with it. 

I decided to give the comic an organic basis, so instead of using very strictly defined panels I was more loose with my panel shapes. 


Since it's a full page comic I recommend checking out fullsize view. You will be able to see a lot more of it. 

Tree with Osprey Now for Sale!

My landscape "Tree with Osprey" is now for sale on my Etsy. Check it out here. You can also see some close ups of the piece there.

Sketchbook (Day 16)

This partial figure was done from a photo reference I found online but have since misplaced. I did her in ink and did a light wash over that on a page from an old book. I then glued that page onto an abstract crayon sketch in my sketchbook. I enjoy the final result, I think it looks interesting.

Sketchbook (Day 15)

I don't really have anything to say about today's sketch. It's just a collection of faces in colored pencil. 

Sketchbook (Day 14)

Today's sketch is a digital one. This is an imagined face I made in photoshop.

My friend suggested I offer this as a print. Any interest?

Sketchbook (Day 13)

These are some imagined noses I drew the other day. I love drawing noses, they are my favorite part of the body to draw. 


So this page is all noses from my imagination. I wanted to push shape in these, specifically geometric shapes. My favorites are the two on the left. 

Sketchbook (Day 12)

I am really happy with this page of my sketchbook. The other day I went over to a bayou that is on campus and drew these bird gestures from life. They liked to move quickly and change positions, so I stuck to gestures instead of doing longer drawings. 

Sketchbook (Day 11)

Sorry for not uploading yesterday, I went to go see a concert in Orlando and didn't get a chance to post. However I will post two today. 


This is an imagined house for a witch character I've been working on. I wanted it to look like it's just been growing over time; hodge-podge and absurd. 

Sketchbook (Day 10)

I've reached ten days with my daily sketchbook pages! I'm happy about that. 


The other day I was watching this Documentary about Vincent Van Gogh, and I decided to try and emulate some elements of his style while watching. He often uses dark blue for outlines and clumps leaves together in an interesting way. I'm happy with how the leaves turned out, but the clouds got to soft, and the color on the ground doesn't look right. 

Sketchbook (Day Nine)

Digital Sketch:This is a quick little portrait I painted in photoshop for fun. Just above two hours of work. I'm happy with the results for the amount of time I invested in it. I think the light looks good, I usually have trouble with light in digital pieces. It was good practice.

I started off using this photo for reference, but I changed it a bit

Sketchbook (Day Eight)

These are some disproportional figures I drew based off of random lines drawn by my friends. I had some difficulty figuring out what the line my friend drew on the right would become, but I think the result is kinda funny and I like it. 


Ballpoint pen