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.