Illustration Friday: Silent

Another quick entry for Illustration Friday.  This week's word was "Silent".  I'm reminded of that famous tag-line from the Alien movie - "In space no one can hear you perform your one-man band act."

The Vault: Clash of the Irritating

I drew this one way back in the summer of 2009, but I'm still really proud of it.  I'd be proud of any illustration that shows a dead Jar Jar though.

This drawing is largely inspired by how much I hated Phantom Menace, but I also couldn't get this scene from Spaced out of my head -

http://youtu.be/bUQfHRfX2o8

(Gotta click the link.  Whoever posted the video doesn't allow embedding.  PFFFT!)

Digital Sketches: Cassowary and Emperor Tamarin

I’ve been dong some more digital sketches of animals on the Wacom the last couple of nights.

 

I accidentally drew the tamarin lines on the background layer, so I wasn’t able to add color. I still like how the lines turned out though.

Digital Sketch: Elephant

Last night I needed a break from coloring the comic book, so I did some other drawing and coloring. (Don't question it.  It makes sense.)

This was about a 45 minute sketch that I did completely on the computer.  I'm still working on my Wacom sketching skills, but I think I am slowly getting there.

1000 Words: Green Lantern Movie

Today Anna and I tried to watch the new Green Lantern movie.  It was painful!  We only made it about half way through until our groans and wailing became so loud that we could no longer hear the film.

When did over-saturated CGI become a valid replacement for story, acting, pacing, originality, etc, etc?

To try to vent some frustration I drew this up really quick on the computer this evening.

The Vault: Treebeard Shadowbox

This project took me ages!  I think it was about a year in total from sketch to completion.  I had a long post about this on my previous blog, and have finally built up the initiative to post the process again.  You can click on any of the thumbnails for a more detailed version.

First Step:  The Sketches and Digital Color Test

   

Second Step: Mapping the Pieces and Painting Watercolor Swatches

To make sure that I constructed Treebeard correctly I had to map out all of the pieces, and then paint swatches for each of the mapped pieces.

 

Third Step: Cutting out the Pieces and Construction

To cut out the pieces I have to trace them from my “map” onto tracing paper, and then tape the tracing paper to my colored swatches.  It’s time consuming!

   

Fourth Step: Building the Box and Placing Treebeard

I built the shadowbox with some lumber I bought at the hardware store, and painted it black.  The Treebeard figure had to be attached to a wire skeleton that I glued to the frame.  After gluing in the ground and Treebeard I attached the background.  Later I had the pieces on the outside of the frame laminated (so they wouldn’t be ruined if the box was splashed with water), and I super-glued them to the front of the frame.

   

 

Ta da!

Babelfish Panda Cards

This series requires a bit of backstory. 

My in-laws are from Korea, and don’t typically speak English.  When they write to me it is usually in Korean.  I assume this is to motivate me to learn a bit more of the language.  Currently my grasp of the Korean language pretty much only involves names of food, and how to say “Hello” and “Thanks”, so I either have to get my wife to translate, or sometimes I’ll use online translation programs.  The translations from Babelfish are my favorite.  They are so abstract and bizarre sometimes it’s almost poetic.  Poetic, but total nonsense.  We thought it would be funny to do a series of greeting cards with these direct “quotes” from Babelfish.

Observe:

  

(Click on any of the cards for a larger image)

Anyone think I’ll be getting job offers from Hallmark?

PS.  Just to be totally clear, this is me making fun of Babelfish.  Definitely not mocking the in-laws.

The Vault: The Office Caricatures

I’m still going through and uploading some of my favorite images to my blog. 
About three years ago I took it upon myself to do caricatures of all of the main players of the American version of The Office.  It was a very boring winter.

  

Michael (Steve Carell)                        Jim (John Krasinski)                       Dwight (Rainn Wilson)

  

Pam (Jenna Fisher)                            Ryan (B.J. Novak)                         Andy (Ed Helms)

  

Angela (Angela Kinsey)                           Oscar (Oscar Nuñez)                      Kevin (Brian Baumgartner)

  

        Creed (Creed Bratton)                         Phyllis (Phyllis Vance)                      Stanley (Leslie David Baker)

  

Toby (Paul Lieberstein)                          Kelly (Mandy Kaling)                     Meredith (Kate Flannery)

(Click on any images for a larger version)

A friend of mine printed out all of these caricatures for me, and for a while I had them all displayed in my home on cork boards.  I also wrote out some of my favorite quotes from the show on multi-colored sticky notes, but unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the complete set-up.

Hopefully this massive, image heavy post hasn’t destroyed everyone’s internet browsers…

The Arnolfini Shotgun Wedding

This month on E-Caricature the challenge is to caricature a famous painting. 

For my illustration I decided to do a spoof of the Arnolfini Wedding by Jan van Eyck.  This picture has always cracked me up.  Both of the subjects appear to be less than thrilled to be there, and they also look a smidge inbred.  Because of the man’s lackluster expression, and the fact that the woman is obviously pregnant, I could imagine this being some sort of antique Netherlandish shotgun wedding (Maybe “crossbow” wedding would be more time-period appropriate).  I guess that Arnolfini decided to “do the right thing”.
For my version of the painting I wanted to make it look like they hired a caricaturist rather than Jan van Eyck.  I borrowed a few of the traditional wedding caricature accessories like the love hearts, ball and chain, and adorable pet.

I also wanted to do some other parodies with the details of the painting, like the self-portrait in the mirror, and the little dog.  In the original painting the little dog was meant to symbolize fidelity.  Rather than muck about with such abstract symbolism, I thought it was easier to just draw a ball-and-chain.  Same meaning.


In the tradition of pretty much every art history book ever printed; here are the details zoomed in.

    

Illustration Friday: Stripe

My submission for this week's challenge at Illustration Friday.  This week's challenge was to illustrate the word, "Stripes".  There are always great entries to the contest.  Check 'em out!

The subject of this illustration ended up being strangely appropriate.  Where I am living now it is supposed to be late spring.  Barbecue weather.  But just yesterday (while I was drawing this no less) it started snowing.

The Vault: Monkey Island Spitting Contest

This is a collaboration that I did with the beautiful and talented Anna (formerly Lee) Barrett about two years ago.  She had the idea of illustrating a spitting contest between the two famous severed heads from the Monkey Island video game series.  We then divided up the supporting cast of the video game to draw in the crowd.  She has her larger versions of her characters on her blog, and I’m just now getting around to posting my versions on my newer blog.  Click on any of the images to see a larger version.

          Guybrush Threepwood and the Navigator                       Hellspawn Pirate LeChuck     

           El Pollo Diablo                                                       Largo LaGrande

Carla the Swordmaster                          The Men of Low Moral Fiber

Fans of the game may notice the absence of a recurring supporting character from the series.  We didn’t include him in the drawing, but objects associated with him have been strewn around the drawing.  “Where’s *Fill in the Blank*?”