Art Jumble Submission 1 (Snow Monster)

I joined The Art Jumble, or more to say they finally let me join. I tried joining earlier in the year with this blog and never heard from them again, then I heard that a couple of my friends were on it and I thought, "hey I'm just as good these guys, they should let me join." So I submitted to join again using my sketch blog instead of this blog and they let me join (whoo hoo! Go trickery!) Now I hope to get one of these done every week, it will probably not turn out that way but I though the same thing about my sketch blog and I seem to be doing pretty good with that one so who knows.

If you don't know what The Art Jumble is then I will explain it is a blog where there is a theme each week and artists who are part of Art Jumble post art work based off of the theme. Pretty Simple.


Here is the first one
The theme was "Snow Monster"


















Here is the sketch which I did for my sketch blog last week



















Here is the final version that I created all in Photoshop.

Auto Outfits

Here is something that I worked on that you can buy at Amazon.com

The product is accessories for your car to make them look like different holiday animals, such as a Christmas Reindeer, a Halloween Bat, and an Easter Bunny. These are called Auto Outfits and they are sold by AbsolutelyNew where i currently work. My friend Amaya, who was a graphic designer here at the time (she has moved on to bigger and better things at Sony now), absolutely hated the old package design for the Auto outfits, it looked poorly designed and had even worst execution. I forget if this was a project that Amaya got or if this was something we took upon our selves because we had extra time (I used to have a lot of that here at this job, not so much any more) but the packaging needed to be redesigned. So Amaya asked me if i wanted to help her redesign the packaging and i said yes. At first we were planning to do these big complicated illustrations for each design














Christmas Sketch

















Halloween Sketch















Easter Sketch
















AOF Halloween














AOF Easter














AOF Christmas

However, in the end the Retail guys didn't think that these overly illustrated ones would be the best direction for the product. So I asked (and insisted) that they at least let me change the car, because I didn't like the car. So I inked the Easter Car in Illustrator because they thought that the mini was a cute and slightly generic looking car. I then gave the mini all the different Auto Outfits and then Amaya placed them on to new back grounds and New Packaging was born.

Here are the links to the Auto Outfits that you can purchase online at amazon
Christmas Auto Outfit
Halloween Auto Outfit

T-shirt Fail

Unicorn Skull (A T-shirt)

A while back my friend Erik Guiterrez told me about this website Threadless (www.threadless.com) which is a web site that sells t-shirts designed by any one with an internet connection and the free time to do so. The shirt designs are selected by the members of the site by voting on the pieces, and as long as more then 50% likes them threadless will print the shirt. The winning designer gets 1500 US dollars and 500 Threadless dollars, plus an additional 500 dollars any time that their design is reprinted. This sounded like a fun away to get my art out there and potentially make some money.

Coming off of my Peter Thomas T-shirt creating high, I decided to create some shirt design (this being the only one that I have finished or developed in the last 3 or 4 months). So I did some sketches and based off of a suggestion made by Laura to do a unicorn skull.

















Here is the unicorn skull sketch.

























Here is the finalized version that I did in illustrator.
I didn't do the little star sparks because I thought it was too silly and whimsical plus i though it didn't make sense with the rest of the piece.





















Here is what i submitted for review on Threadless
See next Blog for how i did

VOTE OR DIE

Mario Pumpkin Painting (PART I)

Last year I painted a portrait on a pumpkin and it sparked my new interest I have with acrylic painting. I like the idea of painting things on non traditional canvases and things that are temporary. It is also more fun to paint a pumpkin as apposed to gutting it and carving it, though I don't get any kick ass roasted pumpkin seeds so there is a trade off.

A while ago Laura and I went to the San Jose Art Museum to see a show about Robots (which had some great pieces but we both thought it wasn't laid out that well in the space the museum had). When we were there we went to the gift shop we found this book "I Am 8-Bit" (which Jason is borrowing at the moment, i wonder if he knows he still has it?) which was filled with fine art based off of old arcade and Nintendo games which Laura and I found to be really fascinating, and sparked an interest in me to create my own video game based art work.

So I painted Mario and a boo on the pumpkin figuring it seemed more Halloweeny then simply having Mario on the pumpkin alone.





































































If I can find the time i want to paint Princess Peach with a Boo looking up her skirt on the other side.

Samurai Tattoo Drawings PART I

I went to Maui back at the end of June with Laura and her family. Aside from the part where she tossed an entire pack of cards in my general direction after a game of BS, I’d say it was pretty amazing. While I was there her uncle Chris approached me about doing a drawing of a samurai for a tattoo he had been considering getting for some time. He wanted to get a samurai on his back and he was having trouble finding reference for what he wanted, so knowing that I was an artist he asked if I drew samurai. Now it might not be apparent from reading this blog, but I do love to draw samurai (vikings too, I will have to start posting more of them) so I was excited to work on this for him. Though without my numerous reference books and the glorious internet (all praise the giver of knowledge) I didn’t think I was quite prepared to start working on this right away, as I thought it needed to be slightly historically accurate because after all, I do love samurai and I respect the history. So in Maui I came up with a couple of rough sketches.






















































When we got back to the main land and good ole California I had the intention of creating a finalized version of the sketches I was working on in Hawaii using all of my samurai books and reference that I had at home. I eventually got around to making the drawing below.






















Here is the inked version that I gave Chris. He liked it, but he wanted the samurai in a different position, so it's back to the drawing board, or more like my couch while I watch cartoons and draw some more samurais.

To be continued...

Laura's Brain Exposed PART II (the final product)

Last night as Laura cooked me a wonderful dinner I drew on her red notebook. Here’s how it turned out.























This was more difficult then I originally thought it would be, as I thought I would be able to sketch on it and then ink it, but no such luck. The material didn't pick up the graphite so I had to ink it straight from the sketch I did. Now, this is not the way I like to work. Though I think it turned out nicely and I liked using the paint pen that I found.

Laura's Brain Exposed PART I (The Sktech)

Laura has started school again and once again she is stressed out of her mind. So to commemorate the occasion she commissioned me to draw her head cracked open with her brain exposed on her red leather notebook where she keeps a calendar of everything she has to do for school on a daily basis. These are the sketches I did.























Here is the first page of sketches that I did showing her brain exposed and steaming in different ways. My favorite was the one where she is crazy, mad and her brain is bursting out of her head (lower left hand corner). She however, likes the one where she looks dead or comatose (on the upper right). So I will be drawing that one on her notebook.






















Here is my bigger refined sketch of the one that she likes. Next step notebook!

Viking Fighting an Octopus PART I (the sketch)

I have too many blogs in the pipeline at the moment because I keep waiting to finish things before I post them. I do it for you, so I don't post an idea and then abandon it once you started liking it and so you don't start hassling me to finish stuff (which at times I may need, but shhhhhhh - don't tell anyone…). So I have decided to start posting things in process, this will hopefully do one of three things; make it so I post more stuff, (because at the moment I wait until it is done and then take my sweet time to writing a blog about it), encourage me to finish some of the ideas I start and get some feed back on what I am doing while it is in progress and I can still change it. So feel free to tell me what you think (though note that I will feel free to ignore you if you aren’t being constructive with your criticism).

If you know me and I have to assume that most people looking at this actually do (sad), you know I have an obsession with Vikings. I just flat out think they are cool. I have read a several Viking history books, some works on their mythology and an Icelandic saga, and it’s still not enough. I’m always on the lookout for more reading materials when Vikings are concerned.

This is a sketch that I did based off of the idea that me and a couple my friends had to do an animation based off of us as Vikings. The idea came from me sketching all of my friends as Vikings and drawing us into little scenes, though unfortunately we have yet to start working on the animations. This is me as a berserker, fighting a giant octopus that has rather impolitely attached itself our hypothetical Viking boat.

A Pathetic Family Portrait

Today would have been my friend Patrick's 23rd Birthday. To commemorate today I’m posting something that he started and I finished. This is a family portrait that Pat started to work on before he died, though he never was able to finish it. His mom asked me to finish it for him so she could have something to give their family, and I said of course I would do it and that I was honored and happy to do so. Pat had already drawn the majority of his family members, he just didn't have the strength to get to drawing the final ones. That was were I came in and as Pat's best friend and as the person who Pat claimed was the “best artist” he knew, I took up the task of finishing the project. I wanted to make sure that I copied his style exactly, something more difficult then I initially thought it would be.




















Here are the drawings that pat did. He did all of the drawings in pencil and then i went over them in pen and ink.















This is a sad note that ended where pat was working on the project. It says "I'm not done But I'm too tired to go on." when Laura and I saw this it made us incredibly sad.










Here are the sketches that I created in Photo shop to immatate Pat's style.










Here are the inked versions of Pat's additional family members









Here is the final version that i gave to Nancy (Pat's mom) yesterday after a very lovely dinner. Hopefully by posting this i don't ruin any surprises.

Body Worlds 2 (sketches)

A while back (probably February or January) Laura and I went to the Tech Museum in San Jose to see Body Worlds 2. If you are unfamiliar with Body Worlds you should look it up at (http://www.koerperwelten.com/en.html) , if you don't have time for that here is a brief low down. Body Worlds is an exhibit where dead human and animal bodies have been put through a process known as plastination where silicone is injected into a dead body, organ, or part and then is removed through a vacuum, in doing this the specimen is preserved. It also doesn't really have a smell, which is nice when you are viewing the respective dead things.
No one was allowed to take photos, so subsequently Laura didn't take any, but I was able to sketch some of the things that caught my eye.


















Horse Head















Horse legs sketch
















This is my favorite sketch; it's a child's skull with the brain exposed. I Think I might want to incorporate this into a tattoo design at some point.





















This is one of the first whole bodies that you see in the exhibit and I liked the exposed skull face with the ears and nose still attached, I thought it made it extra creepy and surreal. Though in general the whole show is very surreal.




















Even without skin I still like drawing faces the best.





































I don't really like this sketch, because I don't think it shows much, but that is what it looked like, it was the human nervous system attached to its brain in a glass case and it was pretty amazing.










































This piece was cool; it was a segmented man who was cut vertically and spread out across the gallery space.


After looking at the few sketches that I did and remembering all the things there were to see there I regret not spending more time there drawing. Though I know I didn't want to draw a lot because I feel very self conscious about it. I would love to go again and sketch more human bodies and body parts with out their skin on, so hopefully the show or one of its subsequent incarnations will come back to the Bay Area sometime soon.

My Brother the Chef (Alex Graduates Culinary School)

My little brother Alex is graduating from culinary school soon and to commemorate the event my dad asked to me to draw a portrait of him as a chef.























Congratulations Alex i hope that you do well in the kitchen.

Anniversatree (Eric and Laura's One Year Anniversary)

"The difference between a normal person and an artist is that a normal person would just carve your names in a tree; an artist gives you a drawing of them carving your names into a tree."

-Laura B

ZOMBIES! (Friends with a Thirst for Blood 2007)