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)

Rat in a Suit

I was bored yesterday and I had all these manila folders lying around so I decided to start drawing on them. One of the things I drew was our hairless rat NHN [Nearly Hairless Nick(who is a girl)] in a pinstriped suit with a bowler hat.

Christopher Lee Portrait (a James Madison Portrait)

Recently at work I've undertaken a project of drawing all of the presidents for my friends in P.D.G. (Product Development Group). They  just created a render farm and have about 42 computers so I suggested that they used the names of presidents for all of the computers to distinguish them from one another, and they didn't think it was such a bad idea either. They wanted all of the computers to have pictures of the presidents on them, which I thought would be a fun little side project that i didn't have to take seriously, and one they didn't want me to take seriously either, so I've just been having fun with it and here are some of the results.  I started to do portraits of the presidents (I'm sure i will post them all in the future) then i got to our 4th president James Madison and found this portrait.
























(NOT MY WORK)

Looking at this the first thing that popped into my head was the fact that he looked like Christopher Lee. So I thought it would be funny to do James Madison's portrait as Christopher Lee from one of his many horror movies.



























I could have done him as Saruman the White from Lord of the Rings, but I thought the beard would confuse things, anyway, I think having the 4th President as a Vampire would be funnier then having him as an evil wizard.

This is my portrait of Christopher Lee;  if you can't tell it's a cheater portrait where I took a picture of Lee and traced it in Illustrator. I'm a tracer. Though it did turn out nicely so I'll forgive myself for my laziness, and you should too! If Chasing Amy taught us anything, it's that it's it's ok to be a tracer... sometimes.