Monday, April 23, 2012

Bang bang!

The Roguish Robot, now complete! Critique last Thursday was very helpful, got some good advice from my classmates and professor. I added some color to the robot's "skin" to help him stand out, hardened and softened some edges, lightened the lighter strip of sky with a very, very, very light wash of orange heavily diluted with white, and put a few subtle brushstrokes around some parts of the figure.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, it's really close to the original idea I had in my mind of "robot-with-gun-briefcase-and-red-streak-over-eyes." By the way, that darn red streak took something like 15 tries (I wasn't really keeping track, but it was a lot) to get right.
Now I have to figure out what to add digitally. I don't know about you, but I'm thinkin' lens flare. (sarcasm)

And here's a little bonus because I'm feeling generous:


A book cover I painted for Illustration 4, for a sci-fi-ish children's chapter book from the mid-1960s about a kid from another world who falls through a portal into hicksville USA, and hijinks ensue. My professor assigned the book.
Also part of the assignment were 2 black-and-white interior illustrations and chapter heading illustrations:
I went for a slightly old-school style with my nib pen and ink.
The chapter headings are still in .psd format, so I can't post them as is. I'm arranging them all on two seperate sheets and adding the chapter titles next to each of them. I'm almost done but may need to make some changes before I print them, so I don't want to convert them to jpeg just yet. Keep an eye out for them on my future blog posts!

See y'all later!
-Will


Sunday, April 22, 2012

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

A Familiar (metal) Face

Been really busy as of late, what with the end of the semester coming up as well as my imminent graduation, but here's a quick update:
bad photo to be replaced by high-quality scan when it's done and dry
 Final project for portfolio 1, oil on gessoed hardboard. Almost done, critique on it tomorrow!

Saturday, March 24, 2012

*blows dust off blog*

Hey there, remember me?

It's been a while since I've made a post on here, I've been busy as usual, so here's a bit of what I've been working on:

Finished this about a month or two ago, should really have posted it then...
Left it at the school for a while and it got a big scratch on it, which I wasn't too happy about, obviously. Fortunately I was able to fix it with a little paint. That's the nice thing about oil paint, you can paint over just about any mistake, blemish, or what have you.

For each project in portfolio class, we have to digitally alter or add text to the image. Here's the painting in the style of a book cover, with some digital color, which was tougher to do than I had expected, and some text. Don't Call Me Robbie is the title of the story my Dad is writing, and Craig F. Owen is my dad's name, as you can see. Yes, we have different last names, Mom's last name, Wunderlich, is my last name and Owen is my middle name, not hyphenated or any of that jazz.

The next project I did for Portfolio 1, in watercolor and ink with digitally added text (lorem ipsum, the universal filler text).

Here's what I'm currently working on for that same class, it's sort of a parody of the classic devil-girl pinups (which I'm definitely a fan of). I thought it would be funny to have a demoness that actually looks terrifying and demonic posing sexily.
Here's a close-up where you can see some of the details a little better, like her extra eyes, four horns, and weird bony growths, ot to mention her little t-rex arms. I'll probably be adding some more weird stuff like spots, scars and veins on her skin.
Painted in watercolor, I may be adding linework in ink eventually, but I like the way it looks without it so far. If I do go ahead with the ink, I'll definitely get a scan of it first. For the digital alteration, I'm thinking about making this one into a calendar page.
Close-up of the little imp guy being threatened by her tail. I've been drawing these guys for a while, my friend pointed out today that they're like the demonic equivalent of cherubs.

I also made a new sticker design and digitally colored it! Seems I have extra eyes on the brain...
I seem to do good work when I'm supposed to be working on other, more important things...

Alright, that's all for now, I've been doing a bunch of other stuff too, which I'll be sure to put up later. Got to get back into the habit of posting at least once a week.

Adios!

Friday, February 17, 2012

A whole lotta llustration, a little graphic design...

Here's a book cover I made for Graphic Design for the Illustrator, for a collection of storied by Isaac Asimov.

The title is not that of the original collection, but one of the stories from it which the illustration is based on. I went for a bit of a retro feel with the illustration and the text. Medium is pen and ink with digital color and values, with torn, crumpled, and scanned paper for the title box, text box on the back cover, and texture on the back cover.
It seems like most of the work in this project was the illustration, the graphic design part was actually pretty simple.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest...

...But here's my faithful Friday blog post, as usual.
First off, an update on the main source of my busy-ness, the robot PI painting. This thing seems like it has been taking forever... I think it's the technique I chose. But latelty I've been employing what I call the "grisaille-a-prima" technique, and that seems to be helping thing come along nicely.

 On another robot-related note, I've been working on some book jacket illustrations for a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov in Graphic Design for the Illustrator. Here's the front cover so far, needs solid blacks and some digital spot color:
 And the back cover. text goes in the blank spot, we're using lorem ipsum (filler text).
 These are based on the (very) short story Insert Knob A Into Slot B from the collection. Both drawn in pen and ink.
And here's a logo I designed, that appears on the crate on the front cover, stretched and squished in photoshop to fit the perspective, and will also appear on the "book"'s spine.

See y'all later!
 

Friday, February 3, 2012

Robot P.I. progress

 I don't have much to say today, but here's an update on the robot P.I. painting:
Thanks to my friend, Holly, for letting me use her phone to take a picture of this at last night's impromptu painting party on the 7th floor (illustration floor, top floor 'cuz we're the best). Coulda used my phone, but the photo would've been the size of a postage stamp and terrible quality.
I'm using the grisaille technique in this painting. Click the link and educate thyself because I can't be arsed to explain it at the moment.
I don't have much time to finish this and I've got a lot of work to do, so I'll be back later with more goodies!