As the title implies, here is the complete and acceptable fashion Illustration for Thiel's class:I like any number of my other fashion illustrations better and Thiel said he was flipping through a fashion magazine at the gym and was surprised at how much nudity there was. I think this makes my second attempt acceptable but Pfft. I'm just waiting for him to realize the 80's are coming back so he can see that the second (better) drawing like this one should have been fine too.

We had to do 30 12x12 portraits in 30 days for painting. In order to complete the task I limited myself to one hour per portrait and mixed mass quantities of fleshy colors. The results are not great but I had all 30 done and the really bad ones have been removed so you don't have to see them. ;)

Let's start with Kid's book... No wait, let me back up a touch. So, working at Joe's house has been hard. We have this big studio space in the back room but it was just not a good workspace. I don't know why but any time I came back here I lost the desire to work. So this weekend I came back here to work while Joe was playing games and I got that "Ugh, I don't want to do this" feeling and decided the room must be tended to. So I poked my head out the door to the living room and asked Joe if I might make the room a proper studio space. He said I could go to town on it. So I moved almost everything. I cleaned and cleared and removed. There was a big corner sofa set in a corner with a TV stand in it, there were about a million chairs... generally there was too much stuff and it wasn't in places that made any sense. So, the whiteboard went up on the wall, the sofa went in the corner, the art supplies went in the cabinet. Everything got swept and dusted and now the space feels like a work environment. It feels comfortable and intentional. I'm proud of my work. All of that said, I started working this afternoon and have only stopped for occassional breaks. I sat down with a paper and a pencil and wrote out an extensive to-do list. I have accomplished a respectable portion of that list in the past hours. Now, let's start with Kid's book:

Most of the people in my children's book class chose stories that involve one character or a few characters, but I am working with Justin. This means two things as near as I can tell. First, it will be awesome when it's done, if it gets done. Second, it cannot be easy. I have to design at least one new character for every page of the book except maybe the last page, depending on the final format of the book. So it's been slow going. The class before last we had a review and I showed the following page of character designs:Wish me luck! It would be really nice if Thiel actually liked something I do again. I also composed the reference photos for the revision of the book cover. {yawn}.
Finally, here's a new piece of the secret project:

So, if you saw my previous post about the fashion illustration for Ill II you know that it was kind of a rough week. Well... that is sort of how this latest assignment has gone too. We had to do a cover for a book. I decided to do a full jacket for "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs. I did thumbnails, I worked it out, all was well... then I came in on Monday with this half-complete image and Thiel hated it. Just hated it. He said to start over, he wants me to do it the way I did the Greenspan/Bernanke piece. Okay but it's due Wednesday. AGAIN. So I went and checked out a camera and a tripod but I couldn't get the tripod until the next day and I couldn't get anyone who I could shoot reference of in the daylight... Ugh. Needless to say I did not complete the assignment by Wednesday. But here's the incomplete of what the cover was going to look like with some text thrown in:

Figure work from my figure painting class, some of it's older, I'm trying to post it in order as best I remember. These first two were from a class in which I developed a much better sense of how to go about things:

Oh god the fashion illustration assignment.  Thiel gave us this one and I just couldn't seem to get it going. I did some sketches and settled on this one idea that I have played with in my head a great deal.  There is something unsettling about amputation, there is also something poetic and beautiful about it and I thought about it and the fashion industry breaks (primarily) women up into component parts as needed.  So I fell into this idea, I wanted to have the woman on the floor, limbless with that same fashion stare, dead eyes, she had to look cold, but at the same time she needed to be sexualized.  I had to include the hands and feet as disembodied seperate fashion images partly because it helped the point and partly because I didn't want to be accused of hand/foot avoidance.  Initial fashion sketches and initial thumbs for the amputee:So Iworked this idea, I took a long time compiling photos and I made this photo-collage sketch for Thiel and he hated it.  He finally just said, "No, absolutely not, you can't do this."  I spent that class working on it anyhow because I had no other ideas.  I ended up with something I could work with and turn into something nice, but that's as far as it got.  All told I miss the above-view of the initial sketch and I think I need to get someone to model for a couple of photos so I can complete the image as I really wanted to.
After he finally decided that my idea was too... I dunno, I actually have no idea what his objection was aside from the fact that he just didn't like it.  If that's the case then he should have decided it was not okay right away because there was no way he was going to suddenly be less disturbed by amputees.  Anyway, after he said no to this idea he decided that the project was due the next class.  This wouldn't be such a problem if it was the wednesday session of our class.  But it was the monday session, which meant I had a day to do a complete illustration from start to finish.  I asked Thiel if he found nipples offensive but the discusion quickly became one of "do they publish nipples in magazines like Vogue?"  The answer is yes.  Anyhow I found some photos that I liked, edited them cropped them and made them into something I could draw from and maybe make a nice image out of.  I am certain I made sufficient changes for my own legal protection.  Anyway, here is what I came up with in a day:Thiel liked the one on the right for technical reasons (I shouldn't have used the salt on the left one, I didn't have anything to block the skin with) but he still said they weren't acceptable and that I should do it again.  So I sat down and got out pencil and a paper and drew a super-skinny gross fashion girl with no breasts and that dead fashion stare.  Thiel liked it, he said I should ink it.  I wanted to put down ballpoint on it, I thought it would work nice, alas, my ballpoint pen had died in my bag so I used this clunky brush-marker, then I put down some watercolor and then some gouache, Thiel says that I murdered it:  (I will replace this image once I re-scan the picture, the file got lost)

The final for my pulp: Red Passion.  (I am actually planning to re-do this in a painted style, the only reason I didn't go with a painted style from the outset was the fear that I would not be able to make it good... {sigh} but I think it'll be really nice if I find the time to re-do it)

The sketch for the Pulp cover.  It's due today but it may be a little while before I save the final in a postable format.  I saved the sketch a bit ago so I figured I would finally post it.Sketches for the celebrity portrait for Ill II:

Just got back from the woodshop,could really use a nap :) but I have much to do and little enough time! Here's a little update on Computer Ill. After the turn-around/3 image project Prochnow assigned us a pulp-fiction book cover. I researched the old pulp books and looked at perhaps a hundred covers. I decided that the funniest of the pulps were the "adult reading" books, specifically the lesbian books. I decided to do a soviet themed cover and I titled my book "Red Passion". Here are the sketches for the cover:

Illustration II we got a story about a kid who's dad used to take him hunting and the kid shot a deer when he was 11 and the father later killed himself.  It wasn't great but at least there was some imagery to work with.  I started with thumbnails.  The one I wanted to do is in the second image:

We had to do a turn-around or three images of a character in different situations for computer illustration.  I initially did a girl in the style I intend to use for the people in the kid's book:

Joe painted a desk.  I helped!

Updates on the Chicken Project from color studies and drawing to completion.  It went over pretty well but... ugh, the thumbnails for the next project went bad... but more on that later.  Anyway, I initially presented this first sketch after the thumbnail was approved:

I thought I was going to need a new story for the kid's book class and I had a character I made for a game.  A goblin named Grisks:

Children's book has not been going particularly well.  It's supposed to be my fun class, my free to do what I want class.  Working with Justin has been difficult.  On the one hand it's his story, he deserves some control.  On the other hand, he's very particular, and I had some trouble keeping myself interested in the project.  I needed to be able to move forward.  Here is the piece I thought would be the last I ever did for the project:

Had to do a portrait for Computer Illustration.  Huge pain in the ass.  I chose to do Gustav Klimt and to base my illustration on a painting of his.  Unfortunately, as graphic as his work was, it still had brush-strokes and bits of stray color, and texture and generally looked 9-million times better than anything I could do with illustrator.  I did three versions of the final image:

We have been working with plaster in 3D, it's good fun but apparently the humidity has combined with our collective ineptitude to create the disagreeable situation of everyone having wet plaster to work with that seems like it might never dry.  Oh well, here's the initial sketch:

Our next assignment for Computer Illustration is a portrait.  I have opted to do Gustav Klimt, in as close an approximation of his own style as I can manage in illustrator.  Here is my sketch: