Senior Exhibit

The Senior Exhibit is opening this Thursday at my school. This is what I submitted.

I've done a bunch like this over the past few months. I'm not sure how much I really like them.

Dream Factory

I just arrived at a stopping point on my first assignment for Digital Art II this semester. The goal was to create and interesting cross-section of a real or imagined person, place, or thing.

I was going for somewhat of a Dr. Seuss style, though I think I may have ended up with a little Simpsons in there also. It took about 8 hours to get to this point between creating and sketching the idea, drawing it and then coloring it in Photoshop. It is print ready for 11x17.


Dream Factory
Digital
11"x17"

Illustration II : Farming

I'll get around to photographing my paintings eventually. For now here is the final project I did for Illustration II. Two digital illustrations of farming. The second one is probably the best thing I've done so far, but it took forever.


Tractor Field
Digital
11"x17"


Plowing
Digital
11"x17"

~Adam

Illustration II : Projects 2 & 4

Order? Who needs it. Here's some digital work I did for my summer Illustration class.

This was inspired by the offbeat news topic "Baltimore Police Run Out of Pants." It speaks for itself.

11"x17"
Digital

And this is an illustration of "Greed," an attempt at a personification of the sin. You can see an earlier draft here.

11"x17"
Digital

Hope you like.
~Adam

Illustration II : Project 1

I'm taking Illustration II over the summer. It's with the same teacher I had for Illustration I and some of the projects seem a little similar, he likes things a certain way, I guess.

Here's the first thing I did. I worked on coming up with the idea while I was on my recent trip to Las Vegas with my friends, hence the subject. The assignment was to illustrate a metaphor.


Cat and Mouse Game
18" x 24"
Acrylic on Canvas

~Adam

Snow Trooper Sketch

A digital sketch I did of a snow trooper based off a photo I took at a con.

All the Cool Kids are Doing it

Yep... school is back. Sorry I've been busy and haven't gotten a post up here in over a week. So I'll post a double today.

This is the final piece I did for my Illustration class over the winter mini-mester. The assignment was to compare an inside and outside view. I know I'm not exactly the most talented artist, but I hope I'm proficient enough that you can figure out what is show in the right side of this painting without me telling. (hint: it's not a "cars race")

Church and Factory
16x20
Acrylic on Canvas

~Adam

Surrealism

I've liked surrealism for longer than I've "formally liked art", and it is a style that has probably played a major part in getting to me where I am currently as an artist. (whether that's good or not is up for debate)

Anyhow, It was kind of a big deal for me to do my first piece of surrealism. It may bring to mind a particular painting by Rene Magritte, but I swear I came up with the idea before seeing that piece. I feel like my lack of skill with the medium had some slight negative effect on the outcome, but I put a lot of time into it and I'm pretty satisfied with it.

16 x 20"
Acrylic on Canvas

~Adam

More Black and White Illustrations

Here's the next two that I said I would do.


~Adam

Illustration I (Week 1)

I started my 3 week mini-mester course, Illustration I, this week. So far it's not too bad. I was a little because I saw the class was scheduled from 10-4, and 6 hours in class sounded like a little hard to handle. As it turns out I only need to be there from 10-12:30 so it's actually shorter than most other studio courses. Though, I end up needing a few hours after each class just to finish up the work for each day.

These are what I've done so far :

A cross-hatch drawing of Clarence Long, the original Marlboro Man. It was my first time I've really done a full drawing in this style, so I don't think it turned out great, but the method doesn't really interest me much to begin with so I don't care.

And second, a black and white side-lit portrait of William Macy, you may have seen him in Fargo or a dozen other movies. This one went much faster than the cross-hatching, but I still think it's a somewhat lame project because Adobe Illustrator can do this very same thing in about 10 seconds. I don't see what the benefit of doing it by hand is. (This is one of the reasons I'm focusing on digital Illustration.)

Anyhow, I have to do one more in each of these styles by the end of the weekend, so expect to see more like these soon.

~Adam

A Peaceful Scene

I did a painting of a temple on a mountain much like the drawings I posted here and here. I felt it was appropriate for this week's Illustration Friday topic, "peace".

Temple on the Mountain
11"x14"
oil on canvas board

~Adam

Finished Triptych

Well it's been several weeks, but I've finally finished up the triptych that I posted sketches for a while ago.

I started off as I do with most paintings, drawing right onto the canvas. For this project I used canvas boards, mostly because they're cheaper.


I began painting right over my drawings here. I tried to go back and forth between each piece so they would all develop at about the same rate and keep some of the same colors.


Here they are with all the major elements.

And finally after I added details, this is what I ended up with.


The piece has a theme of confusion and being lost in life, which is a very serious idea and thought it would be interesting to put that against a cartoony, light-hearted style, adding more to the confusing feeling of the work. Obviously the crossroads piece holds it all together and most clearly relates that theme. The city piece is meant to give a busy and overcrowded kind of feeling. The buildings can't even fit into thier own area. And finally the home is supposed to be the most peaceful of the scenes, yet nothing is perfect, hence it has the darkest sky, a more subtle discomfort.

I also had the idea of making a larger series of paintings with this structure (you may notice the edges of each are nearly identical) that could be placed and rearanged in any order, giving it the ability to take on varying stories and themes dependant on the configuration. We'll see...

~Adam

Triptych Sketches

My next painting is going to be a triptych on canvas board. I got the idea as I was driving home from a friend's last night and had to put down some sketches at around 3am. Here's what I have so far. The fish in the sky for the second panel were ideas for my Captain Hal's logo, obviously they won't be in the painting :)






I started working today, hopefully I'll have something I'm happy with in a few weeks.

~Adam

Liberty

I recently went on a daytrip with my family to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It was a good time, and educational. The buildings on Ellis Island looked awsome, but we were moving around to much for me to be able to take the time to sketch them. Anyway, I decided to use one of the photos I had take as a background for my next painting. It was taken from the top of the Statye of Liberty's pedestal. We could only get so many tickets to go up there, and Anne, unfortunately, was not one of the few that could go up. But this is basically what I thought would be a cool tourist-y photo.

You can see my references taped to the mirror in the first shot, the pose is from a photo of the two of us on a cruise we took a couple years ago. Though I'm only using that for the layout, I am painting the faces from life, hence the mirror, and I had Anne pose while I worked on hers. Obviously I've again shown some of the progression as I've worked on it. I like seeing it, so I'm going to continue doing it.



I've been working on this on and off for the past week but I really need to get started on my final project so I'm going to put this aside for now, hopefully I'll get back to it and finish it soon.

~Adam

I've Been Lazy

I painted this a week ago, but I've been lazy... and distracted. I think this is probably my best painting so far. I had a lot of fun just finding a good spot to paint, and the painting itself was, of course, fun as well.

And here's a shot of the location, with my blank canvas.

There was some huge bird that came by at one point, I was thinking about adding him into the painting, maybe I'll still do that... sometime.

~Adam

Five OH!

Yes, that's right, welcome to my fiftieth post in this blog! Woohoo! To celebrate I updated the gallery to include a lot of the stuff I've done in the past few months. (It's a tedious process and I don't like to do it often) So if you haven't seen everything, please check it out.

I finished my first full color painting today. It took me somewhere between 5 and 6 hours to complete over 2 days. Here's a shot from the end of day 1:

And here's the final product :

(A photo of the real thing if you want to compare)

Looking back at some of the older things in the gallery it's clear that I've gotten at least a little bit better, hopefully I can keep it up. Thanks for sticking with me.

~Adam

Tower Painting

I had to do a large painting that would require several hours. So I decided to do something that I enjoyed and was familiar with. The Tower. It's done all in black oil paint. (I haven't graduated to colors just yet) And it's really big, 39"x27" on cardboard.

The first shot is after 2 hours and the final shot is after 4.


~Adam

Painted Duck

I created this duck character a while ago and wanted do do a painting of him.

This is acrylic on 9x12 bristol.


I don't know how much I like painting, and it's been a couple months at least since I've done any painting, but I think this turned out pretty good considering.

~Adam

Fantasy Drawings

While hanging out with the guys tonight I did some drawings of some fantasy stuff that had popped into my head. I was not at home and had no real reference material besides other entries in the sketchbook I had on hand. This is the only one I really used.

The first is a troll sort of creature. It's not great but probably one of the best figures I've done, especially considering I had no reference. (Well, I did look at Joe's ankle and hand) The original ears I drew on him looked dumb so I did some other possibilities on the side.

The next two drawings are of a Asian style temple that sits high on a mountain and the path that leads up to it. (Based on the Shaolin Temple in China)


I'm feeling fairly confident about my drawings lately. I also just bought some new bamboo brushes and Bristol board. I'm hoping to do some good Andy Lee style splashes soon.

~Adam