Dog Family at Dinner

It has been awhile but I am finally getting around to posting stuff again. I have a ton of things to post the problem is actually posting it.

We were asked to take an animal and put them in a human environment. As is customary for me lately I decided to mix a little pop culture and art history to come up with a drawing. The idea mixes the card playing dog pictures and A Norman Rockwell painting from the Saturday Evening Post.

In case you dont know what I am talking about....

Some sketches ...
Sometimes and by that I mean all the time, my checkout clerk is a turtle....

tighter perspective

little further developed sketch

Finished (well mostly, I need to go back in and add some more colored pencil work, some of the color is too light)

Book #2 (Sketches and Planning)

So, for this project we were asked to take an existing childrens books (the ones that have thick pages made out of cardboard), and sand off the images, gesso the pages, and then make our own story. The idea was to come up with a metaphor that is carried out throughout the pages.

Here are all the drawings and writings I did to come up with the final book. I love this stuff, others may not, but I think its interesting to see things at the inception stage compared to what they look like at the end. I like to see the process. Ill post the actual book next.


At first I was thinking about that drawing I did in the last book of the guy fighting a dragon. I thought, it would be a cool idea to make a really simple book with simple drawings, stick figure-esque, and it be something to deal with a knight and  a wizard. Which of course made me think of the dark tower, and I thought I could connect my story to Kings story. The first premise was that the knight had a magic scarf, and the wizard stole it away, the journey would be him searching it out. At first I thought he would follow a thread of the scarf that had caught on a branch when the wizard took it, and the story would be an adventure story.

First drawings of main character and wizard. Things to connect it to the dark tower if only in symbols.

Here are some scenes I would draw as he followed the wizard to get his scarf back. More sketches of the man in action

I liked the pose from the previous pages so I drew a more detailed version.

With the scarf playing a bigger role I started to draw the warrior with the scarf in more detail, I started to think of it more like spawns cape, where it moved. And the story started to change as well. It was too big the way I was planning it before, lacked focus. I drew a small head and a scarf wrapping around all the characters and suddenly I had a new story....

The new story was a take more on myself when I was a kid. When I walked to school I always would day dream and play different things. Sometimes I was an army man, or a ninja, or whatever, whenever I walked to school a story was going on. So the story became more about a kid walking to school imagining things, and the scarf became the metaphor for... well story, and imagination I guess. So this was now the main character a kid walking to school...and of course in a city because, well cities seem to pop up in everything I do lately.

I thought it would be interesting to see the character slowly fall deeper into his imagination and visually the scarf would start to elongate, and eventually would even talk to him or move like a snake. So the spawn cape idea remained.

So I started planning out how the scarf could grow, what he would imagine, etc etc. I also thought a scarf was a good metaphor for story. There are threads that hold the scarf (story) together, it can be short or long, the threads weave in and out creating a cohesive unit. Also you can see that the same walking to the right pose is being revamped.

I love this little drawing, the scarf feels right, and I started to really enjoy working in pen, the way the lines seemed to convey something more than just line. There was a darkness to the pen, and a roughness that seemed graphically more interesting than pencil. You could really feel texture and movement. The tonality of the thing was more limited but the contrast was greater and more raw.I was ready to start putting scenes together. I had 26 pages to draw on, so I started to draw the different scenes I was seeing in my head.

A whole page of small thumbnail sketches of the different scenes, you can also see I am trying to write some sort of dialog to go along with the story. Dont waste your time reading it, it is not profane.

I love the alley and the scarf running down it toward a door... oh yea, thats right, I found a way to include the dark tower.  Second pic is of him getting lost in day dream, the city is behind him and apparitions appear but only in his head.

A close up of his face... and I came up with the line,"I wonder what's behind the door" and suddenly the story was about day dreaming, but also about the door, and I thought, I could have the story be about imagining what was behind a door. Because a door leads to something new, and a closed door could lead anywhere. Of course it probably just leads to a building interior or exterior, but what if one of those doors actually lead to Kings dark tower. In his books the doors could be anywhere, and anyone could find them. Sort of like the chronicles of Narnia.

More imagination drawings, things the main character could think about.

Close ups of the drawings.

another closeup of the last full page.

After all that drawing  I finally start planning each panel out. Some directly taken from my sketches some evolve of their own accord. Top two panels are cover ideas.

Here are the final compositions for the panels and writings. I did these in pencil so that I could erase and plot things out better. But I wanted to keep the rough style of inking for the finished project.

more...

Finish....

My only regret in this phase, is that I made the panels square, and the books panels were rectangles.

Self Portraits

Wow, five posts in one day, I went insane! I blame the craziness on my advanced age. I usually like to space the posts out, but I guess I just wanted to get them posted. There will be a slew of a few more when I get my paintings back, and my midterm portfolio for life drawing.

I usually have a hell of a time trying to draw myself. These aren't by any means perfect, I can see where I need to pay more attention, but I think these are pretty successful. I know I am pretty proud of them. I was so pumped while I was drawing them because things were just falling into place for me. I kept leaving the room just so I could walk in again to make sure they were actually looking like me.

I had been really nervous about drawing myself so I practiced drawing smaller versions of these every night. So when it came to getting them done I felt like I already knew the measurements and rhythm of the lines. Especially the second one, those lines evolved, Maybe Ill try to dig out a few of those.

(shoot only have one of my drawing pads, oh well)

 Here is the final drawing:

One of my practice pieces for the more dramatic piece.

Close up of the left panel.

Close up of the right panel

This is my favorite part of the right panel. I love the evolution this line went through in all my drawings.

another practice piece.

Theme Park Project Part 5: The Dark Tower Theme Park

CHECK OUT THE *Updated Drawing* OF THE THEME PARK!!!!!

Well here it is the last piece (if there are any critiques feel free to leave one or more if you so desire). There are a few things that were excluded and things placed where they were never intended because of time limits, but I have since gone back in and started to add the elements I wanted to put in but couldn't (ill address those as we see them). I would like to eventually color it, but I feel that is going to be further on down the road.

I did an incredible amount of research as well as used my already fairly good knowledge of the dark tower series to construct the world in such a way that it flowed, and showed all the major places from the book.

I will be adding a movie clip that shows the progress of my drawing, as well as really close up of each of the individual elements that will trace Roland and his parties progress through his world in the books as well as show you the attention payed to detail. So if I have forgotten something or linked things that dont make sense let me know so that I can add it or decide Im to lazy to add it before coloring it.

I hope you think its cool. The only last thing I guess I will say is that. I think the main thing to think about in visualizing the theme park is when you first walk through the front gate off in the far distance you can see the tower jutting up into the sky. So no matter where you are or what you are doing, you can always see it, and how you get there or which course you take is completely up to you.

It is the ultimate in theme parks, and as I mentioned before a better term would be immersion park.

The Dark Tower Theme Park Finished (in a sense)
(slightly smaller than 24x18)


Early Sketch. The Idea didnt change too much from this. The only real big thing is that It became wider so elements moved to fill in the sides.



Ok so I did blow these up to larger chunks but the video will have even closer pictures of the individual elements so I encourage you to check that out when I finally put it up.

One thing I should clarify for everyone is that, one of the elements I wanted to put in, but ended up not having time to do it all, is the idea of the Beams that hold up the dark tower. These beams were not physical beams but more like currents of electricity and each beam had an animal guardian counterpart. Each beam met at the dark tower, so two beams always had two guardians protecting it. Roland and his band of travelers traveled mostly along the beam of the Bear/Turtle (i believe it was turtle I could be wrong, its written on the drawing).

So to incorporate this idea into the theme park each beam would be an entrance into or an exit out of the theme park. What they go to or where they come from was not really thought of. However, I think there is only one Main Entrance and Exit to the Park, and that is through the Bear Door. So the other doors maybe would go to Elements of New York, Main, or whatever places Roland and his band visited outside of his world.

Enough about beams, if you dont know what they are then they are completely unimportant, and if you do know what they are then you already understand what I am talking about.


Top Left Corner: In this part of the Park you can see One of the Beams (eagle). You can see Odd Lane in the trees just to the right of the Eagle Door. Below that would be the Land of ThunderClap in it is Alja Sentiel, and Castle Discordia.





Top Middle: The Dark Tower, surrounded by the field of Roses and the stone heads. Below that you can see the final stop of Blain the Mono Topeka Kansas, and the highway system.



Top Right: The Forge of the Crimson King (town not finished and building not represented exactly the way I wanted it to be). A hole Into Todash Darkness, and the mountain for the doorway cave. You can also see that the Fish doorway is being drawn now that I have time.

This area is where the Calla will eventually be, but since the Calla is rather large it was one of hte parts that I didnt have a real good grasp on how to represent it and therefore ran out of time.

Below is another hill this is the hill that Rhea of the Coos lives on. It was placed here to take up room for the Calla and later will be moved down with the rest of hte Mejis stuff.
To the left of the coos hill you can kind of see Eyebolt Canyon.



Mid Left: Thunderclap, Blaines Mono Rails. Below that the city of Lud and the waste lands, to the right of that the giant forest, and Misty Mountain Range. You can also see the coastline and the doors from the second book.

Harder to see is the Rivers Crossing and the Circle of Stones that Susannah encounters the demon.




Mid Mid: Topeka kansas, the highway system, lud, at the bottom the weigh station.




Mid Right: Eyebolt Canyon, Coos Hill, Mejis, Susann Delgados place, and bottom is Citgo ail pumps, and a bad representation of Jericho Hill




Bottom Left: The beach and the 3 doors, lud, rivers crossing, the nazi plane, the weight station, misty mountains, the swamp and circle of stones that is first encountered, a start to the Rat door, and the corner of Tull.





Mid Bottom; Top left is the weigh station, to the right, Brown and Zoltans place, and tull




Bottom Right: Jericho Hill, Mejis, citgo, and Gilead