Cross 2

Back in February I put up a post about a cross I had designed from a tattoo for a motorcycle graphic. Well the pictures are here of the finished product.

The paint job turned out absolutely beautiful... and the ghost graphics on the bike are phenomenal

The paint job was done at Coonyzs Customz / www.coonyzcustomz.com

The bike looks fantastic and is literally a piece of art rolling down the street, I am glad to have been a part of the creation.

Crest

One of my latest projects was to help a client come up with a family crest. Well when I say help I mean I illustrated and she just told me what to do.
This was her initial sketch of what she wanted and the final image is what we came up with.

After several emails and sketches we started to move forward. She wanted the classic animals protecting the crest and choose a swan and a bear (but she wanted the bear to look like the classic lions that you see in a crest) so there were a ton of elements added and changed.

Here is the final version of the crest once it was finally decided on. The process was several forms of media, traditional drawings for the animals, Adobe Illustrator for the placement and layout, and Adobe Photoshop for the coloring and effects added to the crest.
All in all it was around 25 concept drawings and samples and around a week of solid working to get it to her liking.

Pencil, Adobe Illustrator CS5, Adobe Photoshop CS5

Frank Frazetta 1928-2010

As a boy my father had a set of books by a fantasy artist named Frank Frazetta. I loved these books, strong muscular men battling with axes and swords and sexy curvaceous woman that were dominant and seductive.

These books were my first step into a bigger world of fantasy art, I loved turning every page and absorbing every detail, the colors and the detail in the armor and weapons, and of course his power understanding of the human anatomy.

Today he died at 82. He is one of the men I had wished I could have met, I would hope he was making a special appearance at the Comic Conventions I attended, I had even thought of taking a trip to his estate to see if I could meet him, but never did. His paintings inspired me to become an artist and to love art in a way so few do... through the eyes of a child. I will always look at his art in wonderment and aspire to create something as great as he did. Thank you Frank for making me the artist I am today.

APPROVED

LOST's Island

So I was sitting on my couch watching the greatest show on earth... LOST!!! And I got to thinking.. "Hmm.. I see some very close similarities to another T.V. show I used to watch" and so 'We are all LOST' was born.

Done in graphite of 11"X 17" Bristol - A mix of LOST / Gilligan's Island-The Minnow in the back ground reflecting Oceanic 815, Ginger and Mary-Ann replaced by Kate and Juliette... Sun and Jin as Thurston and Lovey...Sawyer as The Professor and Jack and John Locke as Gilligan and the Skipper.This is a color version of the drawing. I colored it in Photoshop and submitted it to http://www.threadless.com/submission/268474/We_are_all_LOST

vote for my drawing and if enough people do they will print it on a t-shirt!!!
So go vote NOW!!!

If the end of the show they run across the Minnow sitting in a Lagoon.... just know I called it.

Homework Assignment #2 Returned

Homework #2 has been returned!!! I used my good friend Elledge Bowers as my model..Thank you Elledge. and the results were very good.

Joe Kubert himself is correcting my homework.. I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE IT!! I get a feel from his comments he sees real potential and wants me to succeed! I am so excited to start the next piece. Enjoy the wonderful constructive criticisms of a master artist.

American Express Project

I was approached by our marketing team here at O.C.Tanner to help create some files for a presentation of American Express. They wanted the O.C. team to be turned into SUPERHEROES to show their Heroic dedication to the Am Ex project. it was put into a slide show and presented to the Heads of American Express.
Each image shows the picture I used, the pencil sketch, the Illustrator image I turned them into and then the superhero bodies I put them on. I colored them all in Photoshop. The bodies (well all but two ) were created on a fun little web site called
UGO the website if you make your own superhero is, http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp , and then I hand colored them in Photoshop.
I was approached on Tuesday and had to have the entire thing ready to go Monday morning, along with access cards for the team to access there awards for working hard.

The background was created in Illustrator using live trace.

Homework Assignment #2

This assignment was to tell a story using no word bubbles at all...using facial features and body motion to convey the premise.

I used my friend Elledge as a model, thank you Elledge!
Graphite on Bristol Board 11"x 17"

King's Cottage Tuesday Nights

Went to King's Cottage on Tuesday and drew the live model.
Graphite on Paper 11" x 17"

Cross

I was hired to to recreate a tattoo into a tight image to be recreated into a graphic for a motorcycle.

The upper image is the image given, the one below is the sketch that did to get into the computer so I could start the illustration in the computer

Here is the final product that I did in Illustrator and sent off to the motorcycle shop to be painted on the bike. I am sure I will get a photo when the bike is done and I will post it then.

Homework Lesson 1 Returned

Well my first lesson was returned. I did pretty well, I love constructive critique, it has always been my favorite part of art school. If you would like to read the comments I think they are pretty cool..this is the best part..for some reason my art was critiqued by Joe Kubert himself! The owner and proprietor of the Joe Kubert School of Comic Book Art, he is one of the greatest artists to have ever graced the comic art world and I have his art and writing all over my work..I absolutely am beaming!!

Homework Lesson 1

Well my first Homework assignment is complete, that took a bit of time, had so many things come up on a personal level that I did not get it done in September like I wanted..or October...but now it is done!!

This assignment was a based around a Western scene, the class gives you the scenario and the script but the rest is left up to your imagination. you have to establish character faces and angles and then incorporate them in to the story...this is my depiction...I shall send it off have it graded and post what they say.
11" x 17" Graphite on Bristol Board

Hulk

Here is a fun site a friend turned me onto..it is a great way to see the process of how art is drawn..this is one I did. http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/99148/edit if you want to see in a full screen version.

Labor Day Creative Weekend

Here are the ones that have been submitted to me so far.....

Garrick Dean / Acrylic on Canvas

Eric Atencio / Graphite

Angie Jantz / Photography

Isabella Bersen / Graphite

Elledge Bowers / Graphite

Ben Simonsen / Graphite, Computer Color

Warm Up Piece

Well I have received my first class from the Joe Kubert school so I am about to begin, I decided to warm up by doing a piece of my favorite people you love to hate, The Bounty Hunters of the Star Wars galaxy (well not all, but some). It was a fun piece to do took a couple of weeks at just a hour or two a night. But it turned out pretty good. Enjoy
Graphite on Bristol Board 23" x 17"

Giraffe Creative Project

We have been having a creative project at work. We found a artist who is trying to collect 1 Million giraffe drawings so we are trying to poll together as many drawings as we can to help out. Here is my contribution.

Joe Kubert's School of Cartooning and Comic Book Illustration

I am going to go back to school and get my official degree in Comic Book Illustration, I want to go pro in this genre and this school is the best there is!
I will still be living in SLC but doing correspondence classes from the school which is based in New Jersey. Wish me luck, I will start posting my art as I progress through the classes. Nuff' said!

Toy Hunter / Wolverine

With the new Wolverine movie coming out I designed my Toy Hunter logo around the movie logo, which is directly below.

Stones.

One of my hardest challenges and also one of my favorite projects here at OC was to recreate our stone library to make it look more realistic. I took photos off the internet and used them to recreate all our stone, and there are a lot..these are only a few.

Pearls

Ruby's and Garnets

Princess Cut Diamonds

and of course regular Round Diamonds

Here are some of the old stones and the new stones I have created, mind you these are all vector images that have been created in illustrator. The entire stone library I created (over 20 stones )
took close to a year to perfect, and in my opinion I can probably build them a little tighter.

What I do everyday.

I have never blogged about what I do here at OC.I develop processes for new illustration, and continue to improve current processes we currently have. I find new ways to illustrate our product for a WOW effect to dazzle the client. Here are some examples of my work here at OC.

The top illustration is the old way of showing artwork to clients when I arrived here and it was my job to develop new ways of displaying artwork, so the one below it is the new process I developed using Illustrator and Photoshop to create the effect I needed.

The next couple images are recreating how we do 3-D illustration, they used to do flat 3-D and I have helped develop a Photo-realistic effect to make our illustration look great.

So that is what I do 8 hours a day..oh and I go to a lot of meetings and put out a ton of fires, and every now and then I help the artists here do some creative work.