Joust Process

Here are some process photos of the Joust Bird

I almost always start with a foil and wire frame (not pictured, sorry) before adding the Super Sculpey. Here you can see that the structure was still taking shape. I hadn't quite worked out the beak shape and hadn't added the crest. The shape of the chest is still pretty flat. 

The sculpting is pretty close to done here. I regretfully used different colors of Sculpey just because I had them sitting around. It made it hard to see what everything would actually look like once painted.  My favorite piece of reference for this guy was the tongue. I came across photos of goose tongues which have teeth-like ridges on them. In the end the tongue got a bit obscured because I painted it black, but there's a lot of detail tucked in there. 

 I love adding little story bits in the designs. There is a little scar in the feathers on the chest where the  feathers never grew back. I imagined that surviving many joust battles in the sky would leave a lot of bumps, bruises, and cuts. The figure was baked around this point before adding the helmet.

 Here I just started to add the first layer of weathering for the paint job. You can see a wash of sepia ink around the eye and neck. The spike on the helmet was intended to be a cut off beak from a bested opponent, saved as a trophy.

The paint job was 90% done here. I added the nose ring which eventually got a bit of bronze paint and some rust added using pumice texture gel. It is basically acrylic gel medium with sand mixed in. There is a little on the helmet as well. 

The paint was acrylic applied with brushes. I used watercolors and ink here and there and Minwax Polycrylic to goop up the eyes, tongue, and mouth.

JOUST

Here is my sculpt of the best 80's dueling mounted flying ostrich game out there. Of course I speak of the arcade classic Joust. This was my take on a design for the flying war birds in the game. Battle-scarred, tired, and angry. This piece started as a classroom demo. It sat for a while but I recently got back to it and wrapped up the sculpting and paint job.

Occult Librarian

I created this character sculpture for the MICA Illustration Department's "Seance" show in October. I picture him as the keeper of all of the secret, locked away, tomes in the dark corners of a black magic library. He has had nasty run-ins with all types of nare do wells.
It stands about 4.5 inches tall and is made with assorted gray sculpey I mixed. There are also a lot of found objects, cut paper, mini hand-bound books, and a shaved down birthday candle.

Warriors shirts available on Teepublic

I recently added my Warriors poster to teepublic.com where you can now buy it... in shirt form. It comes in three variations and you can select from a number of different shirt colors for each. I am told that they will also be adding prints to their store soon, in which case I will also make it available as a poster.

New sculpt

I have been taking a break from my short film the past week or two to work on some other things. I just finished coloring a short comic project and I am working on a sculpture for a gallery show coming up. Here is the first stage of it. I'll update as it progresses.

Brandywine River Museum Visit

Deanna and I took our MICA classes on a tip to the Brandywine Museum today. They had a great exhibit up on illustrations done for Edgar Allan Poe stories. We got to see some originals by Barry Moser, Aurthur Rackham, and Harry Clark, among many others. As always, the permanent collection was incredible. I am floored by the large NC Wyeth paintings every time I see them.

Come out and plaaaaayayaya...

A poster I did a while ago based on the movie The Warriors got featured today on joblo.com. Joblo is a movie news site that I frequent. They recently started doing a column of movie related artwork. If you haven't seen the 1979 movie The Warriors, do yourself a favor and seek it out. It is a dark but fun movie about rival gangs in New York during the city's grittiest era.

8 Bit Devo

I did some artwork over the summer for an 8bit tribute album to the band Devo. The album, titled Crack that Chip, by 8-Bit Operators is set to be available around election time. Here is a promo video they made featuring some of my artwork and samples of the music.



I had a lot of fun working on this and really loved diving into Devo themed art. Here are a few progress photos from the sculpture.

Alex Fine visit

My friend Alex Fine was kind enough to visit my class at MICA last week to do an inking demo. He did an awesome drawing of the worst thing ever. He was also voted Baltimore's favorite illustrator by City Paper this week, congrats Alex!

yea yea yea yea yea yea ya ya ya yeah

Here's brief glimpse at the latest sculpture I've been working on for KSine aka Receptors aka 8bit Operators. I'm still a little fuzzy if all of those things are a single person, or if some of them are groups. I need to find out if I can post the entire sculpt yet, but here's a small segment at least.

Are We Not Men?

I might be working on some cover art for a Devo tribute album coming up. I've been doing some research lately, revisiting and discovering old music videos. Deanna and I fell in love with the album "Q: Are We Not Men?, A: We Are Devo" when we were driving down the California coast for our honeymoon. So I'm really looking forward to working on some Devo inspired artwork. Here is a video for the original version of Jocko Homo. It's a bit more raw than the album version which is a nice variation. ENJOY!

ICON

Deanna and I drove up to Providence, Rhode Island this past weekend so she could attend the ICON illustration convention being held there. I was able to attend some of the conference and really enjoyed what I saw. I spent the rest of the time exploring Providence, which I really enjoyed. I had been there once to tour RISD while I was looking at schools and liked the feel then, but it was great to have a few days to really explore. I walked most of the city, front to back, back to front. I visited just about every book store I could find, and there were quite a few. Cellar Stories Books and Myopic Books were my favorites. I also got to meet illustrator/musician Marcellus Hall at the convention. I am a big fan of his former band Railroad Jerk, so it was a great thrill to meet him. I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are a few.
 

View from our hotel room over the water

View of the India Point Park

Gondola in the canal

Deanna sitting behind Matt Groening at the conference

We got delicious and cheap treats from the porchagese Silver Star Bakery

One of many telephone pole sculptures in Wickenden