Thumbnail, Drawing and Underpainting

This is the thumbnail, the full drawing and the finished underpainting. The final step is to paint the color on with gouache. Actually, I've already started painting it. It's exciting because I've never used an underpainting before, and according to most painters the underpainting is an important step. For the underpainting I layered washes of india ink. I'm a little worried about the amount of denim clothing I'm gonna have to paint -- they can't all be the same color and shade. That would look lame.

The final, full-color painting will be featured in a Blind Melon fan book. Comments appreciated.

B-Day present for JAWCooper

I drew this as a birthday present for a close friend. I gave it to her about a month late... It's a chick riding a wildebeest, which is the kinda thing my friend really digs. My inspiration was my recent trip to Kenya, where I saw both wildebeests and a whole lot of whatever type of bird I drew here.

Natural History Drawings Part 2

More from the Natural History Museum. There was an awesome bird exhibit and I was able to draw a barn owl, which is one of my favorite animals.

Natural History Museum Drawings Part 1

My friend and I spent an afternoon drawing from the exhibits at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum. It was a lot of fun and I hope I get a chance to go back soon -- there are many taxidermy animals left to draw :)

Blind Melon project sketch

Blind Melon Sketch

12"x13"

col-erase pencil

This is a photograph of a 12x13 finished sketch for a painting I plan to donate to a Blind Melon book project. I drew caricatures of all five band members. I tried to be flattering or at least to make them look young and well groomed. That job wasn't hard -- quite frankly, they were a good looking bunch. Least they are if you can dig a guy with long hair. They were fun to draw, especially the far left figure which was the first one I drew.

Unfinished Sketch - having trouble

I need input on the above drawing. I traced him from my sketchbook, where he was part of a larger drawing with multiple figures. Here the figure is isolated on a sheet of tracing paper and partially penned. The lower half of the body is a problem for me -- I've blocked it out to get the forms, but I am not satisfied. In the end the figure will be wearing tight corderoy pants, a T-Shirt and some sort of loafer for shoes. He holds in his right hand a microphone that I've only loosely sketched in.

How can I improve this? I'm not confident in my use of anatomy. I particularly mean the yet un-penned part, but constructive input for any aspect of the drawing is appreciated.

P.S. The figure is supposed to be Blind Melon's singer Shannon Hoon, of whom I've previously posted a sketch. Unlike the last sketch which was from a photo, this was drawn from imagination. The drawing is intended to take after the music video for the song No Rain, and I want the finished piece to have the iconic Blind Melon butterfly girl and ideally the other band members.

From my sketchbook

This is a page from a recent sketchbook. All the line work is done in col-erase pencils. Pictured on the top left and right are drawings of the first cosmonaut. When I look at this drawing, I can't help but hear in my head "... this is ground control to Major Tom, you've really made the grade...". Lyrics from one of the two Bowie songs on my playlist. I never want to travel into space -- that kinda thing scares me more than man-eating sharks.

Fight Scene

This is a drawing that has undergone as much GIMP work as I could tolerate. It was a two page spread in a sketchbook I fondly referred to as the big'un. I stopped using that sketchbook because it was way to big for my puny-ass scanner. I had to tile this together from four separate quadrants. I then selected the line-art, converted it to a path, then had the path traced with a calligraphic Gimp brush. I like how it turned out -- I'll post the line drawing for comparison.

I love dogs

I drew these from photos I found on google image search. Dogs seem so expressive to me, I tried to capture each dogs expression and exaggerate it. It's hard to believe that domesticated dogs collectively are a single species. There is so much variety among them.

Blind Melon - Shannon Hoon

This is a drawing of Shannon Hoon who was the frontman for the band Blind Melon. When I'm not feeling particularly creative, I sometimes draw from photos or video files. I don't worry to much about being exact since photos aren't perfect themselves. I try to fix awkward elements in the photo. I usually focus on photos of young men which limits what I learn. I'm really just exploiting a loophole in my ADD. I think it is something to the extent of - nothing can hold my attention unless, of course, it's sexy.

Fan Art - Final Fantasy XII

This is an old drawing, but I still like it. It's of a character named Penelo from the game Final Fantasy XII. I really liked the design of her outfit -- it's cute but not too cute and it isn't distractingly revealing.

Corgis

I love video games!

1970's forgotten movie attack

If there were to be a comic book of the old 1970's movie The Omen, it might look like this

Line art

Something from my sketchbook.

Onocentaur

"Onocentaur"

18"x24"

Marker on paper

I heard somewhere that donkeys don't like dogs and can actually be trained to guard livestock by chasing off coyotes. I don't know whether this is true, but the comment illicited from me a dramatic and strangely humorous mental image of strife between dog and donkey. This piece is loosely inspired by that mental image. In this case, one finds a half-man half-donkey creature being accosted by domestic dogs (although they arguably don't look like domestic dogs, maybe I should have picked a particular breed and gotten a picture, but hindsight's 20/20.)

I really like how this turned out. Imperfections aside, I think it captured the feel I was going for. I didn't exactly want a violent image. I wanted to capture the tension of a situation that has not yet erupted in actual violence. In this case, both parties are about evenly matched and stand a good chance of serious injury. There's barking, growling, anxious rearing but either side has yet to make a deffinitive move. I naively thought all of this was self-evident from the image, and that the forty minute critique would require little explaination on my part. In actuality my genuinely supportive classmates were confused about exactly what was happening in the picture, but where nonetheless enthusiastic. My crits often go like this.

Painting - Sueno

Safari life drawing

I drew this while on Safari in Kenya. I drew very little, primarily because it's hard to draw in a moving vehicle, especially if that vehicle is a VW van traveling on dirt roads, which was most of my Africa trip. We stopped at the lions for quite a while and I had time to draw them.

Highlights of animal drawing

Drawings

It's been so long...

I guess I'm updating just for the sake of updating. This is from my sketchbook. I like philosophy a little, and have made a few caricatures of a few notable philosophers. Also, a fanciful imagining of a pope with an eyepatch.