MASSIVE ART ATTACK!

It's an entry that will put you in a karmic coma ala Massive Attack!

I finally gained access to the scanners on the third floor after a good deal of slacking off on Monday and having a drawing session at my friend Ben Z's house and I've pretty much scanned in everything that I've been doing for the past few weeks, so you're getting the newest and best flavors as of this entry.

Let's get started shall we?

Here are some sketchbook entries from Ben Z's last drawing session from Monday night. Some of you might recognize who these people are and I'm not going to bother telling you who is who! Why? Anonymity of course!







Up next are random studies and observational drawing! Not much to say, but they are pretty nifty!








The small images on the side here are concepts from when I was really depressed earlier this summer due to isolation and a lack of social interaction... Just so you know. I may finish one of them in the near future, but we'll see.



And finally move onto concept/idea sketches, some are really rough, so you might want to enlarge them before viewing.



This might turn into a screen print that I'm doing for my girlfriend, Gillian. It's a massive reference to the Fountain since we seem to have running inside jokes with that film... Or references if you will. (Man, I need to watch that again.)



This last series of sketches involves girls with tattoos, piercings or body modification! The first one is a sketch I'm going to give someone as a present in the near future for hooking me up with screen printing ink at a party I went to involving a floral design become a garden, the second is a girl in a scarf, a belt and underwear and not much else... Oh yeah and she has tattoos. The third is of a girl with piercings, reading a book on a bed with a halter top and jeans on and finally, a girl with piercings listening to an iPod. Isn't this fun, kids?

And on the last image of the night, here's something I drew today based on a photo by my friend Victoria taken at her farewell party on Saturday! I'm already redoing this one since it was just a study from reference.



There's a photo that was taken of me that I might do a portrait of because it's rather classy. But we'll see about that in the future.

Since this is technically the post for Wednesday, I think this is pretty fulfilling. You think I can do the same for Friday? If you say no, then you may be correct but let's see how this goes first.

Enjoy! Also, repeat viewers may want to become followers.

Mini-date!

WELL IT'S ABOUT GOD DAMN TIME I PUT THIS UP.

This is a little one page comic that I wrote back in sophomore year after my friend Sherrie and I went off to New York City with my school and I stupidly used the subway map for a road map. It wasn't a pleasant experience but it actually made for a slightly decent idea for a comic.

I'm not particularly proud of the execution of this comic. The hand letter is utter crap (I should be digitally doing this instead of doing it all by hand) and there are some panels that aren't that great but I guess it's a start when it comes to doing weekly comics. I'm not sure what I'm going to do after this because I have a few options, I can do a comic about my girlfriend next or I could do something else... A "mystery" if you will in one page installments. The only question would be, what part of the story do YOU think is true?

And now, the usual post some old sketches nonsense I usually do. (Luckily by tomorrow I'll have new content for the next update. It'll also contain girls with tattoos, piercings and possibly even some suicide girls type nudity!)



Study of a scooter that hangs out outside the school during the semester.



Study of my friend Jerimiah for my linocut series I did for my three best friends. I need to redo all of them really.

LIKE A BEAVER

I've been quite busy the past few days! It seems I've been too busy to post as well.

Anyway, let this count for the past two missed updates and for Friday as well. I know it's not what some of you want to see, but that's just gonna have to be the way it is for this week.

To catch you up to speed, not a whole lot has really been going on aside from me constantly working on art for my silk screening course and the fact I made a really nifty acrylic painting in my Painting for Illustrator's class. I haven't finished my little one page comic because I've been so concerned with getting other artwork done and I did get started on one of the paintings (the one of the laughing princess) but I may scrap it and paint something else entirely.

I told you not much was going on! But settle for some good old fashioned artwork instead!



Starting off with a little sketch of my girlfriend... All done with an eyedropper too!



Then an exercise from printmaking involving paper cut stencils... with freezer paper.

Oh wait no, I do have something interesting to say... MIA's instrumental for Paper Planes? Yeah, it turns out it's a remixed version of the instrumentals for The Clash's Straight to Hell. I'm not sure what to think about it, really.

I'm Getting Bad At This!

And once again, I'm a wee bit late with my update. I'm seriously getting bad at this.

Not much of an update this week I'm afraid! The only big news that's gone down is that I'm almost done with the comic I was working on this week and that I officially know how to do real hardcore photo emulsion with photographs and drawings! I just learned how to do it this evening in my silkscreening class and the silkscreens look excellent! Once a few prints get made I'll put them up in an update but this is wicked important for me right now because now I can do more with my silkscreens than I ever could before!

That and I can teach two of my friends how to do really slick silkscreening now that goes beyond paper stencils! Also really cool art pieces to help me kick Illustration's ass up and down the block!

I've also been on a small horror media stint right now reading World War Z and I'm really getting into stories about towns with dark pasts that come back to haunt them or where bad things happen actively. I'm trying to find more stories like this but I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions? It can be a TV show, movie or book, doesn't matter. I'm just really fascinated by this right now. (Just so you know, I've read It, Uzumaki, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Lottery.)

Again, I don't have much to show right now since most of it's old but here's some sketches that are new and are related to my silk screening course and my first real photo emulsion piece! Check it out!





Also, here's some Junior year sketchbook work! Two from the second part of Mister Reusch's Monster Draw's at MassArt and one of a girl from one of my classes.







There may be an update on Friday but I'm not sure since I'm heading home in the evening to go see "No Doubt" with my sister and my girlfriend in Mansfield, Massachusetts. I'll probably be able to do it but let's see what happens first.

See you tomorrow or Monday!

Sometimes I find it terrifying how quickly the time passes these days. One day it's Friday and I'm putting up a new entry and the next, well it's Monday and it's time to put up a brand new entry. But anyway, I'm sticking to my word and providing you guys with the ground work for my two new paintings!

Check them out!





I haven't done the color studies for the second painting just yet, but I did a color study previously for the first one in markers in the last post, which still needs to be fixed from a CMYK to RGB to show the colors properly, but so far they look pretty good and they'll look pretty good when they're done. What do you guys think of these pieces so far?

I'm also working on a one page comic involving a time I travelled to New York City with my friend Sherrie and I stupidly tried to use a subway map as a road map. I'm afraid there isn't that much left to say than that I gave blood and I got some inspiration from sitting in a chair giving blood, so I need to start thumbnailing that.

Check out these sketches to end on a positive note.

Three Months Off - Three Weeks In

It's official! I've been out of school for about three weeks now - currently going on four - and I've been working at my job while attending two different summer continuing education courses at the Massachusetts College of Art to keep me busy and to further my education while I'm still there.

The two course I've been taking are Silkscreen Printing and Painting for Illustrators. The former has been making a good deal of progress over the latter, next week we're going to learn how to do photo emulsion. Unfortunately, I haven't scanned in any of the work I've done yet so those are being saved for a later posting (most likely by Monday or Wednesday, so not to keep you waiting of course!) Painting hasn't turned out any terrible interesting artwork yet, but I've been planning to do outside painting since I got out of school to improve my painting skills.

Since I got out of school, I've had a few interesting non-art related adventures including visiting my girlfriend up in New Hampshire and discovered that I liked canoeing and one psuedo-art related adventure in New York City last weekend when I went to the MoCCA Comic Festival which I'm going to briefly cover here.

MoCCA happened last weekend and has so far proven that I'm having a rather interesting summer vacation. The purpose of MoCCA is that appears as a simple comic convention. That's not to say that it isn't because it is, but it serves a higher purpose than being a place for people who love comics to get together.

Instead it serves as a fundraiser for the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art so that they can continue to have really nifty exhibits. I didn't get to see it personally, but they had an "Art of the Watchmen" exhibit to go along with the release of the film, for example. There were a LOT of people there too, ranging from professional artists and writers to independent artists and writers all of them selling their wares or promoting themselves in some way shape or form.

I went with an ulterior motive aside from supporting the Museum, I had wanted to go to the festival since last year mostly because I would be able to meet a lot of artists and writers I had a good deal of respect for. Also, I wanted to get some advice on the creative process on writing from some people that I respected.

And meet them and get advice I did! Within thirty minutes of getting into the convention, I ran into Brian Wood! The author of Local, DMZ, Demo, Fight for Tomorrow, Northlanders and other awesome comics. He signed the books I brought with me and he gave me some good advice about the writing and planning process. Within a few minutes after meeting Brian Wood, I ran into Rick Spears (author of Teenagers from Mars, Repo and The Pirates of Coney Island) and he signed the books I brought with me and gave me sound advice that I had never heard before! Then I met Becky Cloonan, one of my favorite artists of all time and she helped to give me some good advice as well. I also met Hope Larson, but I'm only familiar with her work more than anything else so I didn't ask her any questions about writing.

I also bought a lot of really nice swag from them too. I bought Brian Wood's limited edition artbook Public Domain 2, Rick Spear's Repo and he gave me a preview of his new book Die Pumpkin Die and I bought a print from Becky Cloonan and her self published graphic novel Minis, which collects her early comics from two-thousand to two-thousand and two.

I even picked up a few comics from indepedent artists including this rather funny book called "Things I've Seen At Shows" and "Harvest is When I Need You Most" which was published by artist I've met a few times that tributes the original Star Wars films.

Here are some pictures from the event:



Brian Wood



Becky Cloonan



Rick Spears





In regards to art, however. Not a whole lot has been going on since I haven't really sat down and really "made" something outside of class but I've been trying to draw a lot more frequently in my sketchbooks but I'm starting to grow rather bored with the subject matter I've been drawing, which is anything. I plan on fixing this soon, so at least I won't run out of things to show you all.

In other news, here's some more artwork! Three more pieces to be exact!







This last piece is a color study for an upcoming painting that I'm going to be working on. That's going to be posted next update, so get ready!

See you Monday!

Day Late, Dollar Short

I'm rather late on this one. I need to get a better handle on this and write this early the day before... How about the week before rather?

Here's five works of art to tide you over, a real written update will be posted tomorrow.

BACK AND SLIGHTLY BETTER!

This is certainly a long time coming, considering how I haven't updated in almost three months. Oh boy, is this unbelievably embarrassing to admit and acknowledge... Unfortunately I let my schoolwork and my job get the best of me when it came to scanning stuff in and taking the time to write up entries so that's the reason there was so much silence from March up until now.

However, since it is summer time and there's more free time, this leaves me open to do a good deal more with this little old blog of mine. Not only that I need to write more in this anyway since my senior year is coming along and I would like to be able to write here about two-three times a week instead of just once, depending on what's going on with me.

But yeah, this entry is going to be rather brief just to lay down the law on what's going on with this blog, I'm going to be posting a small series of images on Monday, Wednesday and Friday ranging from three to five images of either work in my sketchbook, school assignments (if they're worth showing) or personal projects. There will also be updates on what I'm doing, did or will do in the future to go along with it.

So for now, I leave you with these images, one is the final artwork for the Alphabet Book project for Word and Image and the other two are sketchbook studies. Be sure to check back Wednesday to see more and see what I've been up to lately!

Good News For People Who Loathe Bad News

I've got good news for this update! Hence, the odd subject title for this particular update...

I got into the Illustration department's section of Mass Art's All School Show! I submitted five pieces four of which you've seen here in my blog in the very first post and only one managed to get in. Do you want to guess which one got in?

In case if you didn't guess or just didn't know, it's none other than "Bear Girl"! And in case if you don't remember what that looked like 'cause you never saw it here it is again!



I'm pretty satisfied with myself because I skipped out last year on doing anything for the All School Show and the Illustration section of the all school show is really competitive. It's a small feat, but it's something I'm really, really, really proud of... Let's hope I can still get into shows after school is all said and done!

Anyway, in terms of new work I do have a few new things to show you. One of them is that little painting I mentioned that I was doing for fun. It's a water color practice that I've been working on that's based off of a photograph of my friend Kevin and my girlfriend Gillian. Take a look!



It's not done yet, but when it is I'll definitely show it then. But from what I've gotten in terms of criticism is to use more vibrant colors, which I'll put into effect as I work on it since I'm trying not to copy all the colors in the original photograph. I think I'm doing a pretty good job at the moment, but let's see how this all pans out.

Next up was an experiment that I did out of boredom and burnout that I learned from my black and white illustration teacher, Mr. Reusch. The entire idea behind this is that you use an eye dropper to draw everything on a page, fill in the blacks and then go in with white gouache to clean it up, add highlights and whites... It resulted in me drawing Bob Dylan.



I actually don't get why I've been on a HUGE Bob Dylan kick really, it's possibly due to the fact he's a figure that interests me greatly because it seemed like he lived the life all artists want to live at some point... That and the guy's practically a legend and his music has left some kind of impact on the world, that and him made damn good music and I own three vinyl records by him that I wish I could rip onto my iPod... But that's for when I get a USB turntable.

But anyway, back to the art... I was actually quite satisfied with the way that this turned out! It just looks really cool and it shows a lot of attitude in the work to boot, it feels strong and I'm considering using it in my portfolio to show one aspect of my black and white skills... Maybe, we'll see.

I also have work from my Word and Image class to show as well, it's from the project we just finished up "Liz, Betty and Elizabeth". Check this out, boys and girls!







The story behind these girls for this assignment, is that I essentially designed three women with personality disorders. They range from extreme (Liz), humorous (Betty) to somewhat "normal" (Elizabeth) and I used the motif of the words breaking out of the images to help tie them together to solve an issue with composition.

Out of all of these I'm afraid that I have to say that Betty is the character who came out the best. I think it's because she was the most fun to draw and even devise a color scheme for, I hate to say it but the other girls were after thoughts that were developed because of Betty... But even then Liz is an awesome close second and Elizabeth... Well, Elizabeth is just weird.

I did wish I painted the other two with backgrounds like Betty though. They really would have benefitted from them in a lot of ways... Would have made their text easier to read in some cases and it would have really made them pop out in one case in particular. I'm thinking of redoing these in Photoshop and Illustrator, once I get my hands on a brand new tablet, because I thought these would look pretty swell as digital pieces... and because I really need the practice, I may be getting rusty.

Unfortunately, I've got no sketches to show this week because I CLEARLY didn't scan anything in... But next time, there will be. Especially since my dad just got me a new mini sketchbook recently, so you're going to see a lot of either field stuff, writing or just little doodles that I'm sure will brighten your day.

'Til next time!

Heavy Reading, Hard Sketches, Light Grenades

I hate the fact that I'm more or less late with this new entry, but what can I do? I just got to set up a better way to do this on a weekly basis from here on out, like I said I was going to... Like writing these weekly entries on a daily basis.

As I said about a week ago, this entry has a lot more reading as opposed to artwork. It's all talk about projects for class and pet projects I've been working on as of late, so there may not be as many pictures to show this time around. Just so you're warned.

Class Projects

Since the beginning of junior year in my Illustration III class and up until about a week ago we were working on a project simply entitled "Clock". For this assignment we had to design our own clock face that showed or represented time and that it had to be pleasant to look at. We just finished this assignment about two weeks ago and here's the end result.



I'm personally pretty proud of it, especially since it's an acrylic painting and I haven't done that in a very long time. As for how it met up to the assignment's expectations, it worked and met the requirements but Professor Wojech Wolinksi suggested that I should work more in tones from here on on out as opposed to just using a variety of different colors. Which is something I just recently started doing in my Word and Image class for the current assignment that we're working on.

We're currently doing a new project, a semester long body of work called "Horse" and we're working on the first part of it. Which consists of doing a study of a part of the horse. For a while, I wasn't sure what to do for this assignment since I originally wanted to do a study of the horse's legs but I ended up doing a study of the head since it was going to be a challenge and it would end up being a lot more fun for me to do. I don't have anything to show for it as of yet, but I will have something to show in the next update.

Since I mentioned Word and Image in the previous paragraph, let's discuss that next. For the first assignment we created our own font based off our own handwriting made from experimenting with different handwriting tools and techniques, made an alphabet and named the font based on adjectives we could associate with the font, which ended in creating my font "Brash Bronson" and was then used in a second part of the assignment that involved finding a word that could be used to describe our font and associate a scene or imagery to go with it on the inside of the text. The second part of this project is currently in Suzanne Barnes' possession and I didn't take a photograph of the work before turning it into her. But I can show the font I made, which is right below:



Ain't it DANDY?

In the new project that we're working on, we had a choice of the names "Jim, Jimmy, James" or "Liz, Betty, Elizabeth" and find fonts that associated with these names and create three characters that could be associated with the fonts as well as their names. I ended up picking Liz, Betty and Elizabeth for this project and decided to base the idea of the characters around girls who think that they're people they aren't.











In Liz's case, she thinks she's a Victorian Helena Bonham Carter-type character with homicidal tendencies, Betty thinks she's a robot and Elizabeth thinks she's the Virgin Mary. The sketches and color studies that you see here are preliminary designs for the final piece but the colors seen here will be used in the final versions of the artwork, but the images will be reworked so that the text takes up fifty-percent of the compostion. I've actually been having a blast with this project and I think I might use the Betty character in a little series of mini-comics about her character.

As for my final class, Degree Project with Professor Linda Bourke, I finally decided that my project is going to be about homelessness and I've mostly been doing research and sketching for the project. I don't really have much to say about it currently... Hopefully by next week I should have more to say.

Personal Projects

As for my personal projects, I decided to make another cardboard cutout much like the orchid in the flower pot. This time around I made Gerber Daises, which I gave to a friend of mine as a gift. I decided to use color in this cut out once more to get a better handle on working with acrylic paint on cardboard and as a experiment as well.



I've also been working on a painting based off of a photograph that I took of my girlfriend and my roommate who is taking a break this semester. I just got started on this a few days ago, so it's at a very early stage currently and I don't plan on painting the picture as if it's the photograph itself, so it'll probably turn out pretty good.

I've also been working on a comic book project for Mass Art In Print and a poster for the club itself to help promote it. The comic is about friends becoming more than just friends and two people on both sides of the idea, one who wants to be more than friends and the other wants to their friends to simply be just friends.

I have sketches from my sketchbooks as well, give them a good look.











That's it for now and next time I'll have an update that's ACTUALLY on time.