Fred McDowell

The other day my boyfriend bought a vinyl recording of '"Mississippi'"Fred McDowell. He's a country-blues genius originally from Tennessee who built his own guitar and embodies all that is grunge and black n blues. One afternoon we sat there just listening to this record, hearing his chair creakin' and foot hittin' the old no doubt weathered porch as he kept time. His wife occasionally accompanied. Well, let's just say it's good stuff.

So we had a little show at my studio space in the Hungerford last night, and the night before I was still at a loss of what to paint for it. Carter suggests Fred McDowell and so in about 3 hours, this happened.

Acrylic on cold press ill board. about 8x10.

I haven't painted traditionally in over a month or so. My photo reference was blacka nd white. In fact, I have never found a color photo of the man. So I just kinda guessed what his skin tone was. The first thirty minutes were just me slapping horrible chalky colours around, kinda quagmired in skin tones. Then suddenly it just happened.



God, that's a great feeling. I think I may have pushed the highlights too far in the end. Well, you live, you learn.


Thanks for stoppin' by!

coke girl

two hours, photoshop.

studying skin painting.

....and now I'm off to design some tattoos.

wed night scribbles

i don't know what this is or where it came from but i started scribbling and it happened.
I uh, don't usually paint this way.

i guess she's some version of Ophelia?

twenty minute scribble of some hipster emo guy. he had really blue eyes in the picture.they looked super weird in the painting so i darkened them. probably shouldn't have. but oh well.

digital.

Speedpaint Tom Waits

Tom Waits. One of my favorite musicians. This took about an hour and a half, maybe less, maybe more... about a little over one whole episode of top gear... so a little over an hour??

I had fun.

ps cs 5

Beard Test

'Allo all. Decided to try a new technique. Painting without opacity. For a first shot, it's, well... not bad. But I know I can do better.

Off to try again.

ps cs5
30 minutes.

Norton

I am determined to paint inanimate objects (read: vehicles) correctly. In fact, i kinda had the human as an afterthought. She's def not my best scribbled character haha

But, Norton twin motorcycle. Original reference pic had a big burly guy on it.

acrylic, hour and a half??

some curves some cars

got out some paints tonight. had a go at cars yesterday. Need to work a LOT on that. I'm not very good with things that aren't alive. Cars/planes. I love them, SO so much but I'm not very good at painting them.

So yep, enjoy!


oh, and check out the game I've been working on! http://spongebob.nick.com/games/spongebob-squarepants-oh-snap-road-trip.html
I painted all the backgrounds. if you didn't really notice them, then i did my job as a matte painter haha

3 days of 30

Hiya! So some RIT kids and I decided to do our own 30 characters in NOvember challenge and i was behind so here's the first three.

Also, check out the others at 30 day character challenge tumblr



yay digital cartoony scribbles.

tentwentyfiveeleven

hiy'all. So there's a song by allison krauss called Jacob's Dream. It's realllllyyyyy effing sad. I would love to illustrate/animate it like a story. Here's a scene from it I doodle up the other day and quickly painted last night. Yeeaah, the one boy is dead. I think I might actually paint this one for real some day. acrylic, thirty minutes.
i doodled myself fighting the flu. showed it to my boyfriend (who had been dying of it earlier) and he said he'd probably just be throwing pills and medicine at it. So I drew him in there. We're both sort of alive now. I think.

a doodle.
little monster guy i'm playing around with.. pretty sure he'll have grey fur n such but who knows. i'll keep doodling him until something flows. Nothing's really flowing yet.

I'd post more often but life, sickness and loved ones have needed my time more than my paintbrushes. But we'll see :)

Thanks fer poppin' by!

ten ten eleven

doodle painted a fat chef. why? why not.

that's my boyfriend reading. drew him in about 30 minutes.

TV guys

don't really think i'm done with this one... but for now, sure. I was still working on it when my friend showed up to bake. Walt from Breaking Bad. Which is a fantastic show.

acrylic, bout an hour maybe
Charlie Day. I don't think I quite got him. Close, but no cigar. Gee, I'll just have to stare at his adorable face some more and try again!
acrylic, hour.

Finally found a bit of time yesterday morning to sit on my porch in the beautiful fall weather and just paint for a bit. Gonna get designing a tattoo today, and then back to work Monday.

Thanks for poppin' by!

self

hey guys!

first time i actually have somewhat successfully painted myself realistically.

I've been so busy at work that I haven't painted/drawn/doodled/ANYTHING in over two weeks. I doodle at work but those are on notebook paper haha

which OH! I am now a full time animator/designer at Workinman! It's awesome and I'm excited :) Been doing a lot of matte painting lately which has my digital skills gettin' better all the time.

Digital, photoshop, about 2 hours total.

I still paint. I swear.

broke out the gouache tonight. most liberating thing i've done in a long long time.

some 50s lady in a taffeta dress. yeaa tumblr.

acrylic, sometime two weeks ago.

sketches from work that didn't get used and then some bar doodles.

My studiomate Greg has lots of taxidermied deer hanging around the studio....
sketch dump
skulls?

oh hey guys. I cut all my hair off. woot.

zombie greaser

Been in a bit of a creative rut lately. Been working on some commissions and been doing work for work. Ended up in the hospital last week. So good at taking care of myself.

This is entirely from my brain. I didn't know he'd become covered in blood but.. i had a lot of lovely looking Cadmium Light Red to use and eh... it happened.

No photo reference. Couple hours, most of those hours spent watching Inception.

Acrylic in moleskine.

A10 pilot

quick digital practice. i haven't really done any actual digital painting in months. about an hour and a half.

went to the air show a while back and got a picture of this A-10 warthog pilot smiling at me. Had to paint him. :)


Oh hey, go check out the game my work did! i drew the boats. This is just one of the first playables, there will be more to it in the future!!!
Boatocross 2

sunday scribblings

slumpy triumph enthusiast and a russian convict and lee van cleef.

truth. though i'm actually not having this problem at the moment, thank god.

New sketchbook, new cover. The spine says "I thought you were the"... lyrics by broken social scene.
scribble of a british Rocker gang member... exercise where I didn't look at the page until I was finished. Sort of scribbly and off but a lot of fun.

cowboys and critters

Full view, s'il vous plait :)
this is about 11x17. biggest thing I've done in awhile. Acrylic and micron pen here and there. I'm getting goofier and cartoonier as time goes on, and i think I like it.

and I really don't know why i drew this. It's me chasing a cat that's stolen my choco chip cookie dough. Durn varmints.

Nearly 1 am, but here's a post

this was for my mum's bday. she loves colin firth, and she loves cats. so i made the derpiest cat ever and stuck it in a rather grumpy mister darcy's arms.
acrylic scribbling. my reference was a ginger. not that that's important. but,.... yeah.
another zombie pin up nazi. may be a few more yet before we settle on a design/idea.

Hope all's well! I hope to keep arting, I'm slooowly catching up with a mountain of comissions... and i keep adding more.

Spent the weekend around old cars and great friends, and am realllly considering learning pinstriping. I'll be painting a pinup girl on my boyfriend's motorcycle soon, and depending how that goes, I might just jump into this auto painting biz.

Thanks for stoppin' by!

honda 350s and horse teeth

so a couple months back, my friend Jocelyn and I went for a sunset ride out at Liberty Stables. Deb had a surprise for us- she had her friend Lily, a large animal vet, in to remove a rotting tooth. The horse in question, Paris, is 26 years old and probably won't be around much longer. It was surprisingly emotional, rather gory, and a lot of muscle. We hammered away at that tooth with a drill, the whole while with Paris in a crazy sort of mouth brace and heavily sedated.

Deb asked me to paint a scene from it, so I picked a less gory bit where she was merely smacking away at the tooth with a metal rod.

acrylic, about an hour and a half.

Two days ago I was driving back downtown when I saw the LANKIEST guy in the world riding this little Honda 350. He just simply did not fit. He had his helmet strapped over a baseball cap, little wireframe glasses, big fuck off work boots, and his little ratty ponytail and plaid overshirt blowin' in the breeze. When I got up close enough to see him I just about drove off the road laughing.
So when I made it to my studio, I just had to have a little doodle over it.
Oh, and there's a sneak peek of what I painted for my mum's bday behind it there... I'll post that once she actually gets it.

acrylic, twenty minutes.

A couple portraits

Allo all!

Heed my advice: when it is 94 degrees outside, do not I repeat DO NOT go to your un airconditioned notoriously hot studio space.

You will get heat stroke and sport a lovely headache the rest of the evening.
Here's a McCurry portrait of a boy from India and a 21st century Rocker girl from Britain.
Acrylic, about an hour each, give or take a few minutes. Please full view!


Ten minute warmup of a tribal boy, also from Steve McCurry's book Portraits.

demon seahorse? yep.

Allo! Been a while. Been super busy. Just doodle painted this tonight for an hour. Acrylic. My mind is a strange place.

I've been animating. Er, I should say falling in love. GOD I wish I'd majored in it or something. Yeahhh I'm just doing flash right now, but I love it.

Today marks day 3 of the second week of me ever animating. Here's some stuff I did last week and then yesterday...


'Ave a look at my villain!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzB8XiVNPZI

And here's a "death". a.k.a. game over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLecgzPLFF4&feature=related

Not bad for barely a week at it and barely a month at flash!!

Today I animated icicles melting/dripping, and tomorrow I'm wrapping that up and working on fire.

Man, I am nerding out about these things, but I realllly enjoy my job. :)

rockers

uh, wannabe retro couple in this awesome book i found. It's just loads of pictures of modern day greasers in Britain and their sexy bikes.

bass player from aforementioned book.


seven self portraits, doodle in sharpie at top speed. I own all those clothes. except the shirt the shooting herself jo is wearing.
from that book again... a rather quickly scribbled guy and his inaccurately scribbled Triton. oh and some more sharpie doodling.
more doodling really.


Finished my first walk cycle today. It was so much easier than it was when I tried a few weeks back. I'm slowly learning this language they call Flash. A friend of one of my coworkers came in today, and he animates on the f**king amazing shows Superjail and Metalocalypse. Talk about inspiring!

Hoping to get into the studio more and get more commissions done. Things have been mighty crazy around here lately!