This Ain't Baseball

Just in case you were wondering.







But they do make for cute trading cards, no?

ブルースマン町田謙介

Japanese Bluesman, Machida Kensuke.

Click here for a sampling of his diggable sounds.

Game Time

Working inside all day makes me want to go out and play.

Happy Halloween!

I hadn't touched anything on the Izzy project for a long time, but there's a strangeness in the air on Halloween so I thought I'd carve up a little treat.

Mr. Chung

Look out behind you.

Testing...

Just trying a few things out.

Autumn

Colored pencils on paper.

Recent Gestures

So, I've been spending most of my time animating my senior film. Sitting for so many hours in front of a Cintiq, I started getting pretty rusty at observational gestures so I skipped on down to the open drawing session and loosened up some.

I usually like to mix it up by doing some quick poses that are less anatomically based,


and other poses that focus more on anatomy.


Since it is a student-run open drawing session (not an actual class with a professor), sometimes I end up waiting around for a little while if the model doesn't change poses frequently enough. After drawing a pose 2 or 3 times what do I do if I'm still waiting for the model to change?
Why, draw students drawing, of course!


Some animation or backgrounds from my film soon, hopefully!
Thanks for stopping by!

More doodling

Some more experimenting with the acrylic inks, this time with color pencils layered on top. The edges are a little loose, but when you're experimenting sometimes unexpected things happen.

Doodles

I got some new acrylic inks last week, and took them out to see what they could do (or rather what I could do with them). Some successes and some not-so-successes later, here we are.
And still growing.

Some Simple Math

Given the fact that I haven't done math in an academic sense for well over a decade now, this calculation may be slightly inaccurate...but I think the principle is correct.


I don't know what to tell Allison.

Click the image to enlarge. Bonus points to anyone who can name all of the celebrities (and their best starring roles).

School and Sketches

Some sketches from the beginning of school. Mostly, I animate all day...sometimes I go to other classes. When that happens, I draw people--you know, to stay loose for animating.
With any luck I'll be able to put up some stuff from the film I'm working on soon. For now, on to the sketches! Hope you enjoy!

A military dude from a Japanese class.

Ben Jensen is a super stud (see above).
Some dudette from a class I'm in.


When I doodle in Japanese class, sometimes I try different things like this below. Perhaps this is because I'm paying more attention to the analysis of syntax and morphology, which takes my mind off the technical aspects of drawing and allows my brush to wander. Anyway, I thought this one was pretty fun.

Also, I found an acorn today. It had a cool shell thingy too. Below, I've attempted to diagram the acorn cycle (like the water cycle, but only with acorns). PS, if you're wondering why the girl below has too many eyes, it's because I messed up, but I still liked the drawring...which is okay. sometimes we mess up.

While we're at it

This was a sketch that began, I think, in January and then promptly got lost somewhere inside my computer. While I was doing some spring cleaning (I know I'm a little late), I found it and finished it.
If you're curious, it happens to be of a professor of mine, Darl Larsen, who (among other things) teaches a History of Animation course at Brigham Young University (where I attend school). We had a running contest wherein every week a number of students would decide on a topic and draw Darl according to the confines we set. The image above is from "Cap'n Darl" week; I will spare you the results of "Darl-ene" week. If you're really curious (and of a steady constitution), you can ask Jake.
Okay. Now I'm really off for vacation...seriously. Before we miss our flight.
Be well!

Pre-vacation

Our family is off to do a little summer vacationing in Washington to visit my wife's parents. But before we go, I thought I'd leave a few sketches and the like--in case you wanted new stuff to look at until we get back. I'm scheduled to go backpacking with my father in law for a few days, but apparently Seattle area is having record heat right now so it will hardly be a respite from Utah. Oh well, I'm excited to see some new terrain and, with any luck, do some wilderness sketching while we're out.
Have a great week, everyone, and be safe!

Everything is an Experiment

Dear Everyone,
Please pardon the paucity of postings in the recent past. I've been busy with work and animating (but mostly work)--which is good, because I'm trying to make sure I don't have to work during the school year.
I notice it's been about a month since I posted last, so I'm posting highlights from last month's sketchbookery. Think of it as an apology with a gift. Can we kiss and make up?
(In lieu of posting a million individual images, I've put a lot of little sketches into larger compositions--just click on any of the images below to magnify and get a better look.)
Thanks for stopping by!

Sketches In and Out of the Dark

So, back in April, I participated in an art show at the University of Utah. While the show itself was a marginal success (more a show about technology than art, really), I did have the chance to sketch some cool faces from the crowd while sitting on a post-show question-and-answer panel.
Here are some of the faces from those couple of weekends:





Also in April (every April, as a matter of fact), the LDS church holds a general conference during which leaders speak on various gospel-related topics. This year's was the 178th Annual General Conference, since the conferences have been going ever since 1830 (well, we take breaks...they don't happen all year round). Pretty cool, huh. Below are some sketches made while watching conference (which is broadcast by satellite and over the internet).

Something that was interesting for me was making these sketches almost in the complete dark. I could see the screen, which was several hundred feet away, but I could barely see my own paper--leading to an interesting method of scrawling out shapes and chunks of value. I guess drawing in the dark probably isn't really good for your eyes, but it was a cool chance to try a different way of seeing things (by not seeing them, I guess). Plus the results are mostly a surprise, since you can't really see what's going on while you're drawing--talk about a sketch adventure! Below are some of the more intelligible images that were created using this method. Hope you enjoy! And I promise to be better about posting a little more frequently...(these are from April...oops).

Finally Some Sketches!

So, if any of you have been thinking what I have (and I know you probably have), you're wondering whether it's even okay to call a blog sketch adventure and post so few sketches lately.
You'd be right in thinking this.
So, here are a bunch of sketches of Sawyer, who grows increasingly fun to draw as he ages and figures out how to get into more stuff. These sketches were done in pen when I should have been helping my wife, Allison, with our crazy baby. The simple color was done with ye olde photoeshoppe when I should have been working on my film.
But, I wanted to share some sketches, so I hope you enjoy this little tangent as much as I did!
Back with more sketches soon.