Illustration Friday: Poise

This is my first foray into Illustration Friday. The word this time s "poise" and it called to mind an illustration I did a while back. I was experimenting with the digital medium because at the time, my style as a graphic designer was very Photoshop heavy. So I did a lot of drawings that I scanned and then textured and colored in the computer. This one shows of Petunia's perfect poise as an up-and-coming ballet dancer.

Character of Caricature: Part One

My newest project challenges me to do something I hadn't done in a while: caricature. The trick to caricature is capturing the essence of the character in the exaggeration of features. The other trick is to exaggerate the correct things as it relates to the material. When I first did caricature in a public setting, I was in high school. It was for Ethnic Week and I was featured as the caricature artist. Well, I had done caricatures of friends and teachers as doodles in my notebooks and such. So I had a good understanding of how to mock people. But doing this for people, I had to mentally prepare myself to not to exaggerate the unattractive features. I only wished I had learned that lesson before I drew our assistant principal.

This project comes from a friend of mine who hails from my high school days. Elissa works for the Jung Education Center in Houston www.junghouston.org. The center "offers over one hundred courses, programs, and conferences every year that address the critical social and spiritual issues of our time as well as the need for personal growth and development." She needed an artist to develop a caricature of Carl Jung – something light-hearted yet respectful. I paused... so no huge nose or funny teeth - no exaggerating the unattractive features! OK. I can do light-hearted and respectful.

So immediately I asked for examples and at the same time, I looked up images of Jung and briefed myself a little on Wiki. I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a feeling for what he was like as a person to do the drawing some justice. I mean, it would be odd to draw him laughing and smiling if he was known to be unhappy or vice versa.

Here are a few images I had found and a few Elissa had sent me:





From these images and based on a few things I read on the man, I was able to come up with a few rough sketches. And one was picked to move forward:



What I liked about it was that it captured a lighthearted attitude with his smile and the glasses placed on his head. Elissa had told me that some important physical aspects were his glasses, his mustache and the pipe. I thought it added to the friendly nature to have the pipe in his hand. And the great thing was these very objects also added to the respectable nature she also wanted captured.

From this point, I clean the drawing up and transfer it to board where I will begin inking. Stay tuned for part two!

The Competition

I came up with this sketch because I was told I needed more females in my portfolio. I dug into my past and remembered a number of my friends who were girls were always so competitive with each other - whether it was academic, athletic or social. So I thought this would make a pretty decent subject for an illustration. So I gathered up what reference photos I could find and pieced this together. It's mostly about facial expressions - I wanted to show some sense of jealousy while the other one was not only oblivious but very proud. The writing you see at the bottom is something I sometimes do: I'll write a little paragraph or story to go with the drawing. I'm not a writer. It's just part of my creative process at times. I think it "grounds" the image more to have a story to go with it.

The Dark Times

When I was a young artist, I guess I thought my only source of inspiration was my emotions. Not just any emotions, but my negative ones: anger, depression, sadness, etc. This may have stemmed from something my high school art teacher told me once. She told me to stay in touch with my emotions, because they seem to drive my artwork. Which it did in high school. Art was very therapeutic. Of course, I would never show my own kids the sketches I did during those turbulent times. When I got into college, I still stayed in touch with those emotions. But many art teachers pointed me in many different directions. But as I reached my 30's and had kids, my emotions changed. I don't know how many moons ago it was when I let go of most of those emotions. But for a while, I was filled with joy and inspiration and positivity. Hardly a place for dark subject matter. My taste for the macabre diminished. I haven't seen a horror movie in ages!

Then there was a point in my career where I had to tap in to those dark images to produce art for a haunted house. I found many of the sketches I created for this project. And just recently, I resolved to use them to work on a Hulk illustration. For some reason, the Hulk has always intrigued me as a character - I suppose it was his duality. Much like Jekyll and Hyde. I also like how Bruce Banner had to maintain his cool to keep the monster at bay. I found this struggle interesting because I can actually understand it: we all have to maintain some civility to coexist. Otherwise, we risk chaos. Or you could look at it as society dictating how we should act - putting us in the position of repressing our true selves. Anyway, here are some of those sketches I did. Kinda has a Wolverine pain and anger to them. Hmmmm, Wolverine....

Drawing Blind

Sometimes, I like to challenge myself and do some different things with my art. This summer, I did a lot of plein aire painting. Just recently, I wanted to challenge myself to come up with drawings that did not rely on models or photo reference. That really made my brain work. It's almost like drawing blind. At least, it felt like it. The drawings are more cartoonish compared to my actual style and I'm not sure what I think of that. Perhaps it's my way of taking baby steps to more complicated drawings. Or maybe, that's just how I visualize without reference. I had to use many "rules" of art to create some sense of realism in these drawings without reference: shadow, light source, overlapping, proportion, etc. I can only hope that practicing these techniques from memory further enhances my skills when I DO use reference. And perhaps there's a place for both these styles to coexist. We'll see.

I'm going to call this one, "Mortimer Watches Ant Dance."



This one, I'm calling "Fizzard."