Howlsthunder Art

Painting Haiku

2012-01-12T11:40:00.000-09:00

Here's my 11-hour (into 2 minutes!) time lapse video of me painting "Haiku".

The song is "Solipsist" by Kaki King off her album Legs to Make Us Longer. Check out her music - she's fantastic.

(Disclaimer: song used without any kind of permission. I made absolutely no profit from this video, nor from the painting since it was a gift.)

Haiku

2012-01-11T18:49:00.008-09:00

"Haiku" • oil on illustration board
15"x11" • approx. 11 hours

I'm always keeping my eyes open for striking photographs taken by friends and family that could be a great basis for a painting. Years ago my friend Rachel took this awesome photo of her cat, Haiku (a very awesome and charismatic cat), and I knew when I saw it that I just had to paint it. But I wanted to do it in secret for an occasion, like her birthday or Christmas.

I finally had the time and energy to do the Haiku painting this year. Unfortunately, Haiku passed away about a week before Christmas. That kind of lended extra sentimentality to creating the painting and giving it to my friend.

Below are the progress photos (click to see them larger) - they're more yellow than they should be, ah well. I also took a time-lapse video of myself painting it using Gawker that I will upload soon.

Painter's Thinner acquired!

2011-12-10T15:59:00.003-09:00

I was honored this week to have my painting, "Painter's Thinner", chosen for purchase by the Palmer Museum of History and Art at their annual art acquisition! I am such a shy hermit I have no idea how others see my art. I paint what I do because *I* like it, and because it represents the place where I live and the memories of my colorful childhood. So the fact that a panel of fellow Valley people picked my painting means a great deal. Thank you! :)

Laser cutter

2011-10-26T10:10:00.003-08:00

At work I have access to a 12"x24" laser cutter. I have been tasked with coming up with new business cards for the company that could possibly utilize the laser - which means I finally get to learn to use the darn thing. :) It will plot out of Adobe Illustrator, if only the ancient PC that runs the thing (parallel or SCSI only, grr) doesn't have Illustrator. Which means I have to carefully organize my art in Illustrator for exporting to AutoCAD, which I have absolutely no training in.

Anyway, on my last go-round with the cards I tossed in one of my vector illustrations (as seen here) to get an idea of what I might be able to do with my own art:

I still have a lot to learn. On this sample the outline was etched out but the shapes weren't etched out on the first pass for some reason. Then when I ran it again with the shapes to be etched out, everything was misaligned. *shrugs* You'll have that.

Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Co.

2011-06-09T19:03:00.001-08:00

What a mouthful! Two months later I have finally finished my three Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine Co. (AIDEC) paintings, part of my abandoned mining series. I have several more of the engine that I would like to paint in the future but I have plans to do one of the mill buildings at Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass, Alaska first - the mine that was once home to the AIDEC engine.

I've spoken before about the importance of documenting our historical buildings, especially since the wooden structures decay so quickly. Machinery kind of takes a back seat in terms of visual appeal but these were the objects miners dealt with on a daily basis. Without these machines, hard rock mining would not of been worth the effort for many of the gold miners. And though metal takes longer to wear down in the elements, these machines are changing yearly as well. "Atlas Gauges", for instance, has since lost the needle on the glass-less gauge. The title tin can of "Painters Thinner" has also since gone missing. Be it weather or vandals, bit by bit the mining equipment of the gold rush era is fading just as surely as the buildings around them.

Below are the three paintings, though I don't have a photo of "Lever Face" finished - I had to get it framed in time for a show that it is currently in and failed to remember to photograph it for my blog first. Only the lower right hand rusted area isn't finished in the pic here.

Click to see each image larger.

"Atlas Gauges" 26"x16"

"Lever Face" 18" x 24"

"Painters Thinner" 24" x 18"

Oil paint on illustration board
May/June 2010

Edit to add: Updated the image for "Lever Face" so it now shows the final painting, all done. :)

Faces In My Palette

2011-05-06T22:13:00.005-08:00

I use disposable paper palettes for my oil painting and though I look at them before I toss them out, I have never had cause to keep any of them before. I was transferring my wet, useable paint from an old sheet to a new one when I saw a face in one of the leftover paint stains! It only needed one more eye and a little shading to add emphasis but it was otherwise there - a green Hobbes-like cat face! Fun! So I checked out all the other stains and found this sheet had several.

What is odd is that I've looked over all my sheets closely for faces since then but none of them have such obvious characters living within. Hmm.

Click to see larger

Oils on palette paper, 2011.

The Abandoned - blocking

2011-05-03T09:41:00.004-08:00

Oils on illustration board, blocking stage.

So I thought I'd block in all three pieces at the same time so they'd be more unified in their color palettes. It's pretty much working though it has taken one weekend apiece to block each one in. Normally I sketch on my canvas in Sharpie so that I can then quickly stain the canvas and not lose my lines. But since I've switched to illustration board, the paint soaks in past the Sharpie, leaving the ink lines on the surface. This means I need a lot more paint to cover up the lines. While this could be used to good effect, its not the look I was going for so this time I sketched in pencil. But I forgot how badly pencil smears and I didn't want to lose my lines. Being the detail control freak that I can be, I skipped the staining phase and went for a more tedious route in blocking. *headeasel*

I have nicknames for them: Lever Face, Painters Thinner, and Atlas Gauges, appearing below in that order. It is also the order I blocked them in. Right now I am really liking Lever Face; I think it is interesting and has good contrast. Painters Thinner will require more subtle lighting to make it work. Atlas Gauges is based on my favorite photo of the batch and it is interesting for me to find and draw out the colors that were hidden in the photograph.

Atlas Gauges isn't fully blocked in because the paint I had leftover wasn't what I needed for the large areas. The colors ARE what I need for some of the detailed areas so I started doing some of the details ahead of myself. We'll see if that gets me into trouble down the line.

Click to see them larger.

When painting rust or flaking paint, I block in the color that is physically underneath. So for the rusted dial or the can of painter's thinner, that would be the rust color. Later I'll scrape over it with a palette knife loaded with white paint to put the flaking paint "back on" there.

Airline Doodles

2011-04-05T09:53:00.005-08:00

I had a nice 5 hour flight (each way) on which to kill time. I did so by doodling! The words in the backgrounds are mostly lyrics from songs I was listening to at the time and were a good way to fill in the negative space during turbulence. Done with a Sharpie Pen (not a marker, the Pen).

This first one is primarily made up of images sketched from the Alaska Airlines magazine, though the Pacific Northwest Coast art is from my head. The lyrics are from "Coloured Bedspread" by Annie Lennox.

The second one is all mostly stuff from my head except for the woodpecker and the man in the lower left corner which were from the Alaska Airlines magazine. It contains a bunch of random words as well as lyrics from "Weekend" and "Holiday" by The Birthday Massacre and "Ice Queen" by Within Temptation.

Up next: Abandoned series begins

2011-03-14T17:14:00.004-08:00

I've recently been motivated to get started on my abandoned mine series, with focus on machinery at the moment. These are the three reference photos (that I took) that I will be painting from simultaneously. I only have 2 months to do these in and thought if I chose images with a similar palette I could finish them faster if I painted them at the same time. We'll see…

These are all from the Independence Mine area of Hatcher Pass.

Current Studio

2011-02-28T10:35:00.005-09:00

Because people ask… I am currently living in the basement at my grandma's house. I've converted her old sewing area into an art area. A lot of the stuff on the shelves is my grandma's and some of my sister's art stuff, too. But this is how I have it set up for painting at the moment. Had to get creative with all mom's grow lights I kept from the move since the basement has stark fluorescent lighting. ;)

I usually like to print out my reference photo to paint from but I don't have a working printer at home, the color isn't always that great, and its sometimes a waste of paper so I usually just have the image on my laptop and paint from there. I can zoom in and rotate the image as needed and even check color and draw guide lines to match my canvas.

Oil painting stuff! Just the things I use as I am painting - I've got a tackle box full of other tubes of paint and more random brushes are living in a brush bag on the shelf. I'm a very frugal painter - this is the same wooden art box I've had since I was in middle school, although I've got all-new brushes and some new paint. (The laser pointer is for my cat - he gets bored watching me sometimes).

There I is!

Alice

2011-02-28T10:26:00.003-09:00

Not quite done but pretty close. Oil painting commission. Don't remember the dimensions off the top of my head. 11 hours, I think.

Here it is blocked in (did this last spring)…

The rest of this I did last night. Went over the background to give it texture, impressionist-style but blended. Starting to fill in Alice now…

And here's where I ended up!

Sorry about the glare - it's the best I could do with the lighting I had in the basement. It's kind of got a yellow tint look in the pics. When I'm done and it is dry I'll scan it in and post the finished piece.

Stargate Resurrected

2011-02-04T14:52:00.005-09:00

A lot of digital artists of my generation practice their skillz on making fan art. For me it's the ready-made inspiration so I can concentrate on practicing my software techniques.

Back when Stargate: SG-1 was on the air (and hadn't jumped the shark) I made a lot of wallpaper fanart, mostly in the grunge style. I wasn't particularly good at it (hey, it was practice) but I came up with some interesting compositions. A few months ago I was going down memory lane, looking at some of them and this one caught my eye. It was a lot cleaner than my older walls and I thought it would make a great vector piece. The old one had a foreground image of Carter laying on the floor and I thought it distracted from the cool background image that I wanted to concentrate on.

To translate for non-Stargate fans, this was from an episode called "Entity" where a digital-based lifeform from another world downloaded itself into Stargate Command's computer system and eventually ended up downloading itself into Carter's brain, taking over her mind and body. The image of Carter is when the entity left her body, creating arcs of electricity that lit everything in blue light. The syntax in the background was seen on all the monitors in the complex.

About 90% of this was built in Illustrator CS4 (Carter, the background color, all the text) and then I brought each element into Photoshop to add some blurring to the text. It was fun putting all the text into perspective. For the most part, the text is as-seen in the screen-shot I took from that episode, though in a few places it was too blurry to make out so I made stuff up.

All Widescreen, no fullscreen, sorry.
1920x1200
1680x1050
1440x900
1280x800

The Kitsune/Okami Division

2011-02-03T10:25:00.005-09:00

Normally I only share visual art here but I thought I'd mix it up a bit and add a song.

I have been playing guitar for 17 years or so, albeit self-taught. I primarily play acoustic finger-style though I do have an electric (and am in the process of building another, which will make an appearance on this blog). I have made up quite a few songs, all instrumental.

This is a draft of a song I made up as part of a healing process. A few transitions have since been changed, other bits shortened, and some complexity has been added in the picking but its largely the same. I record things in GarageBand on my Mac with a cheap external mic, so the sound quality isn't top notch - ends up sounding more indie lo-fi but you get the idea. This song is 3-part guitar; I plan on building a baritone guitar after the one I'm building now and plan on re-recording the song with that later. ;)

I recorded this back in November but I've been offline for the past two months which is why I'm only now getting around to this.

Here's the direct download link:
https://files.me.com/howlsthunder/6jj05t.mp3 - 6:50min, 128kbps, 6.3MB

Eyak Lake display signs

2010-12-01T22:57:00.004-09:00

My boss and I recently finished a job designing informational/educational outdoor display panels for the Copper River Watershed Project (CRWP). These six signs will be placed in locations around Eyak Lake in Cordova, Alaska. I hope to see them some day (you can only fly or boat to Cordova).

(The kick-ass salmon photography - like on the "Cycle of Life" sign - is courtesy Tom Kline.)

About: Each of these panels is about 36"x24 (91cm x 60cm ish) and were built with a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. My boss had the initial concept and then I make it happen. Often I work with the images we are given and different layout ideas come out of that. I pretty much built the majority of the layouts with constant edits from the boss and he does all the copy editing and body typography. If it isn't a photo (or one of the two paintings on the second "Spirits" sign) then I drew it :D. It's difficult to get a true appreciation for how these work as signs unless you print them out full-size - it was quite a learning curve for us to go from working on a comparatively tiny 24" screen to seeing them full-size - there is an entirely different psychology involved in laying out a display piece versus a hand-held piece.

I am particularly proud of the bathymetry (lake depth) map on the 5th sign. I had three shoddy - and non-matching - bathymetries of various parts of the lake and had to piece them together in Photoshop, print it out and hand-label it so I knew which colors were which depths on the mis-matched areas, then re-trace the entire thing in Illustrator. :) I also really enjoyed creating the simplistic yet fun illustrations for the backgrounds. Though I'm eager to some day do something really complex with Illustrator and really flex those muscles, its a personal challenge to "dumb down" my style and I think it worked on these signs.

As a bonus, here are the fish from the "Small Fry at Play" sign, bigger. They were one of the last things I illustrated so they ended up much more detailed and less cartoony than the main sign backgrounds that were illustrated - which I think worked because they are foreground subjects anyhow. We just needed fish examples and didn't have photos of them all so illustrating them made it more unified.

WPA Moose

2010-09-01T11:12:00.005-08:00

This is actually only the size of a large postage stamp - it is a remake using a moose instead of an airplane, with modified colors. I drew the moose and everything else, of course, based on multiple moose. :) Did the vectors and base colors in Illustrator CS4, shading, texture, and text in Photoshop CS4.

Limelight

2010-01-31T23:01:00.007-09:00

20"x26" oil on illustration board, 10 hours

Last week at the office, Gary's dog Gus was taking a nap in the hall. My boss, Chris, took the opportunity and turned on the hall spotlights and snapped this photo on his iPhone. I knew right after seeing Gus that this was a painting just waiting to be made so it was lucky Chris got the shot.

Gus is an ENORMOUS malamute - his head is bigger than a backpack and one of his feet are bigger than both of mine put together! But he's pretty low-key and I think this kind of captures a good chunk of his essence.

I am starting to like illustration board again, this being my second piece on it since I originally learned to paint on it 18 years ago. I really like the smooth blend I achieved on the wall and the black stayed more matte than if it had been on canvas, I think. I had a deuce of a time with Gus's fur; I started getting too detailed which clashed with the overall style so I blended it all together and tried again but with large strokes to give a general sense of color. And no, his rear foot isn't missing, he's laying on it.

Sorry no in-progress photos to speak of; I forgot my camera all three days I worked on this.

Cessna 180 N2294C

2009-12-25T00:51:00.010-09:00

Oil on illustration board, 40" x 20", 3 days

I did this for my dad for his Christmas present. I really don't know how long it took to do but it happened over the course of 5 days, but I didn't work entire days. Anyhow, I painted it from a photo of my dad and his airplane, a Cessna 180. I think the photo was taken at the Kustatan River on the western side of Cook Inlet here in Alaska. My dad no longer has the airplane but it was a big part of all our lives. My dad got his pilot's license only a month after he got his drivers license and went to college to be a professional pilot, though that is not what he ended up doing. He got this airplane before I was born and my sister and I pretty much grew up in that airplane. We would at least fly once a month if not once a week until I went to college. I miss flying and I miss that plane terribly. I think my dad is content with his boat now but hopefully he'll like this painting. :)

Below are some in-progress photos. All of these are a bit warped because the illustration board is a bit curled. Ah well. There are 4 pictures, one for each day, basically, not counting the final piece (click on the above thumbnail to see the final piece larger).

Penciled in. That took several hours. O_O;

Blocked in. Normally I'd stain the entire canvas but time was not on my side - see, one nasty thing about illustration board is that it sucks up the paint so it takes a LOT more paint (and more time) to block in the piece.

Plane underside shaded and clouds done.

Airplane and other items colored in and grass added (I hate it).
After this step the only things that were added were the plane numbers, the corrugation on the tail flap, highlights on the white bits of plane, Pop's fishing pole, and my signature - things that couldn't be done with so much wet stuff going on previously.

~==~

Overall it looks pretty sharp I think. Its an awesome photo of the plane anyway and I am pretty pleased with the saturated colors and the clean lines I managed with the plane (as in, how crisply I painted the whole plane, not just the stripes on it, though I gotta say those were a pain. Steady-handed surgeons watch out!) I hate painting grass and rather like it all impressionistic and I think maybe the whole piece could be more successful if everything but the plane and Pop were blurry but your eye doesn't really ever settle in the grass so I don't think it matters. It's a gift, not a gallery piece and a good chance to try things out and learn.

Damien

2009-12-25T00:45:00.005-09:00

Oil on canvas, 12" x 16"
I didn't keep proper track of time on this one since I split the time across two days but it took longer than Shadow. I'd guess maybe 10 hours. (the dark shadow across the top is from my easel, sorry).

My second Christmas present painting is done! This one is of my Aunt PeterAnn's old dog Damien who was very dear to her. Damien died when I was 2 or 3 but I have faint memories of her. Because I was so young, I couldn't say her name properly so it always came out "Dame-er". I referred to her as Damer for years and always thought it strange when my Aunt referred to her by her actual name and to this day I default to "Damer". ;)

The photo this was painted from was poorly composed as far as light goes; Damien's eyes weren't lit at all, for one, so I had to play a few things up a bit. What's kinda funny is that the photo this is from lives on the same page as the reference photo for Shadow. Its kind of fun that I happened to paint two photos from the same page of the same album of two dogs in the same house when we all lived at my grandparents. :)

It was harder to find a line between detail and generalizations with my brush strokes, which is why this one took longer, since Damien HAD more detail to paint. I think the halo effect semi-sorta kinda worked. It was harder to know where the blues in her fur lived and I think I could of gotten her chest shaded a bit darker but it works. I painted it under harsh kitchen lighting so it looks fantastic under more dim, usual lighting. Though I think Shadow is way more successful as an art piece, I think my aunt will like Damer just fine. ^_^

And I happened to take a photo of this painting after I got it blocked in so you can see what it looked like at the midpoint:

One final note of trivia; both the Damer and Shadow paintings are recycled! They use canvases that were part of this stupid 7-canvas painting I started in highschool but never finished. Another fun thing that binds the two art pieces (the others are: same paint, same dimensions, same photo album, same location, same time period). :D

Shadow

2009-12-14T19:21:00.009-09:00

Oil on canvas, 16"x12", 7 hours

Okay, here's the final painting. This is for my mom for Christmas. Its based on a photo of the first dog we had when I was growing up, some kind of shepherd named Shadow. She was about 6 years older than me and lived to be 14 or so. I'd done a pretty good watercolor of this when I was a kid but it was part of a portfolio I'd used to skip a bunch of basic art classes in school and the school system lost the portfolio. I've always been pretty bummed at the loss of that watercolor but it was also my mom's favorite. When I was looking through photo albums to come up with ideas for paintings for Christmas this year, I came across the original photo of Shadow and *bing* the proverbial lightbulb went off in my head and here we are. :)

Here's a detail of the eyes:

Space Experiment

2009-11-14T23:58:00.006-09:00

Widescreen only: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800

About:
Created in Photoshop CS4 in 6 or 7 hours.

This was for an art challenge on LiveJournal, the criteria being "space". I wasn't going to be literal about it; I was going to do something about the emotional space between people. Then I thought it might be fun to make a star field to put in the background - I'd only made one previously and had always wanted to do another. When I got going on the star field, however, I kind of got carried away and so the final piece ended up being a literal outerspace thing. Its not fantastic, as far as digital spaceworks go but it was good practice. I really envy the people who can do photo-realistic space art - especially nebulas; I'd love to learn to make one!

So, all done in Photoshop, took about 6 or 7 hours.
Thank you to some of the nifty tutorials found at SolarVoyager, including the two Greg Martin tuts I'd used previously (the man is THE master at creating spacefields - check out his illustrations at his site).

Lazy Days

2009-11-11T02:19:00.002-09:00

Some time ago I asked for wallpaper idea suggestions and this is from one of those. It is a blatant rip off of "Just a Couple of Girls" by Harry Wilson Watrous.

wide: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
full: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

About: The painting gave me poses but I drew everything from scratch myself. I actually drew this out in the "pen & ink" style of my last several wallpapers and then purposely drew sloppy blocks of color under the "ink" to fill it in and when I took the linework away, this is what was left. I liked the retro look of it and decided to leave it that way. :D You can see the ink by itself here. Their expressions were bugging me anyway so I like the end version much better.

Lanee wallpaper

2009-10-28T00:25:00.003-08:00

When I drew this I knew I was going to want to make a vector version of it and make a wallpaper. I was originally going to do it all in Illustrator but I saw this fantastic wallpaper on Pixelgirl Presents and so it went in a different direction. Kind of experimental.

wide: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
full: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

Technical: Illustration by me, based on a photo I took. LiveTraced the illustration in Illustrator with minor cleanup. Texture by me, courtesy of the office fire (smoke damaged file folders = yay). The text is Norwegian, meaning "Let your sorrows rest at sea • Somewhere between north and south". It was chosen randomly - I was listening to the new Leaves' Eyes album Njord (they are a Norwegian group) and I thought some foreign text might look good in there, and since its easy to verify the translation on lyrics I went with that. Its a line from the song "Ankomst", used without permission, of course.

Color ad Illustrations

2009-10-27T16:36:00.006-08:00

As promised, here are some color ad illustrations I've done (see previous post for background details).

These two vertical ads were "ads that never were" - the client switched to a smaller square shape like the winter ads below. I thought I'd share them here for variety.

The sledding piece is a draft for a website banner image. A similar version was done with the canoe for summer; the canoe piece here was the front of a mailer card. We re-use a lot of the illustrations for all kinds of applications.

These three winter images are all in draft stage and are for web. The sleddog team is an example of where an illustration was kept super simple for newsprint and left simple because it is going to be small on the web. The larger images linked here are larger than they will be when finished. Again, we do all our web ads large scale because it will inevitably be used later for print somehow.

Black & White Ad illustrations

2009-10-27T16:15:00.004-08:00

I currently work for Whittington-Evans Communications. Its a great place to work because my boss has, over time, increasingly used my illustration skills more and more to replace photography in the ads and other pieces we do for the Mat-Su Convention & Visitor Bureau (MSCVB), one of our more ad-prolific clients. It all started when Chris noted that one of my digital illustration styles feels kind of WPA, a style both he and I like. It tied in with this postal/travel style we were developing for the MSCVB one year and it took off from there and I've had a lot of fun working with this style. Because this style features my illustration work I thought I should share it with you here.

We originally began this style in black and white newspaper ads. Because we were working with newsprint, the designs had to be very simple, much more basic than my usual style. Later I had to adapt all of the illustrations into color. For the most part they converted well but there were a few that required added detail or a change in shading scheme. I did a TON of research, primarily by digging through the Library of Congress' web collection here. It also took some doing to find some WPA-esque fonts in our collection here at work. Our results aren't strictly true to the WPA genre but I think they have enough retro flair to make them eye-catching compared to what you see for ads around the rest of Alaska.

These ads here are just some of my favorites. The RV "Hit the Road" ad was the very first one I did back in 2007. The fishing and glacier ads were also from that year while the "Trail Mix" ad was actually much more recent and was originally color - you can see the evolution in detail as well. In earlier illustrations I tried to keep the people very basic. In actual WPA art a lot of human figures were very stylized since the posters they were going on were done with silkscreen. We also took a different direction with the typography in newer ads, as evidenced on the "Trail Mix" ad.

Working in this style influenced my own art I do for fun and I've since tried simplifying the shapes I draw in Illustrator for a "less is more" look. This is highlighted by this poster I did for a contest.

Lanee

2009-10-22T20:23:00.004-08:00

Sharpie, August 2009

Another portrait I did while out at the lodge, also based on a photo I took of a co-worker. The photo came out horrible, most of her facial features were blown out. But as I got to looking at it, I thought it would make a cool stylized illustration. Results shown here. ;)

Gerg

2009-09-25T09:27:00.004-08:00

This is my friend Greg "Gerg" Franckowiak who worked as a ramp dog (camp assistant) at Brooks Lodge when I was there this last summer. Drawn in Sharpie in 2 and 1/2 hours from a photo I took.

Squirrel

2009-09-25T09:06:00.004-08:00

I did this at Brooks Camp this summer in August sometime from a photo I took of one of our local squirrels whom we named "Rutherford". I drew this on a watercolor paper postcard, inked it and colored it with watercolor pencils.

Sleddog Sketch

2009-03-16T13:47:00.004-08:00

I was good and brought a small sketchbook along to draw in on my last plane flight. This was done from a photo out of an Alaska Airlines magazine. Ballpoint pen.

She's got a funny expression because she's pulling a sled, which seems a bit strange out of context, but then, I wasn't drawing this for an audience.

I always sketch in ballpoint pen - it is my preferred sketching medium. It makes me be less of a perfectionist by making me be okay with mistakes, or to at least incorporate mistakes into the drawing. It also makes me more of a perfectionist by slowing down and making sure the next line I draw is something I *actually* want. ;) Bah.

Still Alive

2009-02-02T10:09:00.005-09:00

October 26, 2008
vector art, Adobe Illustrator

My friend Trey wanted to make her own shirt for the 2009 Xena Convention in LA (which is why this post is 3 months delayed; I couldn't share it until after the con was over). The idea is "Xena's not dead! She's still alive - and she's a cylon!" - and also to celebrate Lucy Lawless herself, who has been making a lot of well-performed guest appearances on various shows since Xena: Warrior Princess ended. "Still Alive" is what sums this up best but is also an homage to the wonderful Jonathan Coulton Portal song of the same name. :)

Trey had originally thought of doing this when my mom still owned her silk screening shop so we came up with an idea for a two-color design (white and red on a black shirt). In October we finally got around to putting the design together. I art directed and had Trey find as many profile-shots and other reference images as he could. In Photoshop, I put together a rough made out of 3 Xenas (head, body, arm/chakram) and 3 cylon images (head, body, cylon). The rest was an Illustrator lesson for Trey where I did the entire image, step-by-step and she followed along, copying me on her own computer and file. Trey's final decision was to use my file, though hers is nearly identical.

Dressage Painting

2009-02-02T09:42:00.007-09:00

12" x 16" oil on canvas
December 2007

I did this painting as a Christmas gift for my dad's partner just this last December. It is from a photograph my dad took of her and her horse doing dressage. I painted this in one day in no more than 7 hours. I tried scanning it but I used so much Liquin in it that it scanned as a big shiny glare, so this image is from two crappy photos combined.

As always, I took "progress" photos (and as always, I remember after I've blocked in about 2 square inches of canvas already):
• sketched in
• Background blocked in
• background and figures blocked in

One valuable tool I used on this piece was a silicone paint brush. I don't have it here with me and I cannot find anything like it online or I'd show you. It basically looks like a short-handled paintbrush, size 1 or 2, but instead of bristles it has a flexible silicone tip. They come in rounds and flats and the one I have is a strange sword-tip shape, like a round with two planes carved along it. I bought it because I thought it would be great for doing little details since it would never lose its point. Instead I learned it was horrible for laying down paint - it tended to wipe it off instead. So I began using it to clean up tiny accidents, a job for which it is well suited. On this painting, working wet-in-wet, I used it for scraping out the fence posts and the fence wire from the background so the red paint wouldn't mix in with the green, and also to give the fence posts white tips. It also worked well to help define the shadows on the arena rails, giving the edges a watercolor look. Yay! My brush finally came into its own. :)

Cowgirls

2008-11-24T18:20:00.002-09:00

widescreen: 1900x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

About this wallpaper
Roughly 90% Illustrator CS3 and 10% Photoshop CS3.

This is another Facts of Life wallpaper, but I did so poorly on making Blair look like Blair, and because the characters never dress in western wear, it really could be anyone. ;)

I came across some photos of Lisa Whelchel wearing a cowboy hat that made me go, 'ah, ha!' So this is a kind of what-if.

After I got my idea, I lightly sketched out the composition I wanted: Blair sitting on a fence or something and Jo standing behind her. My figure construction skills are seriously atrophied so I had a friend of mine pose for both figures, took photos of her, and used those as reference to get the perspective and everything right.

In Photoshop, I did the main sketch based on the photos I took, then had to do some head hunting for Jo and Blair's faces. Jo's was fine but it was hard finding an image of Blair with her head at the correct angle. The one I ended up using was of her feigning a pouty expression. No matter HOW hard I tried, I could NOT get my drawing to look like Blair without the pouty expression! I think Jo looks fine but... GRR. Now I know why comic artists who have to draw characters from live-action TV or film don't bother. ;)

Anyhoo - I took the sketch (which was nothing finished - literally just a quick 5 minute sketch) into Illustrator and dreweverything there, line work first. I was originally going to have something like forced-perspective telephone wires overhead but went with clouds instead.

I did this over the course of three days. The initial composition set-up took awhile, and tweaking the blonde's face probably took longer than anything else. While it still doesn't quite look like who I was going for, I am pleased with the overall results. :)

Facts of Life Jo wallpaper

2008-11-21T04:28:00.001-09:00

Finally! A Jo wallpaper! Based on a screencap from xxsaosinxx (Thanks!)

widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

About This Wallpaper
Illustrator CS3, Intuos Wacom tablet, about 4 hours.
I'd had this idea for a Jo wallpaper for awhile, to theme it around her Blair-given "Mr Goodwrench" nickname-insult, in blues with mechanical stuffs happening. After the direction the previous Blair wall went in, I did this one in the same style (which, now that there IS a style, saved a LOT of time!). Stuck with the limited palette and masculine lines. Googled the Goodwrench logo and re-drew it in Illustrator (Live Trace did a lousy job) and found a nice motorcycle engine blueprint to Live Trace to vector and stick in the background. (I was originally going to use some of my Johnstone Supply catalogue illustrations instead since I feel like Live Trace is cheating but I really didn't feel like tracing my own engine. But they were more electrical oriented, not mechanical, so there you go).

I like this one a lot better than the Blair wall - I think it succeeds in its comparative simplicity - but then, as we know, Blair is superficially much more complex than Jo so I think it works. ;)

Brilliant Blair: Facts of Life wallpaper

2008-11-16T16:46:00.005-09:00

widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

About this wallpaper
This is the character Blair from the popular 1980s TV sitcom The Facts of Life", which I was very fond of as a kid.
Done in Adobe Illustrator CS3.
I lost count of the hours after the 50th time trying to work on it. Ugh. This is probably the 4th version of this wallpaper and I had started it the day after the last one I posted!

This thing was a pain in the butt. The theme was to be centered around Blair's quintessential "brilliant"; the original idea was to have a gigantic "BRILLIANT" in the background with Blair looking like she feels brilliant, with Jo glaring at her off to the side. ;) I did the whole thing with detailed shading and everything but Jo came out hiddeous. Also, I couldn't get the "BRILLIANT" worked in the way I wanted. I imported everything into Photoshop and tried stuff there to no avail. I ended up ditching everything and started from scratch in Illustrator, drawing it like you see now and then messing around with random shapes and fills, ditching Jo outright.

And yes, that's the VISA credit card logo, from the 80s. Whee. ;)

Here's what it used to look like:

No, I will not be working this into a wall any time soon so do not ask.
I swear I have a Jo one coming up next. Maybe I'll do it in the same style and they'll be a pair. :D

StarWars: Dark Leia

2008-11-04T11:16:00.004-09:00

I don't generally do requests because I end up being really flaky about getting the piece done. But every once in awhile an idea really strikes my fancy and it not only jumps ahead in the "To Do" queue, it actually gets done!

widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768 • 800x600

About
It is based on an alternate universe for Star Wars, a "what if" deal: what if Leia led the Empire or something (I think this is based on Star Wars: Infinities - look at me, I don't know what I am drawing!). ;) I had the composition in mind well before I started. This is my first figure construction I have done from scratch in years - ugh, I should of hired my friend Ash or Hemisphere for it! Anyhoo, I made up my own costume based on the comic version and some other artist's version. Sketched in Photoshop CS3, drew everything/colored in Illustrator CS3, brought it all back into Photoshop to do shading and add textures. The stars and clouds are all my own textures. Took about 9 hours or so.

Cylon Centurion

2008-10-27T11:22:00.005-08:00

At some point I had the idea to do a cylon centurion wallpaper, and then someone on Facebook requested a BSG wall as well so here I am, finally got to it. :D I would like to do one in a more WPA style which is what I had originally set out to do but got a bit carried away. Ah, well.

widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768 • 800x600

About…
Ah, pretty basic - I wanted to keep it simple. Drew the cylon and did the gradient background in Illustrator CS3, brought everything into Photoshop CS3 and added textures and the eye glow. One texture is a linen one by me, the other is rust by my friend Deborah Schildt. The eye glow is a brush I made. Took about 5 hours.

Tree for the Trees

2008-08-08T12:30:00.006-08:00

4th challenge from the art_wac community. Not too sure how I feel about this one. I am really liking these art challenges because I am not pressuring myself to make a masterpiece each time so I think of these as digital sketches / Illustrator experiments. :)

Widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x800 • 1280x800
Fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

Entire thing is vector, done in Illustrator CS3 with my Wacom tablet. Took about 3 and a half hours.

The concept was "trees or forest?". My concept started out with the two being one within the other within the other, etc. but it morphed into this singling out of the tree chart thingey in which I got to experiment with my sedimentary swatches I got from a government cartography website. :D The underground is a world without trees and I half-assedly stole the visual concept from Ben Schlitter, whose stuff I want to try re-creating for practice. The motherboard pattern is from an Apple II blueprint I found online.

Through the Window

2008-07-26T19:30:00.002-08:00

Widescreen: 1900x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x800 • 1280x800
Fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

This is for challenge #3 at art_wac, "View From a Window". Illustrator & Photoshop CS3, took about 5 and a half hours. I wanted it to be completely vector but it wasn't coming out the way I had envisioned it so I brought all the vectors into Photoshop and messed around with it there. I am not very happy with it but it was a good exercise anyway. :)

Sun Foxes

2008-07-26T14:38:00.003-08:00

Widescreen: 1900x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x800 • 1280x800
Fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

This is in response to the art_wac LiveJournal art community challenge "fun in the sun" that I missed the deadline for. The foxes were based on a photograph taken by my friend Jan DeNapoli (Muzzy Graphics.net). Everything else is mine, all mine. Illustrator CS3, took about 4 hours.

Self Portrait

2008-07-11T10:16:00.006-08:00

Our first assignment over at the art_wac was to do a self-portrait. I was gonna draw mine by hand but ended up not having time. Then earlier this week decided I needed a new banner and look for my LiveJournal. I have a picture of myself in my journal banner because, well, the journal is by and about me, so why not? So I combined the two projects into one.

Technical stuff: Made completely in Illustrator CS1 with a Wacom tablet. I took a photo of myself and traced it by hand in Illustrator. Uhh, that's pretty much it. ;)

Art Stuff: As a portrait, it is me, obviously. Green is one of my favorite colors (blue is the other but my journal was already blue, plus I look better in green ;) ). The wolf is my totem spirit and favorite animal. The trees represent Alaska and my connection to and love for the outdoors. The hill is a recycled graphic I made for an ARIA wall that failed - I love fields for the feel of running free that they represent. The swashes (bitbox.com) are pretty and almost tribal, the way I connect to society. The text is the name of my journal, and the Japanese 石山から is my name "Ishiyama Kara", "Ishiyama" being my last name translated literally ('Stenberg' meaning 'stone mountain' in Swedish, 'Ishiyama' meaning roughly the same).

I'd Know You Anywhere

2008-06-29T14:58:00.004-08:00

Here's my latest and greatest Maria-Sama ga Miteru wallpaper ;) They are completely vector (except for the blur in the blue sky I had to do in Photoshop), done in Illustrator CS1, based on a promotional image for one of the Marimite OVAs (the 3rd one). The sky was originally for an ARIA wallpaper I was working on but decided was fail and the fun patterns/brushes in the orange one are from Bitbox.com. This took me about 5 hours - 2 for Sachiko & the panda, two for the backgrounds, and another for resizing them all (so much easier in PS but to preserve the colors I have to resize them manually in Illustrator).

(you can so tell I am making these on a Mac due to my designing to the left. Sorry Windows fans...)

Sky version:
Wide: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x800 • 1280x800
Standard: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

Vector version:
Wide: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1440x900 • 1280x800
Standard: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

Battery/Fuel panel session 5

2008-06-17T21:56:00.005-08:00

Wow, two nice days in a row! I so hate painting in my room - it has horrible light, so every day that is sunny and not too windy I am outdoors working on this thing.

Normally I would do all the details last but there need to be sticks and grass in front of the chrome dash panel so I have to finish that before I continue on. Still more to do on it - there needs to be highlights around the "battery" and "fuel" letters, with shadows and highlights within the letters themselves, as well as river sludge and other green and rusting things. Still, fun. About 4 hours work today.

Revolutionary Girl Utena wallpaper

2008-06-12T11:36:00.009-08:00

Done completely in Illustrator CS1. This is based on two different official Revolutionary Girl Utena cell art pieces that I liked, one from the anime series and the other from the film, so there are elements from the different costumes combined. This was a really free-form piece in that I had the idea to do the characters more in silhouette but ended up having fun trying out different color combos for everything (complimentary red & greens, reversing the characters' colors, etc) but here's how it ended up. I might do a silhouette version sometime.

Widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1280x800
Standard: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

Funny that I generally don't care for pinks at all but here I go making these fan art wallpapers that have pink palates. Go figure. ;)

Battery/Fuel progress, session 3

2008-06-12T09:22:00.005-08:00

Been awhile since I last worked on this. Gotta be more prolific! I have no idea how accurate this photo is in terms of color, but it probably doesn't matter since the final won't look much like this at all, especially if you compare it to all the progress my Generator/Compressor painting went through.

Basically all I have done is continue to block and fill in areas with their next "main" layers of color. Worked on darkening the shadows and putting in a base for the moss. It is amazing how much green is actually in the original photo from all the river muck and things growing on the car. I am trying to keep it warmer than the photo and not so sludgy. Luckily I have a hard time painting in subdued colors ;) so we'll see where this takes me.

Doodle

2008-06-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

Just a doodle. I had started from the center with no goal in mind, just to make fun shapes. Tacked on a tail, head, and mane at the end. I kind of like the direction the tail went; I may use it later for something.

Bleach art: how-to

2008-03-12T10:44:00.005-08:00

I thought I would throw out a few pointers for those wanting to try their own bleach stencils.

Design
Choose something simple for your first stencil, something that cuts out in one piece so that you are only placing one piece of acetate down and not having to align little bits that get cut out separately. For instance, in my previous post, the heart on the Companion Cube had to be glued down separately. Also, little details are more difficult to keep from bleeding, so the more simple the design, the more likely your stencil will come out.

Materials
• a well ventilated area
• wear old clothes you don't mind ruining should you get bleach on them
• rubber gloves if you don't want bleach on your hands
• towels to cover your workspace and to protect areas of your shirt not blocked by the stencil

• chlorine bleach
• spray bottle - as fine of a mist as you can find
• X-acto knife (a utility knife or box cutter won't do it for details)
• spray adhesive
• lots of paper towels
• a hairdryer
• stencil material - I use acetate transparencies. You can get printable overhead projector sheets at Wal-Mart. I have also used Dura-Lar acetate, which is super heavy duty. Makes a more durable stencil but is a PAIN to cut out.

Process
1) Cut out your design. Careful not to over-cut corners because the stencil may tear at these points when removing it from your material

2) Lay out your item to be stenciled as flat as possible. It may be a good idea to insert a stiff, flat object to keep the item stretched flat (I used cutting boards) and to prevent the item from bleeding through to the other side in the case of shirts and the like.

3) Spray the back-side of your stencil with a light coat of adhesive and place your design. A little goes a REALLY long way so don't overdo it or you will have a hell of a time trying to remove your stencil from your shirt. Make sure to get any detailed areas as those are the most prone to bleeding.

4) block off any areas of your material that you don't want to get bleach on. If your design goes pretty close to the edge of your stencil, you may want to extend the border of your stencil with wide tape to prevent overspray.

5) Bleach away! Go one 'layer' at a time, don't saturate your material. Pat off excess bleach with towels/paper towels, especially on detailed areas, to prevent bleeding. The bleach will take a minute to fully "develop" so be patient - it is slower on materials such as denim or Carhartt so give it a little time. Blow dry your design between 'layers' so that the material doesn't become over saturated and bleed under the edges of your stencil. The more bleach you lay down, the lighter the design.

7) When you've got your design the way you want it, dry your design as best you can, then carefully remove your stencil. Tumble dry your material to beat out the crystalized bleach. Failing to do so and then washing your item can cause the bleach to re-activate and ruin your design.

* * * * * * * * * *
Those are the basics! Keep in mind that bleaching fabric also makes it weaker and prone to wearing out faster than the rest of your material. This method of decorating clothes is not good for items you want to last a long time, its more for raggy stuff you have lying around.

http://www.stencilrevolution.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=354443
This is the link to the original article I read that got me to give this all a try. In the comments you will find a whole slew of ideas that other people came up with to help you get inspired. If you try it out, too, comment with a link to your design so I can see what you made. :D

Bleached Shirt Designs

2008-03-12T10:03:00.013-08:00

Last fall I saw an article on BoingBoing.net featuring a how-to for bleach stencil art on clothes. I immediately knew this was something I had to try. In October my friend Trey and I tried it out with a tribal wolf and horse I had designed. We had varying degrees of success testing some of the rules:

1) use 100% cotton ONLY. Poly blends will not work
2) use spray adhesive to keep your stencil flat on the shirt
3) do not oversaturate your material (causes bleeding)

Half the fun is watching the bleach "develop" the shirt, especially out of a black shirt since black ink often has some other color as a base, usually a rust or pinkish tan. We experimented with khaki, which can give anything from a greenish yellow to orange.

This past week, my friend Eric and I decided to make some shirts to honor our new favorite geekdom, Portal, in particular, the Weighted Companion Cube from the game (see above). This led to a few more fun designs, including the MYST spaceship (a 2-stencil design by Eric) and the Maria-Sama ga Miteru text logo and some character silhouettes.

Here's Trey and I modeling our wolf and horse designs. Each stencil (usually with more simple designs) can be used in both the positive and the negative. These were done with a globby, generic spray bottle and no adhesive on the stencils.

Here's the Companion Cube in all its glory on a black shirt. Its fun to bleach some areas a bit more than others in order to achieve a grungy, airbrushed look.

Here's Eric in his $8 Carhartt coat with MYST rocket ship. He did this stencil in two pieces, one for the body and one for the fins and nose. Carhartt takes more time to bleach than a thin shirt but the end result is worth the patience for sure. I gotta come up with something to put on my own Carhartt...

The Marimite logo. It says "Maria-Sama ga Miteru" which loosely means "Maria is watching Us" or "[the Virgin Mary] Watches Over Us". This was done on a slate blue longsleeve shirt.

My second Marimite shirt with the addition of a stencil of two characters running hand-in-hand along the bottom hem. The characters (Sei and Shimako) were made with the vector from the blue wallpaper in my previous post. I used two sheets of acetate taped together to get the width I needed to get the design to wrap around the side of the shirt so that one character was on the front while the other was on the back. What is amusing about this shirt is that while the fabric is navy blue, it bleached out a magenta color. I was kind of bummed at first but I think it makes a rather striking shirt. :)

Marimite Wallpapers

2008-03-08T11:05:00.006-09:00

Maria-Sama ga Miteru ("Marimite" for short) is a shoujo anime that was recently licensed in America (finally). It follows a group of girls on the student council at a Catholic girls school and is basically about their friendships and their character development. There's no action, no traumatic events - just minor high school drama with a lot of heart, no big plots, and tons of character development. ;) As a fan, I take the opportunity to practice my Adobe Illustrator skills by making wallpapers. Here are the three latest, all Marimite themed:

I had the image of this wall in my head when I woke up one morning - a wind-swept hill with clouds and people running along. Done in Illustrator CS1 with a bit of masking done on the rays in Photoshop CS1, the only thing I didn't create myself are the decorative swooshes in the sky, which were by Bittbox.com. I did the clouds twice, the first time with too much detail that left me unsatisfied, which is when I decided to try swooshes. I am particularly proud of the grass on this one.
Widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050
Fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1024x768

Done completely in Illustrator CS3, 5 hours. This second wall I am the most happy with as it has the best sense of mood and most interesting composition. I generally start out a wallpaper with a color in mind and this was originally to be sunset orange with a silhouetted tree-covered hill. Immediately the sunset went pink & yellow and I didn't ever get to the silhouetted hill once I found a good reference picture that had hills instead. I had major color space issues on this wallpaper so what you see is not quite what I had originally created - yet one more reason I am a print person, not a web person. ;) Long story short, working on a Mac, and not in the right RGB space (sRGB IEC61966-2.1).
Widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1280x800
Fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

Done completely in Illustrator CS3, 7 hours. Again, I started out with a color (green), which to me means plants. While all the walls were experimental, the first two were a bit more "safe" in that they are set in a wide-open landscape where this one is cloistered in the woods. It is much easier to place things compositionally against a wide open sky than it is to build a particular setting so this piece was a bit tricky and I feel loses its sense of mood. At any rate, it was a great chance to try getting the opening in the leaf canopy created and to try out creating rays of light. At first the grass was dark and in the foreground but when I took it away everything looked better. In the end I put it back in and pushed it back because, as a friend pointed out, it reminds us of the layered nature of a forest setting.
Widescreen: 1920x1200 • 1680x1050 • 1280x800
Fullscreen: 1600x1200 • 1280x960 • 1152x864 • 1024x768

I think I will do more, perhaps in other fandoms as well. The fun thing about keeping them entirely vector is that they are infinitely re-sizeable for print, unlike most of my previous walls which were built at 72ppi. I also really enjoy the practice in Illustrator- it has always been my favorite program but it is more technically challenging to learn. I never learned how to use gradient meshes in college or any of the other fancy stuff Illustrator can do so I am trying to push the limits on what I DO know how to do and I am discovering little bits as I go along. :)

It's Callisto!

2007-12-29T14:34:00.001-09:00

This was my Christmas present to my friend Trey, one of the world's biggest Callisto fans. (For the un-initiated, Callisto was one of the better-known villans from the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess). This is from a scene in the episode "Ten Little Warlords" where Callisto is dragged down into Tartarus after a battle with Xena. I chose to draw this scene because of the dramatic lighting, Callisto's expression, the challenge of all the hands, and because it told a story rather than just being a character posing.

Same materials as last time - 11"x14" 100lb paper, sketched in graphite, inked with Sharpie marker. I had a lot of fun using Sharpies - because they bleed into the paper a lot I had to keep my lines and shapes more blocky. I experimented with letting the eye complete forms rather than drawing them in - this is more obvious in Callisto's left hand (her left, to our right) where it becomes lost in her hair. Took three times longer to do than the previous Xena drawing. I re-drew the hands a zillion times, re-drew her entire body once, and the details took patience and precision to fill in. I also spend a lot of time staring at the screenshot printout to decide what should go black and what should stay white. Fun!

Digitally shaded in Photoshop CS1 using my trusty & crusty ol' Wacom Intuos 1 tablet. I spent more time shading this piece than I did Xena, particularly in my use of hard-edged brushes on the leather to give it a more textured look. The background rock texture is an un-inspired photo of asphalt I took a few summers ago - I didn't spend any time fancying it up.

I'm enjoying my time diving into my Xena nostalgia and look forward to drawing more characters from the show. Keep an eye out on this blog for more. ;)

It's Xena! Shaded!

2007-12-08T11:42:00.000-09:00

Here she is again, this time shaded (Photoshop CS1). Normally you'd use gradients for a proper comic-book look but I was being lazy and just used the airbrush. For me, the final version is the plain ink one, this was just a distraction but I thought I'd share it anyway. ;)

It's Xena!

2007-12-03T15:18:00.000-09:00

I got into an inking mood as well as a Xena mood. I took the opportunity of being away from my computer all weekend to draw what you see here. It was quite eventful, as anything pertaining to Xena should be.

I started this piece with an ink illustration in mind but by the time I got done with the sketch I liked it so much I decided to trace a copy of what I'd done into my sketchbook so I could do a pencil piece as well. Being pitch black at 11pm and without a light box didn't stop me; I set up a halogen light outside the house to shine in through a window so I could trace on that. In setting this up, I gave myself a (very) minor concussion which (literally) stopped me in my tracks. I was able to continue and finish two days later. ;)

She's about 11"x14" on 110lb paper, inked with Sharpie permanent markers (I couldn't find my Micron pens).
Below is the pencil sketch I was so desperatley trying to preserve with my head-damaging skills.

Nenana Ice Classic Poster

2007-12-01T12:07:00.000-09:00

The Nenana Ice Classic that takes place each year in Alaska. This wooden tripod is assembled and put on the ice of the frozen Tanana River in the town of Nenana. The tripod is rigged to a timer and they have a lottery to see who can guess the time at which the ice goes out - at which point the tripod will topple over, stopping the timer.

This was my entry for a poster contest they advertised in the paper. Full-size it is 18"x24". Any age or medium, the only requirements being the dimensions, the text (as seen here), and that the tripod be on it. This took me about 9 hours to do, in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

The whole thing is original with only slight borrowing of the idea of the clouds from an actual 1930's WPA poster for Yosemite. I did nearly everything in Illustrator; the bridge and tripod were both done with simple paths that I then converted to shapes and distorted and hand-manipulated to give them perspective. Once I got everything the way I wanted it, I copied each element one-by-one into Photoshop as shapes so I could manipulate them individually. Each element got its own folder Group in the Layers palette where I then shaded them to my liking and applied a nice texture I made one day at work. The tripod was originally quite cartoony and it took awhile to get it to be simple without looking cheezy. Being a near-silhouette helps achieve a better look, I think. The text is Kabel (top; an authentic 1930's font) and SignPainter (bottom). I left some room at the bottom for the competition folks to add further text, as it looks like they usually have more info on there.

I'm pretty pleased with how it all turned out. It's tough being really simplistic with shapes without making it all look cartoony. I think everything flows well; I originally sketched it with the tripod and the bridge but no clouds - those came later after I researched WPA posters and saw the Yosemite poster that had them. The clouds really give it a lot of energy and helps pull your eyes back up the 'canvas'.

*Note: I attempted to calibrate my monitor before I did this; the color/brightness may be WAY off at the moment. I'm going to take the file to my office and adjust it on my computer there; if the change is severe, I'll update this post.

** This isn't the final version - This hasn't been color corrected and I changed "2008" to be small and to the right under the main heading.

P.S. - I didn't win! ;)

Dragonfly

2007-08-25T23:28:00.001-08:00

Here are two wallpapers I made of a dragonfly I found on the sidewalk:
Widescreen 1680x1080
Fullscreen 1280x960

I'm working on cleaning up the scan for a left-side of the dragonfly. That way if someone has two monitors side-by-side they get both halves of the dragonfly.

I'd like to do something artistic with this sometime - either in Photoshop or as a painting. The wings are so beautiful - they remind me of the Musée D'Orsay in Paris with its enormous glass and iron canopy - the beauty of humanity's industrial works reflected from nature.

WPA-Style Denali Poster

2007-08-21T18:41:00.000-08:00

Each summer the MSCVB puts out a series of 4 black and white ads, each covering a different aspect of the Mat-Su Borough (glacier hikes, fishing, canoeing/boating, RVing, etc). This year we changed it up a bit by making the ads look like WPA posters from the 1930's, featuring illustrations by me. :D

We've since carried the WPA flavor over to the 2008 Mat-Su Visitor Guide. The guide breaks the Mat-Su Borough into 5 regions and each region gets its own WPA-style postage stamp. The above image is actually for the "Off the Beaten Path" region, which is everything in the borough that is not road-accessible, but I thought the sky was a good place for text and so dressed it up as a Denali poster just for fun.

The background is closely based on an actual WPA poster for Montana or something - the mountains came pre-resembling Denali so I borrowed their design, though drew it from scratch and did my own color theme. The Cessna 180 is from a photo I took - the colors are totally changed (the original plane was white with brown).

I'll have to upload those ads and the other stamps sometime.

Anteater Wallet

2007-08-08T23:55:00.002-08:00

I simply adore Engrish.com! My sister and I were wondering to ourselves if it would be possible to create our own Engrish, seeing as how we have a firm grasp of the English language and really, it takes a feeble and carefree grasp of English in order to produce quality Engrish. So we did this MadLibs style: Kaisa randomly picked an animal while I picked a promotional paragraph on some product I had in my room. She picked an anteater and I had picked hand warmers. Next, I had Kais (who didn't know what my product was) give me a noun here or adjective there and took out most of the words in the sentences. And I made a wallpaper out of it.

So no, this is not authentic Engrish! but it is authentic Kara art. The anteater is mine, all mine! The kanji says "wallet" and "giant anteater", à la Wikipedia. Background texture in the wallpaper is mine as well.

Bumble Bee

2007-07-20T07:30:00.001-08:00

Sometimes art kind of makes itself.
I found this bumble bee on the floor at work and had the thought of scanning her at the highest resolution possible with our Epson V700. The image is enormous and the detail fabulous. The sheet of paper I put over her kind of makes this nice fuzzy blue backdrop - kind of feels peaceful. I think with the way the bee's head is tucked makes her look sad or shy and tired. Or possibly just dead, but hey. ;) It might be kind of fun to do a quick painting of this sometime.

Knik Car: Battery/Fuel

2007-06-23T08:46:00.001-08:00

This is a photograph of what I am currently painting. With work getting busy it's been awhile since I've worked on it but I thought I'd share the progress anyway - that's the point of this blog, right? :) Anyway, it's the driver side dash board of one of the cars the military put into the Knik River bank to help stop/slow bank erosion over by the hatchery. There's quite a lot of interesting stuff over there besides cars: stoves, refrigerators, barrels, old tin cans with still-readable labels... Some of the cars were in the bank and some weren't doing much as far as erosion prevention and were just sitting along the river, making for scenic abandoned photography. I plan to paint some of those, as they're probably more appealing to folks, but I liked the dash on this car and thought I could play up the contrast in the blue distant background/chrome and the orange rust.

Left: The canvas with the final sketch on it before I start blocking everything in.

Right: is the first phase of blocking. Currently it has more shadows and some of the birch trees semi-blocked into the blue distant background but this is pretty close. Color-wise, the painting won't really resemble the photograph, which is pretty common for me as I tend to paint pretty saturatedly, which I like. For instance, the Generator/Compressor original photograph was really washed out, the rust was more purple-looking, and the overal image was cold. I'm no photographer - when I take photos I'm more concerned about composition, subject, and angle of light, in that order. Everything else I can make up.

This piece will be a challenge. I had to teach myself how to do rust on the Generator/Compressor and hopefully I've retained something from that but I've not done moss before - and I don't want to do it in the 'easy' Bob Ross style. I will be playing down the moss and concentrating on bringing out the chrome in good contrast - it's all about the dashboard, "Battery/Fuel" (yay for slash names!) :)

Generator/Compressor: Original

2007-06-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

I found the original photo of the Generator/Compressor! You can see how washed out it is and not very orange. I had done some Photoshop tutorial practice using the image that darkened the background elements and was inspired to do the painting that way to bring out the foreground elements. Below is the final painting for comparison:

On my monitor at home the painting looks a bit green but at work it looks okay. I hate the inability to achieve true color across the board with monitors and the internet. Grr.

Generator/Compressor

2007-06-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

click to view larger image

24" x 18" oil on canvas, 2006

Close up of large black pressure gauge
Close up of large white water cooler gauge

This is my most recent finished oil painting, completed in 2006. I estimate the time it took to be two to two-and-a-half weeks but I can't be sure since I started the painting in 2005 and went for months in between painting sessions. I do know that the large white gauge took 6 hours to complete.

The subject is an air compressor/generator used for powering mining drill bits that I found up above Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass, just outside of my hometown of Palmer, Alaska. I'll have to post photos of the entire thing sometime - it's built into its own trailer and is clear up a mountain side, left to die and rust. Abandoned things are my favorite subject matter because of their unknown history. They invite the viewer to imagine who first owned it, who left it there, is anyone still alive who ever knew the object, was it working when it was abandoned? Some day there may be no humans alive who know what the item was really all about, how it worked, how it behaved, any quirks it might of had. Catalogue descriptions will of faded and the item itself may be rusted to bits and all we'll have left are any possible photographs (or paintings!) that folks like me thought to take along the way.

Here are some in-progress photos I took for posterity:
1) Canvas drawing
2) Blocking
3) Shadows added
4) More details

Kennicott

2007-06-01T09:36:00.001-08:00

click to view larger

18" x 24" oil on canvas, 2004/5

This is my second to last most recent (as of this post) oil painting, of some buildings at Kennicott, Alaska that were part of the Kennecott (yes, different spelling) copper mining operation there. I painted this from a photograph I took in the 90's sometime. The composition isn't so great and I knew it from the start but I wanted to paint it anyway, a) just because I wanted to paint and b) because of all the different elements and details it would be good practice.

Again, I painted this over the course of a year, starting in Portland, OR and finishing in Alaska, but it probably took 2 weeks to complete.

The Last Kiss

2007-06-01T08:33:00.002-08:00

20" x 30" oil on canvas
February 2002

This is my best known painting to date and is the first painting I did on my own after I got out of highschool. It's a copy of a production shot from the last episode of Xena: Warrior Princess that you see around the web. I printed out the shot at nearly the same size as the canvas (tiled out of QuarkXPress) and painted from that. It took about a week (compressed) to do. The scan doesn't do it any justice; the colors are much richer in the actual painting.

Again, as a disclaimer: I painted this for fun for myself in honor of a show that meant a lot to me as I went through some tough self-realisation in life. The original image does not belong to me and I'm not making a dime from this painting.

Sketchbook

2007-05-30T10:58:00.001-08:00

pen, 2007

Here are two pen sketches I did this spring from random photos I found online. The mom & cub sketch was from a National Geographic Society magazine. As a disclaimer, these were drawn soley for practice and I'm not making a penny from them - they aren't mine.

I made a 1920px widescreen desktop wallpaper of the wolf mom & cub image using my own brushes and textures in Photoshop here. I'll have to create and upload different screen sizes later.

Teryl Rothery

2007-05-29T15:24:00.003-08:00

digital illustration
Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
September 9, 2006

Hallalundi said she'd kick my ass if I didn't participate in the 2006 Teryl Rothery contest, a fan art/fan fic contest put on by Terylicious.net. So, not wanting my ass to be kicked, I participated. Which was good because I hadn't done a digital illustration in over a year.

Teryl photo from http://terylicious.net/. Other photo textures from myself and Deborah Schildt

I did it for print, so the original (not online) is 300dpi at 20" wide. I made it in widescreen monitor dimensions so it would be easy to downsize for wallpapers. For the curious, this was done in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS and took about 9 hours to complete. I drew all the shapes in Illustrator, then imported the paths to Photoshop where I colored them each individually, airbrushed/blended areas, and added details (hair, shine) and textures. The only filter used was Gaussian Blur on the background. I'll put together a quick visual walkthrough in PDF format sometime later today.

Wallpapers
1024x768
1152x864
1680x1050 (widescreen)

Soccer Ball

2007-03-12T11:18:00.001-08:00

12" x 7", oils on canvas, 2005

As part of a self-challenge, on my LiveJournal I asked friends to give me photos that I might try to draw or paint. My friend Hope Preston gave me an image of a soccer ball that I painted in half a day, non-stop. It's about 12" by 7", oils. It was done sometime in the fall of 2005.

Disclaimer: the original image is not mine - I did this painting for fun and practice and did not make a penny on it.

Tipping the Velvet

2007-03-05T14:14:00.001-09:00

digital illustrations
Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop
May 20th & May ?, 2005

These are both from the BBC film Tipping the Velvet, based on screenshots I took from the DVD. Drawn in Adobe Illustrator CS and colored in Adobe Photoshop CS. Not much else to say about them other than to disclaim that the originals are not mine and do not belong to me - I created these for fun, for love of the film, and for practice and I did not make a penny from any of it.

Wonder Woman

2007-02-24T14:49:00.002-09:00

10" x 14"?, ink, Feb. 2006

I was supposed to send my friend InstantAmazon a doodle, and couldn't think of anything, so I asked for a topic and she said people. On my last day of house sitting I came across this Wonder Woman comic in Spanish -- the title and issue number are written on the image there for refrence. So this is drawn from an image out of that comic. The only thing I did different was where the lasso begins and ends, making it a bit more dynamic visually, and her face, mostly her mouth, is different since I really can't draw those retro late-70's early 80's big lips they used to do - at least, I've never had practice. ;)

Here's a link to the original English issue of Wonder Woman which includes a picture of the original that I was drawing from (scroll down): http://www.amazonarchives.com/ww232.htm

Also, here is a 1260px widescreen wallpaper version I created:

Again, not mine - drawn for fun and practice and I didn't make a dime.

Quick Portraits

2007-02-12T12:18:00.001-09:00

I did a challenge on my LiveJournal where I asked my friends to give me photos of themselves and I would have an hour to draw each person. I went over time on all but the last one of Eric (the pencil line one), which I did in 34 minutes.

Eclipse

2007-01-24T11:37:00.000-09:00

9' x 2' ink-on-canvas, 2000?

from my LiveJournal, 18th-Jan-2004:
This is a 2 foot by 9 foot triptych I did as an experimental final project for Advanced Drawing in college at the end of 2000, I believe. In that class we had to choose an art style we'd like to experiment with and study, and I chose the neo-art neuveau look of Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise). This project wasn't done to mimick his style, but was an experiment in a more comic-looking linework using an experimental medium some classmates of mine in highschool stumbled upon. I actually did this in 16 and a half hours the night before it was due. It was fun but taxing - it's flipping HUGE. I had to paint all three canvases at the same time to ensure even color throughout .... anyway, it was quite the endeavor.

After hanging on a hall wall at the college for half a year, I finally lugged it home and then up to Alaska where it is living behind my mom's couch (we have no walls long enough for it). Being so large I only have these low-quality digital photos of the painting.

It's called "Eclipse". It had a lot of meaning when I did it, but I don't really remember most of it now. I do remember balancing it so it specifically goes from complex to simplistic, from left to right. I like the last panel the best and the first panel the least.

Ink Wolf

2007-01-15T13:02:00.000-09:00

24" x 36" ink on canvas, December 1999

This was based on a dream I had, which I won't go into, but it's about survival of the spirit. Totally out of my head. This painting is a huge reason of why I am so hesitant to let go of any of my work. I sent it to the person who was in the dream as a gift and she's since moved to a different country, the painting left behind with her mother whom has since moved. I pray the painting didn't get thrown out as I put a lot of work (12 hours) and heart into it. My only copy is a Xerox made of 4 sheets of 11x17 (B) that I scanned and stitched together in Photoshop.

What I have been up to

2007-01-10T18:59:00.000-09:00

For folks who stumble upon this and haven't seen me since college or highschool, here's a bit of an update:

The fall after highschool graduation I started college in the Graphic Design program at the Art Institute of Portland, then a very tiny place consisting of two buildings and maybe 300 students. While Art Institutes have their drawbacks, the small community meant I got a lot of one-on-one time and the entire process was very personable for me. I took (and even helped create) every illustration and fine-art type class they had and graduated with a bachelors of science in graphic design (with honors, woo).

After college, I got an at-home job digitally illustrating a variety of items for the Johnstone Supply parts catalogue. It was seasonal and the faster my turnaround, the more work I got. Because I was their only digital illustrator, my work was cleaner and I could turn around illustrations faster so I became their lead illustrator. I drew an insane amount of electric motors, switches, odd plumbing items, and all manner of things. It was fun and I really got to hone my Adobe Illustrator skills.

Unfortunately, after two summers of that, JS decided to switch to photography so I packed up and moved back home to Alaska

Moving home was hard but turned out to be the best thing, career wise. In the 'states they tell you that you must specialise - you cannot do both graphic design and illustrate. I knew better about Alaska and I was right. I've done a little bit of both since I've been back and in 2005 I got a job working for Whittington-Evans Communications (WEC) (Chris). Chris also does double-duty as an architect and we share office space with his work partner, Gary, who is an architect. We're combining businesses at the moment and it's fun. I get to do most of the graphic design work with Chris acting as an art director, not just for the graphic design side of things but I get to do graphics for architecture as well.

Currently...
So WEC is where I currently work. We do everything from business identity to brochures, ads to posters, pamphlets to entire magazine-sized documents, including the Mat-Su Visitor Guide, which I must say is one of the better looking guides in the state. ;) At WEC I've been able to impliment every graphic design trick taught to me at the Art Institute as well as all of my Illustrator tricks taught to me by the fantastic Lisa Johnston/Kelson.

Sadly, my fine arts have fallen by the wayside. Though I took every opportunity to create paintings while I was in college, life took some crazy turns that did not include much in the way of art. Since highschool I have completed a total of three oil paintings on my own that were not school related. The good news is that they are far and beyond any other paintings I have ever created and I have to say I'm rather happy with myself. Due to some recent life stresses and haunting dreams, I've begun pushing myself to paint.

I've always had a passion for abandoned old things, places like abandoned mines and burnt out buildings, things like old train cars and vehicles used to halt erosion along river banks. Odd things found in the middle of nowhere with little clue as to how they came to be there. A lot of these things are self evident as to how they got to be where they are and why they were abandoned but there are plenty of things people are starting to forget about. In just a generation or two, no one will recall anything about these abandoned items. I think it's facinating to wonder about what these things were like when they were new and when was the last time anyone cared for it?

It began with an ill-composed painting of some of the Kennecott mill buildings in Kennicott, Alaska. Piles of wrecked boards and twisted rails with mostly standing buildings. Fun. The second I call "Generator/Compressor" - it's an abandoned air compressor used to drive drill bits for mining in ore. It was left halfway up a mountain in Hatcher Pass - I did a painting of the control panel and nearby parts. I'm currently working on a painting of the dashboard of an abandoned car that was one of dozens used to stop the Knik river from eating away at a local fishing stream. Next I may do more of the abandoned cars, all from the 50's and back, and then one of Independence Mine. Or rather, the board pile that is left. A woman in charge of the tourism element of Kennecott expressed interest in my Kennecott painting so I'd like to do more of those as well.

Right now I don't have time to do a whole lot of paintings, nor do I have the room or facilities for it. I'd like to get enough together to do an "Abandonings" show, and then expand into site-specific series, one for Hatcher Pass/Independence Mine and one for Kennecott, as those would have good commercial value as well as just being fun and interesting to do.

And that's about the size of it.

Welcome to my art blog

2007-01-04T10:53:00.000-09:00

I've decided to create this blog as a way of keeping friends and family updated as to my progress with art. I generally post most things in my LiveJournal but not everyone has an LJ, so here we are.

Howlsthunder Art will only be used for my art: old art, new art, things in progress, ideas, sketches, digital art, and fine art. I'll post practice things as well as original pieces. I'm not very prolific so I'll try to throw in some 'blasts from the past' to keep things moving and we'll see how it goes!

This post was backdated, originally written in May - I moved it back in order to scatter posts apart to shorten by-month archive view-times.