This illo is for the Illustration Friday theme “Wilderness”.
It took me about 6.5 hours from ball point pen sketch to final digital image.
The work in progress thread can be found here.
Feel free to visit the rest of my blog. It’s new and improved!
Posted on 19 January '10 by ognus, under Illustration and Design. 11 Comments.
—————-UPDATE: 1-19—————–
All finished! See it here.
I added highlights, details and a few shadows. I adjusted the line color and darkness and got fancy with a splotchy shaped brush via blur tool for the clouds. For the highlights I created a layer under the line art and set it to overlay. Then I used a very light cyan (I prefer it to white) to add the highlights to each leaf and stone. Finally, I added my secret watercolor method to make the picture look like it has layers and soluble grime mixed in with the colors, as well as some detailing with various shaped brushes.
—————-UPDATE: 1-18 —————–
Filled in the base colors. I am keeping the background, grass, river, golemn and line art as separate layers. Now I will go to work on the meticulous highlights.
————————— Previous ———————-
This weeks Illustration Friday theme is “Wilderness.” This is the Work in Progress (WIP) topic for this theme. I will update this blog post as I make progress on the illo, and then create a new post with the final illustration, hopefully by Thursday.
I start with a ballpoint pen sketch. I love sketching with a ballpoint pen because it is fast, messy, cheap and I can almost always find one. Something about drawing with a ballpoint pen unlocks the part of my brain that is willing to think the drawing is unimportant. If I use a pencil I feel like my pencil strokes are more labored and forced. A good sketch should be stream of conscious like. This sketch is about 4 inches by 3 inches. A good policy for thumbnail sketches is to use post it notes. Having a smaller canvas allows for faster brainstorming and ensures the artist is less likely to get lost or bored (which I can easily do if I am performing my exploratory work on a larger scale. Keep exploration simple.)
Benefits to thumbnail sketching are:
For “Wilderness” I got the idea of a giant golemn made of river stones that had frozen in place over a stream, perhaps while getting a drink. He has been there for ages and a veritable wilderness has sprung up all over him.
From there I lay down some larger messy blue lines with a non photo blue pencil on a much larger canvas (9×12 inches). I have been using a Prismacolor Non Photo Blue pencil, but they are too waxy and don’t erase well. I prefer one that is erasable and a little lighter. For this illustration, instead of using drafting pens to go over the blue lines, I am using two mechanical pencil widths. A 0.5mm for the fine details and a 0.9mm for the larger contour lines.
TIP: It is important to use a small piece of paper between the illo and the drawing hand, to prevent smearing.
Once I scan the finished drawing into Photoshop I select “Greyscale” and the blue lines go away, as the reader can see below.
From here, I will fill in basic colors and lay down a background. Stay tuned. . .
Posted on 17 January '10 by ognus, under Illustration and Design, Sketches. 11 Comments.
Here are my last two FocusZine designs from work.
I’ve abandoned the idea of a header banner and moved to a more organic integrated full page design.
Posted on 14 January '10 by ognus, under Web Design. 4 Comments.
Believe it or not, Og was not always as refined and upstanding as he is today. As this actual photo from his childhood can attest, Og was once a wild and ferocious beast.
The reader will notice the sharp teeth common to feral carnivores. Also notice the unkempt mane of hair so often found among the non domesticated. The scar beneath the eye indicates the child has seen battle and survived it. Notice the sparse amount of clothing; the creature obviously did not feel comfortable in the garb of man. The beastly boy had a white line across his nose, evidence of time spent in the blistering sunshine. The bandaged knee indicates this stray may have had a caretaker of some sort. Lastly, notice the magnetic attraction the dandelion exhibits toward the boy, indicating a possible mystical property.
Today, perhaps, Og is a well dressed denizen of civilized society. Lets not forget his animalistic roots, less someday he return to them; the reader found unprepared.
Posted on 13 January '10 by ognus, under Chibiogi. 5 Comments.
As a child, I lived on Charlestown Loop at 4090b. Somebody else lives there now. Being a military base, all residents are transitional. Nobody I knew still lives there. The loop is not my loop. I like to think, however, that my childhood ghosts still run those streets. Some figment, former self all full of glee. A bookmark for me to return to in the next life.
Sonny cut a frog in half with a kitchen knife. Joseph fell all the way down from the top of a tree and all he broke was his thumb. Gilbert’s dog bit Og’s face off. Og’s teeth are sharper now. He has a faint scar beneath his right eye. Cliff never got caught stealing. Sonny died in a bank robbery. Og got the chicken pox. Cliff let him borrow Final Fantasy while he was sick. Becky had a crush on Og, but Og was too young to care. Og fancied Gilbert’s sister Connie. He tried to touch her hand, once. Summer ate candy off the ground. Reed jumped off the roof and broke his ankle. Daniel’s mom was an officer but she was all alone. Chris told on everyone. Nobody liked Chris. Angel’s mom made good oatmeal. Juan ran faster than all of us. Og sneezed once, and everything came out. Embarrassed, he laid his head on his desk and wondered what to do; paralyzed. Juan quietly brought him a tissue and said “Here, use this”. He never told anyone. Gardner’s dad beat him up. So Gardner beat his mother up. Gardner won a vanilla ice CD by doing the chicken dance. His dad made him throw it away. Josh, Jeremy and Jared were jocks. They had a motorcycle. Little Paul died of half a heart. He was slumped over his big wheel, looking so tired the day he died. His father gave him beer once and tried to spoil him rotten. The girl with the different colored eyes showed everyone her chest. Og? He burnt the place down. A mile and a half of it anyway. It was on the news. Neighbors sat in their backyards with hoses, fighting off the fringe of the blaze.
Then they all moved away. To other states. To other bases.
The street was the shape of a giant horseshoe and rested on a hill. The beginning and the end of the street were both outlets on the same main road, being a horseshoe. But the loop is where we all played between the houses and in the fields. There were not many fences, like there are now. Everyones yard mixed together and a boy could run two miles before worrying about a fence. Behind this loop was a massive field full of dead trees, bugs, frogs, abandoned forts, and The Warehouse. The Warehouse was an old storage building the military had abandoned. It was two stories high with a massive metal door down the middle as if the building was built for one half to be protected from the other. It took all of us to slide the massive door shut. The building was full of abandoned goods. A pool table, long flourescant light bulbs that popped when smashed, furniture and military gadgets all taken apart and left in pieces. All of these components ended up becoming a part of the fort.
It seemed to me, as a kid, the entire place was covered in frogs.
Posted on 11 January '10 by ognus, under General Musings, Illustration and Design. 9 Comments.
This illo began life as a pencil sketch from Deb Day Newey’s sketchbook. I peeked at it once, when she wasn’t looking. A few weeks later it showed up on her blog and I was instantly inspired to add some visual garnish to the sketch. Deb was nice enough to send me her sketch so that I could draw over it.
Method: I used the pen tool in Photoshop to create smooth and simple contour lines over the pencil art. I drew the headphones in Photoshop with the pen tool and my wacom tablet. I remembered Deb’s Eames chair drawings and requested those also. She complied and I mixed the chairs (100% Deb illos) into the medley of bursting art. The city, tree and birds are photoshop brushes I stamped in. The 3 dimensional musical notes and stars I created in Photoshop.
Meaning: Notice how Deb’s face is in color near the music source. Where her creative life begins? Also, her eyelashes are meant to be a graphic equalizer: the idea that her sight is augmented by music. The title “Creative Suicide” has to do with the way music can help and hinder an artist in the act of creation. Perhaps some music inspires life and adventure, and art is put away. And some might inspire feelings and thoughts and artistry, and life is put away. It’s madness.
Oh, and Deb’s a Saint. Literally.
Posted on 11 January '10 by ognus, under Illustration and Design. 4 Comments.
Coming out of my funk, I sketched a man sitting on a stop light. I’ve had the image in my head for awhile now and decided to make it my first full illustration of the post-funk era. There are 9 elements of meaning to this piece. See the image at the bottom of this post.
The image below can be zoomed for detail using the mouse of the buttons that appear when hovering. Use the right most button to see the image in full screen mode. Thanks for looking.
Posted on 9 January '10 by ognus, under Illustration and Design. 6 Comments.
This year I decided to work on my figure drawing every day. All year. I am 8 days into it (which reminds me, I need to draw today!). Here are my first 8 days.
The viewer utilizes SeaDragon. Try zooming in, zooming out and toggling full screen for all the painful details. It’s neat. It works really well with a scroll mouse. To scroll the page instead of zoom the image, just move the mouse cursor off the blog post.
Posted on 9 January '10 by ognus, under Sketches. 3 Comments.
Well, here we are again.
You and me.
The Reader. The Writer. The Feeder. The Blighter. Welcome to an obscure, little known blog by an even more obscure, lesser known artist. I’m a nobody, which is the synonym for most of us dreamers.
My blog has been submerged in the deep and murky vicissitudes of life and living. I struggled with creating art for about 9 months. It was a horrible season. Periodically, I would attempt to redesign my blog. To start an art fit. To get things rolling again. But the time wasn’t right. Well’s ran dry. I was experiencing a profound creative famine. Where were my whispers? My unseen friends that seem to fill my heart with words to say? Where was my observant eye? My inward voice? All of these things fed my blog. My sketchbook. My dreams. Perhaps I had done something to numb my ears to them. Most likely they were screaming at me and I went about my ignorant life aloof. It was paralysis.
I’ve always drawn. Its just what I do. Who I am. I write. I draw. Occurrences at work, home and everywhere seemed all to conspire to turn me from art (and more than that, from self). Every aspect of my life has experienced some trial over the last year. Mostly, those problems which beset me are not over. They still bawl against me, for the most part. Loudly. But they’ll not turn me around. I am an artist. A writer. It’s who I am.
This is my blog.
Posted on 9 January '10 by ognus, under General Musings. 3 Comments.
Og stares ponderously to the left of his readers, avoiding eye contact with visitors. Mr. Og is an artist living in Clinton, Utah. This is his blog. A place for him to pour himself into. Og is rather gelatinous. Like putty, he settles into form. Right now, Og is the shape of your monitor.
Copyright 2010 by The Og Blog. Feel free to burn the place down.
Original design by My Web Caffe. CSS hijacked and artistically modified by Og.
