Thought Process, Continued

After completing the thumbnails for the Strokes illustration (see previous post), I realized that the majority of them were only of the band or Julian Casablancas posing. Yes, a straightforward idea that had the potential to be illustrated well, but most likely not stick with the viewer. I want to avoid someone looking at it, saying, "oh, nice picture" then moving on to something else. I'd rather stop someone in their tracks to think further about the image they see, even if they interpret something different from what I had imagined.

(materials: pencil and charcoal)

I decided to go with the thumbnail of Julian Casablancas with the Rubik's cube. Sounds strange, but it was the string of ideas I had that lead me to this thought. The album is an interesting blend of their consistent "rock" sound with a twist of eighties pop. The songs vary in the ratio of those sounds, but that's what I generally perceived from the album and the Rolling Stones review. The idea of illustrating the combination of opposite sounds was a challenge I wanted to take on. I did so by emphasizing the "rocker" look of Julian Casablancas (in my opinion, an image that fans of the band are aware of) and the Rubik's cube, a famous puzzle popular in the eighties. I thought it would be interesting to represent the Rubik's cube as a puzzle Casablancas tries to solve in this album; the problem being re-imaging the band without losing their loyal fanbase.

Drawings and Thought Process

(I apologize in advance if the photos aren't too good quality! A busted graphics card in my laptop leaves me to use school computers and scanners, which is never fun.)

Below: Steve Aoki, people in the library, and another character sheet.

 Below is my drafting for an editorial illustration. The article was about the Strokes new album, Angles, taken from Rolling Stone magazine. The most important thing about going from article to illustration is taking note of key words from the article. This should help narrow down the main theme of the illustration (writing down these thoughts and ideas are important when wanting your illustration to communicate the article's message!). I'm a huge fan of this album, so getting into the material and understanding it was no problem for me. The last thing I wanted to do was to simply draw/paint the band members. So here, I wanted to focus on how the album experiments with a pop/electronic sound while still maintaining their signature rock sound. In my next update, you'll see where these thoughts and ideas will lead to...

Special Post!

I was completely surprised and flattered to find that my work is being featured on EatSleepDraw TV! Go to their site and follow them! I've done so for about a year now, and it's definitely a great community for rising artists.

Pencils, Peeps, and Animals!

I haven't worked with pencil rendering in a while...(click to see the details)

Tried to draw a figure from the imagination. Time for some figure drawing classes!

My work is seriously lacking animal drawings...I'll be doing creature designs for one of my current projects, so time to get inspired by animals!

Playing around with the idea of using shapes to create varieties of characters. 

I've been trying to churn out as many different types of characters as possible...and some caricatures. If there's anything more difficult than making up people, it's capturing the likeness of a real person. I'll be practicing with this as often as possible.

Introspective

While browsing the web last week, I came across an art contest being held by V Magazine. The contest is about Lady Gaga becoming a columnist for the magazine, and they want an illustrated piece of the pop star. The winner will get their piece published next to her column in the May issue. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it out! Unfortunately, I wasn't chosen as a finalist.

Initially, I was disappointed (it would've been incredible to have my work published in V Magazine!). Rather than feel pessimistic that my work wasn't chosen, it's better for me to say "oh well!" and move on to something else. It felt good to find a rare opportunity like this to showcase my work. These losses happen in your art career in order for you to learn from them. The most important thing I learned from this is that to get the results you want, you need to be proactive and take chances! I'm only at the beginning of my professional career. There's so much to look forward to in my future...as long as I always put in the effort.