Green Vesper

So this is pretty late, but I just finished cleaning it up. It's an illustration inspired by a drink called a "Green Vesper." The Vesper was "created" by Ian Fleming in one of his James Bond novels, and to my understanding it's mostly a very specific kind of martini. The green version just substitutes absinthe in for Kina Lillet. Big thanks to Kali Ciesemier for the help and encouragement with this one!

Wardruna, Sabriel, and Things That Happen

So, after a pretty long dry spell, I'm back in the game! It's been a weird semester, sorting some stuff out with myself, but I have new work to show! After a disastrous month-long computer breakdown, I have a new laptop and have resumed work on Wardruna. Hoping to submit it to Spectrum in January. Also, here's my first "finished" piece from my current semester of thesis, in which I attempt to create something resembling the pre-production work for an imaginary 2D animated adaption of Sabriel, by Garth Nix.

Sabriel's been a huge influence on me, and working on this project has always been a huge personal goal for me, so despite the stuff I've been dealing with lately, it's pretty gratifying to have this piece done finally. I'll update more pieces and eventually cleaned up sketches and such to add on to this. Enjoy :)

Mike Simpson: A Patient Soul

There you have it! Back to front, Mike Simpson's debut album is out now on Bandcamp! That's Mike Simpson, ladies and gents, and that's my work on the album art! LET EM KNOW

HELLO, 2011

Wow, that's a lot of non-updating for this blog....since December! Well, it's a new year now, so happy 2011 people. A lot of artwork has been made since the last update, and I will be faithfully trying to bring more of that to light. In the mean time, if you are too impatient, go ahead and check my website! YAODRAWS.COM It's totally up to date and has a whole mess of credibility now that it's on a paid server. Go on and drop by!

Here I am just trying out some simple, 2D portraits as a series of my friends at MICA. All done in Photoshop, averaging at a measly 1.5 - 2 hours each. Hoping to continue this series, and maybe one day in the distant distant future people will be paying me to do drawings like these. ONE DAY. In the meantime, note how each person's name is hand lettered, and relates to the person's interests or character! Yes, I know, I'm that awesome. Updates to continue!

Jambvant, King of Bears

He's the bear King!

TIME Cover

So my most recent assignment was to redo the cover of TIME's Aug. 30 issue for Concepts. I did Uncle Sam as a crusader, making the link with the medieval hunting of Muslims and connecting that to the question "Is America Islamophobic?" Hope it reads well enough. 11 hours, Photoshop.

Constitution Day Response

So for Constitution Day MICA held a panel about equal marriage rights featuring Dan Savage, Sharon Hayes, and Dr. Kendall Thomas, and moderated by NPR's Aaron Henkin. After attending, I made this piece in response to the issues discussed.

Spacemen

First short in my Sequential Arts class this fall! I like how it turned out. The assignment was to do a four-panel short where the phrase "this isn't going to work" was the only dialogue allowed, and only in one of the four panels. The concept was to portray a certain mood. I had a hell of a time figuring out how to get a decent screentone, and am still amazed that I cannot seem to find actual screentone brushes for photoshop. Inked with a brush, and then colored in CS4.

Tattoo?

Direct linking failed... Here's a small drawing. Originally for practicing painting tattoos, but only after I rendered the skin did I realize that the original resolution was too small to do any fine details, so after a few tries I gave up. I'll just have to learn how to paint tattoos the original way....or the Shawn Barber way? Time will tell.

Concept art: Monster

So here's what I've been working on. A pretty big file, full sized. Here's a smaller preview. I'm pretty happy with how it's going. Sorry for the washed out color, I've figured out what's making that happen, more or less, but haven't yet found a way around it.

Also, I'm totally getting a website made! View my progress HERE
My super awesome friend Robin has been helping me set this up, she's great at webdesign. Let me know if you want her contact info!

Illustration Friday: Breakfast

Hey again people! Just got back from Florida. Here's my (first ever!) submission for this week's IF topic, breakfast. I am beginning to think that maybe I should be calibrating my screen display settings or something, because I am still having this problem where when I upload anything at all (or save as a bmp) my images lose saturation drastically and are dulled down significantly. I'm not terribly torn up about this one though, because it gives the piece a slightly faded, old-timey diner look but NONETHELESS. Someone help me figure this out! Is it CS4? Is it just web colors being web colors? Is it my display settings? Is it something about how I am saving or uploading these images??? Assisstance would be preferred.

Also, comments. Thanks!

Mickey!

Hello, boys and girls. Here I have a personal piece that I started about two weeks ago. I was experimenting with a different coloring method in photoshop that will give a much cleaner, more graphic look to my work. Actually quite happy with how this turned out. I worked on and off, every once in a while as a break from doing commissions and stuff. I was inspired after watching Gaga's Alejandro video and finding some random picture of a Mickey Mouse halloween costume on tokyodandy.com.

My girlfriend Ashley did a parallel piece of Minnie, here!

comic: "See No Evil"

FINALLY my comic that I made for my Illustration 2 final is here! Loosely based on three chapters from the Chinese epic "Journey West" (also known as "Monkey" or "Monkey King"). I'll add more information to this post later.

SPACE JAIL

Space Jail was a pseudo parody collaborative effort by the MICA sequential arts club, about the events surrounding an intergalactic Repo-man named Vlad and his adventures abroad a Galactic maximum space prison. Read more about it at the space jail blog.
My sections above were both two pages each, the bottom ones being the intro and the two on top are a separate scene.

The linework is pencil and the shading is awful photoshop work, so I'm going to redo those later on probably.

Radiolab!

Finally! The first assignment that I am really quite fond of from Illustration 2. Struggled unbelievably hard with this one. Debating whether or not to put the Radiolab logo in there.

My subject was Morality. I will add to this post later to explain when I've had some sleep, maybe.

Juicy, delicious slabs of meat.

USDA APPROVED.

Okay, so this is the first piece I am at all proud of from this semester.
The idea was to create an organic alphabet for Hand Letters that draws from something found in nature. I was mildly annoyed by this until Chris suggested I do meat. Sexy, sexy slabs of MEAT.

Naturally, I was enthused. I painted the alphabet in acrylic and then created a poster to advertise the release of a fictional book. Holy gods I hope Virginia Temple isn't a real author.

Props to Maria for modeling her beautiful self.

Zodiac Part 1

3/5 Spot Illustrations done for Daniel Krall's Zodiac assignment. More coming later.

The God In The River

Awwwww hells YES.
So I've been working on this piece for like, an entire week, just to polish it up for scholarships and for Society of Illustrators. Here's the original ink and graphite, versus the final colored piece. This looks nothing like what I did in class.
This illustration was a non-literal interpretation of a remix of "My Sweet Shadow" by the band In Flames. I listened to the song, and wrote down what I heard instead of the actual lyrics, and then used the images I came up with as a spring board for that. The actual process was more complicated, but that's it in a nutshell.

Hammering Heads

Done!

Operation: Defy Boredom

So I'm working on something new, to keep my head from imploding from boredom. This is a semi-self portrait, based on a dream I had recently. I honestly don't remember anything about the dream except it included explosions, casual business attire, and hammerhead sharks.


Go ahead and fullview 'em for full detail.