Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Sketchbook Project

Check out http://www.thesketchbookproject.com/. They will send you a sketchbook for $13 (part of the proceeds benefit a rape crisis center). You fill the sketchbook with anything you want relating to the theme (fears), and it will be put on display during an exhibit on October 27th. I think this is a really cool concept.

Hurry and register as there are only 85 books left!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Logo Design 2

I just thought I'd post with the latest change to the "sshabang" logo I am working on. I changed the tail a little on this one to better match my original sketch. I'm still waiting to hear back from my friend regarding any changes he may like.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Logo Design

I have been working on my 1st freelance project which is a logo design. The logo is for a software program that works as an installer for OpenBSD (the program was tentatively called "sshabang"). A friend of mine is in charge of the software updates and was looking for a new logo. So I started coming up with some preliminary sketches that incorporated aspects of the OpenBSD blow fish. The OpenBSD blowfish logo is copyrighted by OpenBSD.

The best 2 ideas were a bomb with spikes, and a series of cogs that morphed into the fish. I was thinking of "Spy vs. Spy" when I drew the bomb, and then added spikes to mimic the fish, and just make it look menacing. However, it was mistaken for a stick of dynamite in the fish's butt, so I guess I didn't convey the look I was going for. My friend preferred the cog logo, so I went to work in Illustrator and came up with 3 designs (all basically the same). The design is not finalized yet, and I think I need to work on some aspects (like the tail). Once I get some feedback I will be sure to post updates.


Sunday, July 15, 2007

About my blog

So the reason I am starting this blog is because my goal is to one day have a successful freelance art career. I have no formal art training, but I am hoping to go back to school soon. This blog is just a way for me to document the journey. It will be cool to see how I've progressed (especially with digital art...I'm trying to teach myself Illustrator & Photoshop now). Hopefully this will become a place where people can share tips and give constructive criticism.

Some old pencil drawings

A sketch of a convergent lady beetle I did:




Sugar maple leaves drawn with carbon dust on drafting film. This was my first time working with drafting film and carbon dust. I quickly learned that fingerprints on film are a bad thing! However, it did end up creating some interesting texture effects. After completing this drawing, I ruined the whole thing by trying to backpaint it.
I took an adult continuing ed drawing class, and one night we had to draw a wine glass still life set-up. We covered the entire piece of paper with carbon dust, and then completed the drawing by adding darker values, or erasing to create lighter values.




Some old digital drawings....

This was the 1st picture I ever did on the computer....I used Corel Painter (using the Pencil tool) and a Wacom tablet:


I then took the same picture and played with the oil pastel tool in Corel Painter:


When I bought Adobe Creative Suite 2, I was playing with the Live Trace and Live Paint features. The coloring is completely off, but I thought it looked cool anyway.