First day of gesture class!

Today was the first day of Ryan Woodward's gesture drawing class, which I have been wanting to get into for 2 years lol–  I'm so psyched!  We had a sub today, the incredibly talented Cynthia Hogan, who was incidentally my very first figure drawing teacher :) It was a blast.  Here are a few of my favorite sketches from the session:

Lol my buddy Mitch (plug!) started drawing some of the poses as Marvel Avengers in honor of the movie coming out next week.  He did hulk, so I decided to do iron man lol:

(cleanup and shades in phootoshop)

"City of Enoch" concept

This one's part of a series of illustrations for my Doctrine and Covenants teacher.  It's still rough and painterly, but I kind of like the way it turned out :)

The people of the City of Enoch, or Zion, became so righteous that the whole city was brought up to meet God.  Hearing the story as a child, I always wondered what it would look like to have a city uprooted out of the ground and pulled into the sky, so illustrating this chapter was particularly fun :)

I thought it would be neat to take dirt up with the city, like the dirt clinging to the roots of an uprooted tree.  Also in this concept there's a river that ran through the city while it was on the ground, so that as it rises up into the sky the water spills off the sides in waterfalls

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day all! Man, we live in a great place :) If you didn't today, I'd invite you to take your next chance to go outside, even for a few minutes, and take some time to soak in the sights, sounds, and smells of the wonderful world we've been given.  And if you can manage it, it's even more fun with a camera or a sketchbook :)

I celebrated by going out this afternoon and oil painting some nature in nature, aka "e plein air" for you sophisticates.   Actually, I painted from a parking lot, but.  It was fun :)  The painting is done, but will wait for a future post

This picture is unrelated, just a doodle from church today that was kind of fun.  It's of the tortoise and the hare.  And they say I don't pay attention! ;)

Mechs, Spaceships, and– Cats?

Feng Zhu, one of my heroes, suggested in a "Design Cinema' episode to design things in threes. The idea is to maintain the same visual language between them.  His example involved spaceships of different classes, but designed by the same race.  Here I tried it out, attempting to design 3 ships as different classes from the same alien armada:

This one is separate.  It was originally designed vertically, with an engine that pulls instead of pushes, but I kind of like it tipped on its side as well:

sideways it seems kind of bug-like . . . :)

Last, kind of a giant tripod-dog mech :)

Potpourri

Huzzah for bicycles!  I'm actually rather proud of this one:

There's no intended theme with the smoking guys, they just happened to be on candid sketchbook lol

Terrible Puns :)

" A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself."

-Doug Larson

Get it? 'Cause he's like Garth Brooks, who's a country singer, except . . . yeah, I better quit while I'm ahead ;)

Mud

A couple of mudbox sculpts, George Washington and an alien.  No relation whatsoever ha . . . or is there . . . I'll leave that one up to the conspiracy theorists ;)

A turnaround of the Alien:

Out and about

A couple of sketches from walking around campus yesterday :)

Such an idyllic scene . . . kids splashing in the water, twitterpated couples promenading in the park . . . you would never suspect that next week is finals lol :)

"Dagrons" :)

There's something therapeutic about drawing dragons . . . :)

lol this last one was kind of a goofy idea, but I think I might play with it . . . 

Whirlpool 51

This was originally a comic I did for my grandmother as a Christmas present.  She is an expert fisherwoman, and took my sisters and I on many fishing trips in the Big Horn Mountains when we were growing up.  That's her in the bottom panel :)

(note: Due to the limitations of Blogger, if you want to see the image better you may have to download it.  Just right click and hit "save image as")

"Easters"

Happy the day after the day after Easter everyone!  Here are some links that might interest you:

An interesting Wikipedia article on the "Flemish Giant", a dog-sized breed of rabbit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_Giant

my favorite picture from the article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Runt_and_Paxie.jpg

On a more serious note, a sketch from Sacrament meeting on Sunday:

Happy Easter, and God Bless!

Josh