Tanystropheus

This was a piece for a young dinosaur scientist friend of mine, and it is with his permission I post it here :)  It's amazing how much kids know about current paleontology research. They come into the museum all the time and tell me about new facts and discoveries I've never heard of before.

The animal pictured here is Tanystropheus, a semi-aquatic marine reptile from the Middle Triassic Period.  Of his total 20 foot length, 10 feet were neck.  He was primarily piscivouros, which is to say, he ate a lot of fish (i guess "fishivore" didn't sound sophisticated enough for zoologists).

Loosening Up

Today in class Chris Thornock had us do an exercise inspired by the thoughts of Jillian Tamaki, who believes that one of the best ways to improve professional work is to use personal time to experiment with art. She believes sketchbooks and personal work should be a safe place to experiment and make mistakes. If you don't worry about who's going to see your work, your mind is freed up to try out ideas and take risks it wouldn't under pressure.  Now every week we have an hour to experiment and just make what we will, with no expectations to meet.  Afterward, we can apply the new ideas we found through experimentation to higher pressure projects.

The image above was my experiment for today.  I forgot my paints so instead I played in photoshop lol :)   For our last assignment I had scanned some paintstrokes and textures, so I mixed those in new ways and pulled in some old reference photography I had shot for intro to 3d Animation a couple of years ago.  It was kind of fun, so I spent some time afterward as well.  I'm excited to see what future sessions bring, though I may or may not post them here.

Saint Patrick A La Secret of Kells

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Yesterday! Lol Hulu had "Secret of Kells" up for the occasion and I thought it would be a good excuse for doodling/ an emulation exercise :)  Saint Patrick is actually a very interesting character, I recommend the Wikipedia Article.

I've been trying to learn lately about flattening a space.  It's odd after years of figure drawing class where you're using every bit of mental RAM you've got to add depth and volume to a figure to turn around and intentionally smoosh it.  Kind of fun to do, though.  I've been gaining new respect for artists like Lane Smith (illustrator of the ever-classy "Stinky Cheese Man" :}).

Saint Patrick's day was the fun, I didn't get pinched even though I totally forgot to wear green.  My wife eventually let me borrow a Vegggie Tales tie with Larry the cucumber on it. Because that's how we roll.