I'm Back! (but not from the dead)

Hello once again my friends! Finally, my three-week Summer Program at Cornish College of the Arts is over, and I have enough time to blog again! The next few posts will probably be a bit random, but they will soon be back to the old schedule. I'm already missing Cornish - the 30-min car trip followed by a 45-min bus ride wasn't exactly exhilarating, but it was really fun to just get breakfast with some friends every day, go to class, and then eat lunch with some more friends - everyone was really nice and I just had a great time. The classes I did were Art Foundations, Comics Studio, and Watercolor Illustration. (It sounds like the students who were staying in the dorms, mostly out-of-state ones, didn't get much sleep though.) Anyway, there should be a steady stream of posts now, I'm returning with much more than I went in with!

Here are a few photos I took while I was there:

This is an exercise we did in Foundations - we draped a string/rope/length of tape over this display and drew the line - ONLY the line, interrupting it whenever it went behind an object. We then took turns to put another line on, and then we drew it. The second time we did this exercise only the teacher put the lines on but we moved one easel to our right every time he did, so we all worked on everybody else's drawing. The room looked like a spiderweb or some diabolical trap by the time we'd done!

Here is a charcoal (The first time I ever worked with charcoal was in this class - but not this drawing) we did in Foundations. We had a male nude model and three hours (approx, with breaks) to draw him. This was my result.

...And here is me with Conner, a friend I made there. He's 17 (he had his birthday on the last day, the gallery show - so technically this is him on his birthday) and he does amazing pen drawings, I'll probably post some sometime. On the wall behind us is the Comics Studio wall of the show (he was in that class with me)

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post, I will get back to you Friday morning! (I am going out Friday afternoon for teen mini-golf, then a sleepover at a friend's house, then an art lesson at the Redmond library the next day)

~Samuel8R

Quick Post

Okay, once again I failed to get my latest digital piece done in time for today. I just don't have any time in the evenings right now with my grandparents out. Here instead is a cool image I found on teh internetz. (not owned by me obviously) I wish I'd thought of this, it's so cute! I'm definitely going to make a 'steampug' addition to the pug shirts sometime (without ripping this amazing artwork off obviously) Anyway, sorry for the delays (again.) I PROMISE I will have something good for you on Tuesday, for SURE.

Until then,

~Samuel8R

HMS Indefatigable

Sorry once again, I almost got that digital piece finished off for today, but with my grandparents out here, not as much art is getting done as usual. So today I'll just post an image I made in Pixen. It's a steampunk airship christened the HMS Indefatigable. One of the larger warships in the skies, it sports two side engines, assisted by a larger engine inside the hull. The balloon is set slightly backwards to compensate for a weightier stern. It was designed mostly as a weapons/VIP carrier/blockade runner and so has roomy accommodation (as demonstrated by the row of portholes) and is lightly armed with only two heavy cannons (many of the largest warships have 10-12) Crew: 35-45. I hope you don't mind this over some of my other 'real' art. (I'm not very good with pixel art yet)

~Samuel8R

Fleks & Svek (and an apology)

Well, here we are on this fine Saturday night... I completely forgot about yesterday's post until this morning! (facepalm) We were out a lot of Friday doing things. Anyway, here is another of my multimedia adventures. (pencil + pen + watercolor) apart from Svek (on the right) whose color scheme was pretty flat anyway. Fleks is also more detailed. These are chibi versions of the main characters from a story of mine that I started and hope to finish sometime. Not a full-length novel but maybe a novella or long story. I posted the introduction for it a while back I think, if you can find it.. I have in fact written several pages, but all on my antique typewriter to give it a wonderful distressed feel. As such, I cannot post those until I scan them. Talking about scanning - I'm going to need to continue the search for a scanner - I'm running out of drawings and I don't have many digital projects going at the moment (though I promise to post one next time!) Well I think that's all for now, I have to go to bed soon! (can hear parents coming up stairs, must type faster!)
~Until next time~
~Samuel8R

Paper Boats

Whoo, I almost forgot to post again! :D My grandparents are arriving late tonight so we got kinda busy, Anyway, I'm back with another drawing. I'm actually starting to run out of scanned drawings (haven't had access to a scanner in a while) so I need to get cracking on some more digital pieces! I nearly did one but I have been busy painting so I haven't got round to doing the finishing touches. I should get that one done by next post or post after. But today we have this drawing of a couple of paper boats I found on Teh InterWebz! I copied the water tension and reflections as best I could but it turned out looking a bit strange translating from photo to paper. Oh well, at least you should be able to tell what they are! I put less definition on the far one to put it a little out of focus. Took around 5 hours (I'm going to start putting estimations of the time taken on here for fun) Also, I was looking at some cool videos of the mysterious 'Herobrine' from Minecraft (any fans of minecraft should know what I mean, people who don't care much for the game need read no further) and it got me thinking about a backstory, of which the game itself has none. So I wrote one! I am also working on an adventure map of my own, so it will tie in with that. Maybe next time I will see if I can post a PDF link in case anyone wants to read it.

I think that's everything!
~Samuel8R

Tirqu

Hello once again! Our internet was broken all day yesterday, and we only just got it back. It's funny how you never realize how much you use something until it's gone. I kept thinking "Oh, I'll just look that up - crud." Anyway, today's drawing is of a little alien I call Tirqu. I haven't thought about him or his kind much, but I have a good feeling about him and I want to develop him more. As a character, he is a scientist, as we can see here. He always wears a single-piece cloth suit with a big zipper, making it like a comfortable jumpsuit. You never see his feet, and his arms are slightly out of proportion. No, I don't know what that thing is either, its some kind of socket that he drags around like hair. I really like this guy, but I'm less than proud of the result. The watercolors are messy, there's not much shading that you can see, and I goofed on the perspective of his lifted arm. However, this was when I was still experimenting with this new style, so I'm not about to beat myself up over it. I will make it a future project to re-do this.

~Samuel8R

P.S. I've been considering graphic novels as a path to go with my art, so I have been reading some books on the subject. My first comic is in the works now! (still planning and sketching)

Test Subject Blue 2.0

Greetings once again from this week's Tuesday's post! Here is another watercolor Nitrome character, from the game of the same title, who uses a laser gun and his wits to get through each miniature test chamber. He (a sentient, learning, goo) is injected into his suit at the start of each level by a scientist and goes about his tasks. The original suit is here:

As you can see, I have made the suit a lot more complex, and my idea is that it is a more advanced second edition of the suit. However, it still retains the glass dome to hold the goo, and a similar color scheme. I'm thinking I might send this to Nitrome as fan art.

Nitrome Games: http://www.nitrome.com/

Test Subject Blue: http://www.nitrome.com/games/testsubjectblue/index.html

Enjoy!

~Samuel8R