Shoeless Joe Monsterface

Live Painting

I had the opportunity to do a live painting performance during our church service a couple weeks ago. I was painting for the full hour, and about 3/4 through shared a brief testimony (experiential story of faith) about a struggle that inspired the painting. It was interesting to try the same painting twice, during two 1 hour services. I actually received some really great feedback from some members of the congregation after the first service, and was able to immediately implement their suggestions during second service, resulting in a much more successful painting (in my opinion).

My friend John Martin was kind enough to take this photo, and my friend Brad Rozman made this awesome timelapse video too! I guess everyone gets a turn on YouTube.

Illustration Friday

Experimenting with a fountain pen...

Where You Go, I Will Go

This image was inspired by a difficult yet touching scene witnessed in Africa. A blind woman was begging on the streets of a crowded city with her daughter. Her daughter stayed close by her side, leading her carefully wherever they went.

Illustration-wise, I'm really happy with how this came out! I'd to make more pieces like this, inspired by some of my memories of Africa, and to tell the stories of people who don't have a voice over here.

One concern I have however, is the relationship of form to content - is this comic-book/disney-ish style appropriate for a piece about third world desperation? Does the caricatured style disrespect the subject, or gloss over the seriousness of their hardship? I'd love to see comic/animation artwork begin to tackle reality as well as it does fantasy. Perhaps the fact that this isn't the standard gritty photojournalistic depiction might enable the story of these two to reach a different audience?

I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on the subject!

Scattered Characters

Sorry for the silence (again). Hopefully I'll be more consistent with the updates this new year!

To kick it off, here is a collection of some characters that have spawned in unconventional locations - post-its, notebooks, index cards - anywhere except my sketchbooks. It's neat to see that as I'm learning and practicing more, even my doodles are becoming more fluid.

So What Now?

This I made a few weeks ago to illustrate a sermon called "So What Now?" about responding to the unexpected changes in life.

Drawing this was a good learning experience, I started out the process with a specific style in mind, one that is only very newly developing for me. After many attempts, I found it stifling to try to inject that style into this picture while it's still immature. Eventually I realized it'd probably be best just to draw the picture without too much attention to style, and let whatever comes naturally for me be the look. That worked much better!

I did a lot of stages in building up the drawing, from thumbnail, to figure wireframes, to a rough sketches, and a final drawing. It was very helpful, so I'll try to make the most of that process in the future, while hopefully streamlining it a bit more with practice.

Another Christmasy pic

Last week was a really good week for illustration! Here is another seasonal picture, my church commissioned it for our Christmas service next month.