"Killer Headphones" Skull... - Daily Line Art #2

"Don't Feed The Reaper" - Daily Line Art #1

On October 13th, 2014, I began a challenging new routine of waking at 5am to coffee, heavy metal, and two+ hours of traditional line art illustration.  This is where we began.

Portrait of David Bowie as Tesla in 'The Prestige'

I was invited to contribute to a David Bowie themed art show in Dallas, and admitting a cursory knowledge of his catalogue (highlighted by I'm Afraid of Americans with NIN mastermind Trent Reznor), I felt most compelled to pay homage to his portrayal of Nikola Tesla in The Prestige.  Having seen and loved most everything by director Christopher Nolan, I felt this was a concept I could run with and keep within my typical aesthetic.  Drawing electrocuted cat = fun!

Challenging myself to work a little larger, and with less comfortable tools, I worked on a sheet of 11x14 bristol board using a Pentel pocket brush pen.  I'm enjoying the line quality you can get with a brush vs a fixed width technical pen, and working a little larger seems to be helping as well.  Hatching with a brush is a little awkward at first, but it's starting to make sense to me.

Posters are available here, and for those of you in Dallas, check out the show page!

Donkey Kong Un-Tied - self-promotional illustration

This is a self-promotional piece that I drew up as a companion to my Donkey Kong sculpture for Vinyl Thoughts 2 in Dallas.

With sculpture and vinyl toys being new creative avenues for me, I thought I'd take the opportunity to tie it all back to the line art drawings I consider my primarily discipline and make double impressions at the show.  So while I worked on my Donkey Kong sculpture I also drew this up in my signature pen on scratchboard style to print on self-promotional postcards and hand out at the show.  I had a lot of fun with this one!

For The Love of The Artists - Show Poster

 

Just finished up the show poster for Kettle Art's "For The Love of The Artists" group gallery show.  Don't miss it, soft opening Sat Feb 22nd & Grand Opening Saturday March 3rd, 7-10pm.  Hope to see everyone there!

The original drawing (below) is pen & ink line art on 5x7 scratchboard, finished in photoshop with hand lettering and additional grey tones.

Animated Movie Poster Illustration

Just finished up this poster illustration and animated gif for Broken Heart Disease, a short film being directed out in good ol' Los Angeles.  Learn about the film and "Like" the movie page on facebook!

Beyond the fun drawing itself, it's like visiting an old friend working with animated gifs, and I think I'll make an effort to find more outlets for it.  This piece would also make a fun anaglyph for retro red/blue 3D glasses.

Here's the raw drawing on its own... 5x7, pen & ink on scratchboard, followed by some of the initial doodles to gain my bearings.

Balancing Values in Black & White Line Art

In the seven months since beginning my Low Residency MFA in Illustration at Hartford, the biggest personal change I've witnessed beyond multiplied creative output is a new found sense of focus and confidence in my individual style. In the 6 years from undergraduate work til now, a number of techniques, media, and approaches took hold of me. In that experimentation, I lost a sense of confident direction in my work... and my output suffered as well. Whether it was the final decision to take responsibility for my growth through graduate work, or simply being surrounded by massively talented classmates, almost instantly in the first days on campus I could see with a new clarity which piece best represented me as an artist. 

'Survival of the Biggest' had been an experiment in process, using technical pen on blank white clayboard as opposed to scratching into pre-inked black scratchboard (something I went back and forth about multiple times over the years). Claybord's unique flexibility for sculpting values in ink combined with additional compositional prep work on my part brought the piece to a certain level of style and finish that I continue to be proud of today.  I decided that between my enjoyment of that process and satisfaction with the final product, this was the vein I would continue down for the foreseeable future. 


Since that moment seven months ago, I have held true to the process and started building a new portfolio of work that feels genuinely 'Albright,' for all intents and purposes. Now I've come to a point where I feel a comfortable enough distance from the pieces that I can evaluate the body of work as a whole, and am more able to improve upon the formula in small but significant ways. For example, using what I'd call thumbnail evaluation some images are more effective than others when viewed from a distance or reduced to a small preview on screen.  Viewing an image at this greatly reduced size helps you ignore the subtleties for a moment and instead judge the overall composition, clarity, and impact.  

Using quick thumbnail evaluation, I've recognized that my drawings with larger areas of heavy blacks are more immediately effective and easier for the eyes to process than drawings with even contrast through the entire piece.  Case in point, both 'Sabre Skull Valley' and 'Pterodactdinner' (above) are rather tonally even throughout.  Intending to provide the viewers dense jungle of information to explore, all areas of the picture plane are handled with equal contrast and no large areas of heavy black aside from 'Pterodactdinner's frame. But in comparison with 'Lava' or 'Post-Apocrowlyptic' (below), both of which contain large areas of black to counter evenly balanced hatch work, I'm finding the two latter examples are more successful and give the eyes both a resting place and an easier point of entry.  And by that virtue, they both perhaps appear more 'finished.'

Long story short, moving forward I intend to pay closer attention to having areas of heavy black as a resting point for the eyes.  I also suspect this will lead me to make more complete use of the claybord medium in the sense that these black areas will require that I use my scratch tool for white detailing, rather than building up values with the pen and using the scraper tool for corrections alone.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!

Cosmic Controls - Gallery Benefit Piece #2

Here's my second piece for Kettle Art's For The Love of Kettle benefit show on Sat, Feb 11th.  Follow the link for details.  Again, everything in the show is a steal for $50 and goes 100% to keeping the non-profit gallery afloat.  

I've been wanting to do a piece like this for quite awhile and hope to do some more on my usual scratchboards, possibly integrating color.  This one is nib pen on 9x12 primed masonite board.  This and the 'Empty Nest' piece were a good excuse to get used to working with a dip pen instead of technical fine tip pens.  Naturally I'm most comfortable on scratchboard and still feel they're the most flexible medium for me, but I enjoying playing with new materials!

Empty Nest - gallery benefit piece

Just finished up this piece for a benefit show at Kettle Art ("For The Love of Kettle") on February 11th.  I'm told every year there's a line down the block of people waiting to get their hands on the work, all of which sells for $50.  This is a major steal, by the way, and there's a huge group of talented Dallas artists showing work.

This piece was a challenge for me in the sense that I was working on a primed piece of wood instead of my super smooth claybords, which required that I use different tools to contend with the rougher and more absorbent surface.  I went through a large handful of pens, sharpies, markers, brushes, and finally settled into a comfortable use of a dip nib pen.  So far all of these new gallery opportunities are forcing me to really stretch out of my comfort zone, material wise, while retaining a sense of my usual aesthetic.  All good things!

Kablam! - mixed media Soda Gallery piece

This is a piece I just finished for the upcoming Fab 50 Show at The Soda Gallery in Dallas on March 1st (50 artists, 50 pieces, $50 each).

This was my first attempt at adding color to a scratchboard, and found that it's remarkably easy to to add watercolor washes to the Ampersand Claybords.  The silver was also an experiment, where I masked out the black drawing with a carefully cut chunk of blue painter's tape.  Spray painting the black was a total disaster, actually, because the paint wouldn't adhere over the silver layer.  I ended up having to manually draw the lines and hand paint the fills.  The painter's tape did a nice job of texturizing the silver when I pulled it off, which was a happy accident.  


Despite my reluctance to integrate color into my drawings, generally, this was successful enough that I suspect I'll be doing more of it down the line.

Plesiosaur - Dinosaur Illustration

Here's a plesiosaur working on a snack!  I recently drew this illustration for a dear friend, being her favorite of our dinosaur ancestors.  It was fun to transcribe my prehistoric obsession underwater for a change!  Good opportunities here for gritty grey tones and squiggly shapes.  This is something I'd like to explore further down the line to really push the textures and lighting some more. 

'Lava' Volcano Illustration

Following my asteroid and prehistoric valley illustrations, I wanted to do one focusing on the erupting volcano.  This one is a 5x7, pen & ink on ampersand claybord (uninked white scratchboard).

This was a fun start to my day over coffee and heavy metal, and I thought I'd share an animated gif of the rough sketch, tighter sketch, and final inked version.

Rear Window Hitchcock Illustration

Here's another pen on scratchboard 12x16 piece, illustrating Hitchcock's classic Rear Window.  Between Rear Window and Vertigo, it seems Hitchcock took sick pleasure in throwing James Stewart out of windows, and offered prime caricature material. 

While I had planned on keeping Stewart as the focal point, after doing dozens of thumbnail drawings it just wasn't quite working.  I had one that cut Stewart out of the drawing almost completely, focusing instead on Hitchcock's enjoyment of dumping him out of the wheelchair.  Much more interesting!

Finally, here is a version done up as a mock MAD Magazine cover for the Hartford Art School MFA in Illustration program.  I haven't yet published a magazine cover, but wouldn't MAD be an incredible place to start?!  (wink, wink)

Pet & Baby Portrait Drawing

I thought I'd share my most recent commissioned pen & ink portrait.  Thanks Beth!

This was my first time rendering an infant, and I wanted to retain my familiar hatched shading technique without her appearing wrinkly, aged, or otherwise distorted (as the hatching sometimes can do).  All in all, I think she looks consistent with the rest of the image and I'm happy with how everything turned out.

I really love doing pen & ink pieces like these for clients. While I primary work less realistically and from the imagination, it's so enjoyable to work from a photo and explore basic shading techniques. I find the process meditative, and affords me the freedom to study value and play with texture. And ultimately it's just awesome hearing how happy people are to share it with their families.

Pterodactdinner... yet another dinosaur drawing

Yet another dinosaur drawing... 8x10, pen on scratchboard.

A delectable dino dinner for drawing dorks like me, with color and 3d versions to follow. In fact, I have a feeling I will soon be starting an spin-off blog featuring my 3d drawings, which can for now be seen at AlbrightIllustration.com and facebook.com/albrightillustration.

Thanks, as always, for looking!

Drawing Process - 'Sabre Skull Valley'

 

Greetings! Today I'll to explain the process of developing my latest illustration--a prehistoric landscape on 12"x16" Claybord (Ampersand brand uninked scratchboard).  You can click any of these images to see them enlarged.

Most of this will look pretty rough and scrappy, and I guess that's kind of the point.  It takes a series of steps for me to reach the final state of what appears to be a controlled drawing.  Despite the mass of detail in the final image, I honestly don't have it all just sitting in my head ready to go.  It comes out of a lengthy process of continually refining the composition and values through a series of thumbnail drawings, rough full-size sketches, refined tracings of those sketches, and ultimately the clayboard itself.  

It sounds like a masochistic process when you think about how many times the image gets redrawn, but I've found it's actually the most reliable way for me to come to a final image that makes me happy.  So in that sense, I quite enjoy it!

I begin with a vague concept that I'd like to explore, in this case a dense prehistoric jungle with the key elements of a dragonfly and sabretooth tiger skull in the foreground with a volcano in the background.  These tiny sketches aren't meant to lock down any real detail, but simply explore different combinations of the elements in a composition that leads the eye around the page in an interesting way.

Once I have a thumbnail that I'm reasonably comfortable with, I'll cut a sheet of scrap paper to the size of my final board and do some rough sketching to explore my options.  Here I've used a light blue pencil to start, followed by a regular pencil to lock in some of the elements.  As you can see on the left image below, there's a lot of sloppy sketching going on where I'm trying different things and making intuitive compositional decisions.  

After the first rough starts to come together, I'll cut a second sheet of newsprint paper and lay it over the first on a lightbox, tracing and refining the shapes yet again.  At this point I'll still have areas that I'm not totally happy with, in which case I'll do my best to erase or just redraw over them.  You can see with the dragonfly that I'll sometimes use tracing paper to clean it up some or try variations without wearing through the paper.

I'll then do yet another tracing of the image on the lightbox to double check everything and form a template of the outlines.  This version get's laid down over the final board, sandwiching graphite transfer paper.  Using a ballpoint pen, I trace over the outlines, which leaves a light carbon copy on the clayboard that I can then finalize with micron technical pens (I prefer the 03 (.35mm) width).  

Here's an animation of the final board as it's outlined and then shaded.

I'm always singing the praises of Ampersand's Claybords, and yet again I have to say how much I enjoy working on them as opposed to paper.  Having the freedom to scratch away at the ink for texture or for corrections has truly liberated my process.  The flexibility to draw the values from light to dark, and then scratch them back again from dark to light has allowed me to literally sculpt my drawings until everything feels balanced.  It's removed the fear of going to dark and ruining hours of work, and made the whole process a lot more fun.

I've been working so much in black and white lately that my next experiment is to do a colored version of this to include in my portfolio.  Stay tuned for that, as well as a series of 3D illustration for your retro red/blue glasses!

Alice in Wonderland illustration

I just finished up my Alice in Wonderland illustration, which I am contributing to a collaborative wordless adaptation through Facebook.  

Here's a link to the album "What's The Use Of A Book Without Pictures?" by Neoflux Productions http://www.tinyurl.com/BookWithoutPictures

Any artist or photographer can join in and email to claim a paragraph, which is then posted in the facebook album, later to be collected in a PDF and perhaps printed and bound for nonprofit publication, in which case all sales will go towards printing for library submissions.  It seemed like a great opportunity to practice my compositions and ink work, and get involved in a large group effort.  And who doesn't love Alice in Wonderland?

My passage sees the loquacious Duchess blathering on while Alice politely suggests she limit her words.  The piece itself is 8x10, pen & ink on scratchboard.  For those of you interested in the typical process blogging, here are shots of some thumbnails and my rough pencils.

At first I wasn't sure which direction to follow.  I wanted to shy away from replicating the familiar character designs, but I was also a bit intimidated by the prospect of a complete redesign.  I ended up getting excited about representing the Duchess and something of a grotesque, saggy old loudmouth with an oblivious enthusiasm and unintentional domination over Alice.  I turned Alice herself away from the camera in order to place the viewer in her shoes, facing up at the overbearing Duchess.

 

And lastly, here's an example of why I love claybord so much.  After consulting with some of my illustrator friends and graduate classmates, I realized that Alice's hand at the center of the composition just called too much attention to itself and appeared to be grabbing at the Duchess's chest.  Not critical to the overall image, I decided to scratch it out and re-ink the area.  A quick and painless adjustment when using claybord.  Kind of remind you of those 'find the difference' bar games, doesn't it?

original with 'boob grab'

adjusted drawing, sans hand

Happy Mother's Day! - Orchid Scratchboard

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

I must admit, flowers are such a beautiful, naturally perfected form that it's arguably a ridiculous venture to attempt manually recreating them.  But alas, it's a fun exercise to both replicate and abstract the forms.  My version seems to resemble pelvic bones... A curious coincidence considering my own mother's recent stress fracture which kept her on crutches for 8 weeks... and healed just in time for mothers day!

Gritty Kitty - scratchboard portrait

Here's a new commissioned pet portrait of kitty 'Columbine', thanks again to Pete ( @GunGeekATX ) who's awesome dog Clyde has graced us with his likeness previously on the blog.  Full-disclosure, I've never met either of these animals in person, but I feel like they'd be my pals if I ever do.  In fact, I've been meaning to post the colored version of Clyde's portrait, so here you go!

I'm having fun becoming more comfortable with scratchboard, and noticing the different aesthetic that it offers in comparison to black ink on white clayboard.  My scraper tool is a much finer instrument than my pens of choice, so the level of detail coming out on scratchboard is a different beast entirely.  Less cartoony, I'd say, for better or worse.  The challenge, I find, is in reaching a satisfying level of white value in the drawings.  This one is more successful than the previous cats in that regard, although I am fond of the shadowy gothic feel of a darker scratchboard.  One of these days I promise I'll do a colored scratch piece, wouldn't that be fun?


EDIT: No time like the present right?!

Gritty Kitty ain't so pretty, but it's really thick
It fits my catbox, oh so snug, it always does the trick
I love to pour it on my toes, and squish, and squish, and squish
It ne'er offends my tender nose like a smelly fish
It's texture is a joy to me, it's just as smooth as silk
It makes my little whiskers twitch
It stays crunchy even in milk
I may not be the President, I may not be the Pope
But as long as I have Gritty Kitty, I shall never mope.


... Ren & Stimpy anyone?

Cats con Crows - scratchboard pet portrait

Today's drawing is a scratchboard portrait of my dear friends Kyle and Christie's cats Spyder and Maverick.  As we're all fans of crows, it seemed fitting to replace the couch from the original photo with something more ominous.  Now I find myself wondering, who's the predator and who's the prey?!

Since we last spoke I've created a new facebook page, so stop by and say hello!  It's a little easier for me to make minor posts there with images and links, so if you happen to be stopping by the blog and wondering where the action is... well, now you know!  The new page is also linked to my twitter, so that gives you a couple added ways to keep up.  

Something new I'm doing via facebook/twitter (but not here on the blog) is to provide links to exciting things that I'm finding... other creative themed blog posts, tutorials, and anything else I suspect would benefit or interest you guys.  Despite all the distractions that the iPad brings, it does offer some fantastic methods of directing you towards relevant articles while cutting out the fat.  I highly recommend the ZITE app, for customizable content that updates constantly.  Most of my links are coming from there.