illustration sketches

I've been working on some new fine art illustrations for no particular reason but being very inspired by some influences in my life, and that I'm tired of the rat race that is the corporate world.  I guess it's sort of a relaxing escapism for me.
The above has some incorporated pop graphic elements with a realistic liquid splash as well as the Balinese dancer's realistic rendering.  I'm looking to juxtapose certain elements to help with the surrealist elements of the seemingly lack of gravity to her hair and scarf.  The scarf is pushing towards the more graphic elemnt side of things as well to tie in the whole frame.

A good deal of research has gone into my work recently as reflected above.  This is a sketch of Callisto, a nymph who was impregnated by Jupiter, who is also one of Jupiter's larger moons, and (depending on which account you want to follow) was shot by Artemis after realizing she was no longer a virgin, as nymphs were supposed to stay chaste.

Bathroom Symbol Sketch

I started work on this on my free time.  I was going to offer it to a party that needed signs, but they opted to do hand drawn materials.  This is the beginning of the idea, please only use with permission.

Type I Poster Design

For typography, I had to design an informational poster about a type.  I chose American Typewriter, as I felt going too weird would have distracted the viewer in general, but felt that this was way more unique and heavier than say Courier, or similar "type" fonts.
I had to make five sketches where the class gave me feedback.  My two strongest were slight variations of the above, in which I took further than their originals of course.
The first one was laid out using a grid method, save for the enormous A, which I treated as a non-grid graphic element to line up type against in a new grid.  I felt this made the appropriate juxtapose I was looking for in the overall design, albiet a bit more subtle than the second piece.
The second poster utilized grunge elements, particularly the paint splatter, non grid format, and the skewed line work.  I treated some type elements a little off kilter to further add to the overall grunge effect.  I think this played nicely against the subject typeface as it is a decently clean old style.  The juxtapose here working to make this font almost grimy.

photo-a-day 2 20/20

Here is a little trick I thought of myself.  I wasn't too sure if it would work, but it did the first time I tried it here.  I wouldn't be surprised if someone else may have done this before, but it's all in the wrist.  The gray sky behind the buildings caused the overall composition to look black and white, when in fact it is color.  I'm glad this is was the case as I feel too much color would take away from the overall effect.

prints

photo-a-day 2 19/20

Another cool thing about Detroit's downtown is this mixture of old and new.  I found this best illustrated here.  I took a good strong under angle to help illustrate the immensity of these structures, but also made sure I captured their interaction in the same swoop.  Luckily there was a monorail line as well to be included in the frame.

prints

photo-a-day 2 18/20

Detroit has some amazing architecture in the downtown area.  I find this one to be on e of the better buildings I have encountered inside and out.  It reminds me of one of those mega structures that one would find in a scifi novel.  I wanted to illustrate it's symmetry both in the structure itself and the reflections of the outer towers on the center one.  The sky was a nice cloudy one, to offer less interference and for greater concentration on the subject at hand.

prints

photo-a-day 2 17/20

The added depth of a simplest silhouette was intended to function on a multiple levels.  Power lines always make for great movement in a photo that would be too still if it were just clouds.  They also cut up the frame random sections of smaller frames.  And there is the opposed western movement, with the power lines starting lower in the composition and splitting eye movement into two different directions of up and down.  Viewers who read from left to right tend to view art the same way.

prints