Update Long Overdue

It's been almost five months since my last post, and a crazy five months it's been.  A great deal has changed for me during that time in both my personal and professional lives, some good and some not so good, but all taking a lot of my time.  I've still made time for several projects, but I've failed to keep up with this blog and post about my progress.  So...this one will be quite lengthy, and I'm going to try to post more regularly over the next few months.

First, here are the pics of the finished canvas for Anijha, the daughter of my son's first caretaker at his daycare.  The look and design of this painting is very simple, but it took forever.  She had requested as many neon colors as possible; the problem arose when I discovered neon acrylic paint is very thin.  It's akin to painting with water with a little food coloring added.  Everything on that canvas took from 30-50 coats to give it a solid, even appearance (even then a few spots were lacking for my taste).

I've also continued working on the series of three canvases I'm painting for my son with his full name on them.  I finished his middle name, Langston, first and posted those pics last spring.  I also posted the next canvas of his first name, Joseph, last spring during it's drawing phase.  This summer I nearly finished painting it.  I've got a few characters to finish and then some touching up to do on the white background, where you can still see some of the rough pencil lines.  This canvas uses all Hanna-Barbera characters.

After finishing Anijha's canvas posted above, I was left feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the end result.  I was most unhappy with the way the neon paints had worked out, but I was also a little disappointed with the design I had settled on.  When I took on the commission for her and her brother's canvases, her brother's design popped right into my head, and I was happy with it from beginning to end.  But Anijha's always seemed a little forced to me.  I felt some pressure to get come up with something fast and get it finished.  Even still, it took me about 2 1/2 months to complete them both just because I was so busy with teaching and my family.  But because of that dissatisfaction and because I had also gotten the urge to start working with watercolors again, I took another stab at the design.  It's almost finished, as well.  When it is finished, I'll give it to her for free to do what she wants with it.  I feel I owe her a better design, and it gives me a chances to practice with watercolors again.  The first pic below is the sketch that I colored with prismacolors to test some color choices.  The second pic is the actual watercolor in progress.

Speaking of watercolors, I've started drawing some characters from the show Tiny Toons which was a huge hit during the '90s and one of my favorite afternoon cartoons when I was younger.  I've drawn and inked them on watercolor paper.  I'm planning to paint them with watercolors and cut them out.  I'm not exactly sure what I'll do with them from there, but I'll figure something out.

In this next painting, I'm actually using oils.  I don't use oils very often because they take so long to dry, but I love the look they create on canvas.  It's a painting of the character Huey from the comic strip and, now, cartoon series The Boondocks.  I've been a huge fan of the comic strip for years and love season one of the show.  I've just not gotten around to watching the other seasons; I can't imagine their bad, though.  Animator LeSean Thomas is largely responsible for it, and his stuff is always amazing.  Using oil paints gives even a cartoon character a certain look of sophistication.  It needs a little touching up before going up on a wall somewhere in my house.

Below is the rough pencil sketch of a tattoo design for friend of mine.  She asked me to design one involving a runner some time ago that never quite worked out, which is probably a good thing since she completely changed her mind about what she wanted.  The new design involves several references to Shel Silverstein's books and poems with significant numbers and letters pertaining to her immediate family worked in (some hidden and not-so-hidden in the branches and roots).  She's very happy with this design, so now I need to scale it down and make it a nice, crisp black ink drawing.  From there, it's up to some tattoo artist to finish the job; that's not part of my expertise.

And finally, I've decided to design a t-shirt for my classes this year.  This is something I've thought about before but never followed through with.  Through a random set of events, the running icon for the class is zombies.  We've made some loose, corny connection between lusting for brains and lusting for intelligence, but pretty much zombies are just kind of cool right now, so we're going with it.  The front of the shirt will have a sort of crest in the top left-hand side of the shirt involving Wilkins's Pre-AP Scholars.  The back will have a large cartoon zombie head surrounded by the words "Taking over the world one SOAPSTone at a time."  It's completely pompous and full of inside jokes, but the students are really excited about it.  And I want them to feel like it's special to be in my class.  I'm not sure what the colors will actually be on the shirt, probably way different from what I mocked up, but I'm happy with the overall design regardless.

Hopefully, I'll post again soon with some final versions of most of what I've shown you this time and have some new stuff in process, as well.

Anijha's Canvas...In Progress

I was planning to have Anijha's canvas finished by today, but, with little notice, we had had to accommodate family at our house for almost our entire Spring Break.  Needless to say, some of our plans were pushed back or completely usurped.  Still, I made some progress on the canvas and can probably finish very soon.  I think the final canvas will look quite different from the process pictures I'll post below (in a good way), but you can get an idea of where it's going.  For this canvas, the only requests I was given were flowers, hearts, peace signs, and fluorescent colors.  While Eze's design with Superman and Batman came to me almost immediately, I actually struggled with this one.  Anijha seemed pleased with the mock-up drawing, so I hope she'll be pleased with the final result.  Until then, here are some process pictures...

Eze's Finished Canvas

Finally finished Eze's canvas.  My job and other things have kept me from painting as often as I'd like.  Minus a few small touch-ups, though, I think this one is wrapped up.  I'll post the beginning stages of his sister's canvas very soon, maybe as early as tomorrow.  I hope not to take nearly as long on hers.  With Spring Break coming up, I should be able to finish hers then if not before.

Langston's Second Canvas: Joseph

This is the other canvas I've been working on, Langston's first name:  Joseph.  It's much like his Looney Tunes canvas but with Hanna-Barbera characters.  I have about three more characters to draw and will start painting soon.  

Eze's Canvas: Stage One

These are a few pictures of a canvas I'm working on for Eze, who is the son of Langston's primary teacher/caretaker, Anya, at his daycare.  The design was pretty much up to me, except she wanted it to involve super heroes and sports.  So, here's what I came up with:  the entire background will look like a basketball.  I've written his name to look like a comic book title, inspired mostly by the lettering for the X-Men comic book covers.  And his name is flanked by Superman and Batman, two of his favorite super heroes.  The pics aren't great due to a combination of poor lighting and the pencil not showing up well on the orange background.  I have everything drawn except the rest of Batman.  You can see that I've only finished his chest so far.  I hope to start painting in the next day or two.    

Delving Into Digital Drawing

I just drew my first picture on a digital tablet; I am borrowing one for now from my friend Adam to get accustomed to it and see if I want to invest in one myself.  The biggest adjustment is looking at the computer screen while you draw instead of the tablet (like you do with a regular piece of paper and pencil).  Though I grew more comfortable with the process and using the tools within the hour or so of playing with it, I'm still thinking I might invest in the slightly more expensive model that allows you to draw directly on the tablet.  It will be a while before I can afford that anyhow, so, in the meantime, I may grow to like this version just fine.  I'll post my rudimentary attempt below. 

We're taking our first official family vacation this summer to Disney World.  Needless to say, I'm excited and already counting down.

Ornaments for Langston and Alciedo

Here's the second ornament I scuplted and painted for my son.  It's the other character I mentioned before, Eduardo, from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.  These two were fun and I'll likely make at least a couple more from the show next year.

This last ornament I painted for my young friend Alciedo.  He'll be eight at the end of this month.  Alciedo is a young artist, and we regularly exchange drawings.  I'll post some of our artistic correspondence at some point, I'm sure.