Opening Night!!!!!

This past Friday my art show opened, I've spent the past month preparing for this show and it turned out better than expected.  I wasn't able to do all new pieces for the show since I was doing all the logistics but, I did get a few new pieces ( I'll post them in a few days) done that I was quite happy with.
We estimate that a few hundred people came through that night which it great for a first time event and the shop offered to let me hold annual show their.  I 'm not sure what's next for me but as of right now I just going to keep painting and showing my portfolio around as much as I can.  

Art Show

It was a rough start when I moved back to California in June but things lately have been giving me some hope.  I've been putting together this show over the past few weeks, I think that my work will pay off opening night so if your in California drop by. 

Thanks,

Nicolas

The fruits of my labor (and the labor of at least five other people who ive never seen)

So I've been working from home these past few weeks on a game for the Milky Elephant guys, who in turn were working for Sports Illustrated for kids. This is what we did:

http://www.sikids.com/games/doodle/

Everyone, play it. It's kinda fun! I did a lot of prep work and animations using the artwork they provided, but I DID draw and color and animate the spaceship that flashes by the left side of the screen after the kid falls through the cloud. It is also one of your opponents in the foot race. HOORAY!

Company Poster

Hey Guys,

I hope the summer has been treating everyone well.

Here is some new illustration work for my job. The company I work for is called Aardvark Design and I was given the task of designing a poster for a moving notice/open house party invite package. The cool thing about doing the poster is that it didn't have to relay any specific information. Anyways I gave them two versions. Hope you enjoy.


P.S. This poster also marks what may be the begining of a long and prosperous modeling career.

THREADLESS!!!!

http://www.threadless.com/submission/167556/Shape_Eater

Also please vote on my new shirt design over at threadless.

UP UP UP DATE!!!!!!!!!

hello friends ..i noticed some new posts and i thought i would finally make one. Ive been working on an Acrylic painting. I hate acrylics. My room is not well ventilated enough to use oils, so i thought id give them a shot. I still hate them.

Blurry (sorry)process pics. still unfinished.
the painting is 2x3 feet. im posting this on no sleep. HAha!

Its heavily based on a screen print i did this past winter.

HEY GREAT NEWS!!

CHECK IT OUT GUYS: http://ericseanbenedict.com/ is LIVE and RETARDED!

never has there been a more inconvenient way to peruse my portfolio and animation reel! Wade through the tasteless animations and hidden buttons and you might get an idea of shit that I can do!

It's still got plenty to be updated so don't feel bad if you're not on the links page yet... you will be soon!
Enjoy folkssszzszszs

My first piece out of RISD

I'm just so excited, posted this to my own blog and website as well. This is an ink drawing with digital color, sort of revisited on and off this week.


Have I mentioned my love for color-filled line lately? And pink?


Oh, and don't worry, I've been knitting, too.

My last piece at RISD

This is my last piece for Mary Jane's portfolio class that is about the news and its amazing ability to take any story and make it into a novel or two hour long t.v. special. I think the scan of it is a little weird so sorry if there are parts of the image that look faded or brighter than they should be. 

-Phil

Gradumication!

All of the contributors to this blog are graduating from RISD on Saturday... so congratulations everyone, we made it!

Oh, and I don't think I posted these... but here are the Wolverine: Netsuke piece and the Dune piece I did, awaiting acrylics.

The Magnificent Brothers Bendoverinkov

My latest animation (ah•nee•meh•SHAUGH). Please, enjoy.

Orphan Works Bill

I figured I'd put the link up with the e-mail you can send to your Senators about opposing the Orphan Works Bill for anyone that hasn't yet.

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/home/

Also, here's the interview with Brad Holland for anyone that hasn't heard it:

http://www.sellyourtvconceptnow.com/orphan.html

More Whales

I reworked the Record Keeping piece. SooJin wanted happier whales, personally if I was a whale I would probably harpoon myself, but it was still a fun piece to do.
For the drawing this time I used a trace monotype technique that Jing showed me. I was able to get some cool texture with it. I think I might try some more of it.

Anyways, Graduation is comming up so I'll probably be seeing all of you at the bars.

PEACE,
_Jake

Lance Thunder hits primetime

So the Lance Thunder piece I did ( see my previous post) ended up being shown to someone who works on the TV Show Dirty Sexy Money for ABC (friend showed it to a friend who showed it to a friend). Apparently they needed a comic for an episode they were filming where Donald Sutherland's kid has a comic. So, they asked if they could use Lance. I doublechecked with Keith and we went ahead with it. Of course it needed to be colored so I asked a few different people if they could take swings at it. It was the last week of classes here so I was shocked anyone signed up for it, but my friends Chris McInerney and Erica Henderson both did some sweet coloring on it.

The producers ended up choosing Erica's version cause they felt it had a more "old-timey" feel they were going for.

Here is Erica's. She's graduating from the FAV department here at RISD. You can check out her blog at: http://failatlife.blogspot.com





And here is Chris's version. He graduated two years ago from the Illustration department and is currently teaching art in Maine. His blog can be found here: http://skizzenblok.blogspot.com

Wrappin' it up!

So I ended up with two more finished caricatures for my color works class. I decided to wrap up the project with two other musicians that really give me that dang ol' rockin' good feelin': Frank Zappa and Roger Waters. This project actually ended up being way more enjoyable than I thought, despite the agonizing hours I searched to find people that I don't normally see caricatured. I think Zappa and Waters are two that aren't done too much but obviously Bob Dylan gets drawn a lot. So, to quote Meatloaf, "Two out of three ain't bad". Enjoy! Or don't.

-Phil

The master of suspense!

I made this in photoshop. whaddya think!?

Senior Show, baby! And Lance!

The opening for my senior show is this Thursday, May 15th, from 6 to 8 PM at the ISB Gallery at RISD. It's a group show with my friends Katherine, Rory, Angela, Keith, Art and Stephanie.

This is the drawing I did for the poster:


Also, Keith and Art have this parody comic character, Lance Thunder. He rides on top of monster trucks. It's pretty great. We're each trying to do a tribute piece to put in the show. So here's mine:



Enjoy. Hope to see ya, Thursday!

Movie Poster!

17"x20" woodcut and ink

Recently I made a poster to promote my friend's short film. I still can't figure out if the colors desaturate when I put it on the web or if my monitor just dulls everything. Anyhoo, the movie is showing at the Senior Film Festival in the RISD auditorium this Thursday and Saturday. The whole festival runs from Wednesday to Saturday, starting at 7:00 each night. Everyone should go!!

Free Range

I have been given total freedom in what subject matter I choose to use for the final project in the color works class, so I decided to have some fun with caricature and try to experiment more with color and rely less on the lines. This past week I went with Bob Dylan, since I've never done a caricature of him and have always wanted to do. Now I have to come up with 2 more finished caricatures before next Monday and I have no idea who to do next. Bummer, dude.

PRINT SHOW

This saturday, May 3rd, there will be a print show and fundraiser at Narwhal Arms on Matthewson.  The AS220 print lab organized the event; I along with some other friends will have work available.  Check out the site below for more information. 

www.myspace.com/narwhalarms

Watercolor Society

Early last month one of my watercolors was selected to be in a juried expo for the N.E.W.S, there is only a few shows each year that non-members can participate in.  So check it out, all the accepted work on their site.  The show is at The Cotuit Center for the Arts until May 14.

Thank Nick

newenglandwatercolorsociety.org/

 

New Flash Project - Raging Bull

Raging Bull is a sick movie.

I threw together a little flash project to redesign the opening movie titles.
You can check it out here.



Nothing to fancy, I just wanted it to be something simple to complement the movie.
The song is from this local Providence artist Deer Tick.

_Jake

Sketch to More Finished Sketch

Well, I figured I'd follow Jake's post with a look into my process.

So this week for Cover to Cover with Jon Foster, we had to do a cover to Wolverine: Netsuke.

First step was to work up a bunch of thumbnails and send them off to Jon:


I liked the thumbnail in the top left (boxed blue) which had Wolverine over the crest of a hill, mostly in silhouette, with a bonzai-ish tree to the left some flames and smoke in the distance with crows, etc. Jon felt it wasn't "covery" enough and told me to go with one of two others. The one of the two he suggested that I chose is boxed in red. It's Wolverine seated drinking tea, with an image of Mariko's face above him. If you haven't read the comic, the first issue, at least is for the most part a quiet, introspective comic, with one fight in which Wolverine uses a sword (not even his claws!) and there are no bodies. So I felt the typical Wolverine, claws out, looking badass, with piles of bodies around him, didn't really fit.

Here was a pencil sketch I did in my sketchbook trying to work out his pose:


After taking a look at this, I felt his posture was a little too erect and not quite the mood I was looking for. Also, it looked like a normal size guy with Wolverine hair, rather than the runty sized guy that Wolverine is supposed to be.

Now for for the final piece, I decided to try a new (for me) method, and created the underdrawing with charcoal pencil, hopefully allowing me to establish the darks I can never do with graphite. I dropped his head down a bit and sloped his shoulders on the final sketch, adding in the actual type from the comic to try to get a sense of how it would fit:


So I took the drawing in, along with some quick digital color flats I had done over it, to class for crit, figuring I'd make the changes suggested in crit, fix it, then go in with acrylics.

Today we had some guest critics, artists: Greg Manchess, Dan Dos Santos, and Tor books art director Irene Gallo.

They had some good suggestions including getting better reference photos for the hands and lap, and choosing to either go realistic with the rendering of Mariko at the top or go Japanese wood block print. Right now, the feeling was, that Mariko was kind of neither here nor there with that choice.

So I'm gonna go back and make those changes, along with a few other minor details, and then fix this down and see how painting acrylic over it goes. The whole thing's been an adventure and one that I'm enjoying so far. On the whole it's been more successful (so far) than some of my forays into other media heh. I'm really liking the charcoal pencils, and I think, if nothing else, I'm definitely gonna stick with them for a while.

Sketch to Finish

Here is a quick sample of my process... the article/boring statistics was about the record keeping of different companies.

here is the initial sketch....



the final ink drawing...



and here is the final piece, colored in Photoshop.




Enjoy.

_Jake