Reality Not Included Submission

This past Fall, a group of students and alumni from Brigham Young University's animation and illustration programs put together an anthology/book/collection/thing showcasing their art, titled Reality Not Included. A lot of it is composed of comics, but there are some single pieces in there too. I was fortunate enough to be a part of it. Here's my little contribution.

Yeah, it's based on a series of photos I took of myself. What else ya gonna go without a willing model around? I'd had a completely different idea for the project at the outset. That got changed a couple weeks before the deadline. Then this came out. It went through a fair amount of tweaking to get here, but I'm pretty satisfied with it.

Oh, and we're doing another volume. So we'll see what happens next.

"The Character of Color" Self-Portrait

Here it is. You can see all of the pieces together (sort of) by visiting my website here.

Photos of the show as it was exhibited will be uploaded in the near future. How near exactly, I'm not sure. Definitely before never, and most probably not before lunchtime tomorrow.

Head Paintings

These are my favored picks from this last semester's head painting class. Each is a 2 to 3 hour head study in oil.

The Color of Character: Residents of N206

These are the first part of my semester long illustration project, where I wanted to portray each of my eight roommates from this last school year. Every one was set up in a pose reminiscent or telling of their personality, and their respective color washing comes from my interpretation of their personalities as based on color psychology.

Look What I Found!

I finished this editorial piece about comparing baby and dog IQ's almost a year ago, and I realized that it was never put up on my blog here. It was just sitting in a large stack of past projects. I apologize for that gross oversight. Here you go!

Art Meets Dentisry... Sort Of

This is a piece I did during an Art Jam activity last week, and which I'm submitting for the Annual Vending Machine Show. I thought to myself "Hey, why don't I draw something about a dentist?" How it turned out creepy from there I'm not sure. Maybe it's just that time of year.

Caught (Like Father, Like Son)

These two pieces, which actually sit atop each other similar to what you see, were my submission into BYU's Nature and Nurture: Narratives of the Family Student Juried Show. I won't explain anything else about them. The message should be fairly readable.

I will admit that the color is a little off between the two, but these were photos taken after it was framed, so whatya gonna do?



Special thanks to my sister, Beth Summers for taking the reference photos I needed, and to her husband, Brad, and son, Will, for being my models. You are now immortalized in art. So you're welcome.

Guess What? Even More Figure Drawings!

So what makes these drawings different from past ones? Two things--first, this is from the Advanced Life Drawing class (meaning I passed Intermediate Life Drawing... huzzah!). Second, these mark my first foray into the medium of NuPastel. It's a lot smoother and versatile than the Conté crayons I was using from before.

Also, I ought to point out that although all three drawings look as if they are based off one single pose and one model from different viewpoints, they are in fact different people in different poses at different times. Honest. You'll have to take my word for it.

More Figure Drawings

Including disembodied hands and head!

Figure Drawings

In no particular order, here are my favorite studies from my Intermediate Life Drawing course.

Alice in Wonderland

Everyone in the class was to spend a month adapting Lewis Carroll's masterpiece of literary nonsense with their own style.

Some chose to do a series of finished paintings, while most compiled what's referred to in the industry as a dummy book--16 pages of nearly complete pencil illustrations indicative of the final product. From there we selected one page or spread to take to a final piece.

I'd like to think the scene speaks as to which part of the story is being told. Oh, and just as an FYI, my version of the story occurs in space...

ink, acrylics

Line and Wash

The assignment was to present a unique take on the phrase or idea "what sort of things do we grow or keep in the secret garden of our heart?" Not sure where they got that one, but anyway...

This was done with ink and dipped brush followed with a series of washes. And yes, those are real razor blades (I'd been harvesting used x-acto knife blades for weeks in preparation for an opportunity where I could use them).

I think I'll call it pricked.

acrylic ink, acrylic wash

Abstract Word

We were given a list of words, and told to choose one to illustrate in an original way. My word originally started out as "invisible," and the image you see below was supposed to be a more subtle, intelligent way of describing that.

But when class critiques came around, most people took it to be the word "flat" (one of the other words we could have chosen to illustrate). As it turned out, the word fit my illustration much better, so I retroactively adopted it.

Visual Cliché

The word or cliché I chose was "Piggy Bank." The assignment was to either reinvent or redefine the cliché with an original piece. Hopefully, the new idea is communicated quickly and effectively enough to the viewer (this is where you try to get what I'm saying).

acrylic, hair (seriously)

Acrylic Painting -- Introductory Studies

acrylic (various techniques)

Poster Design--Richard III

Do you know the classic tale of England's King Richard III as told by Shakespeare? No? Well, many people don't actually (even though it is purportedly his most popular play). Essentially it's about how through manipulation and greed, one can both gain everything and lose everything (the "one" here being the ol' king himself).

pen and ink

Book Cover Redo

We were asked to take an existing book and come up with a new book jacket. The styles and specifications were pretty open, so I elected to go back to scratchboard, something I haven't done since high school. I actually decided to use this approach before I picked the book I wanted to do.

As you can hopefully tell from looking at the image, the book I chose is Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which is essentially a twist on the classic Jungle Book story. Although I own and love the book, the cover always irked me a bit. I liked the colors and everything (although the artist's style without and within the book were a tad out there for my tastes), but I just didn't think it communicated the idea of the book as as whole. So with that in mind, I tried thinking of the best--or at least a more effective--way of giving the viewer a glimpse of what's inside...

*[Keep in mind that this image is actually for the entire jacket, meaning it's intended to be wrapped around from front to back.]

Of course it was only after I was close to finishing that my brother pointed out some of the original cover's subtlety (i.e. there's actually a boy's profile in the shadow running up against the gravestone), making my version close to moot. Whatever.

Original Cover Art by Dave McKean

Narrative Illustration--Character/Background Project

After weeks of studying emotions, mood and character design, we were finally assigned to implement our unique character into a background to begin to tell a story (hence the Narrative Illustration course description). The background alone required several color studies and examination of lighting and additional research. The end product is what you see here.

Actually, the word "end" is a bit of a misnomer--this piece is technically still "under construction" as they say... but it's mostly finished.

Those of you who have in the past followed my cartoon blogs will hopefully recognize this character from my most-recent-yet-indefinitely-postponed Skum of the Universe. My current plan is to continue with a series of these Illustrations and implement them into said blog. It's the only way to get the character and his unresolved story out of my head.

gouache, prismacolor

Illustration 251 - Gouache painting

These were my first real attempts at painting. Some are more successful than others, but I'm happy overall with how everything turned out.

Silence and Cold Comfort

Peter the Pumpkin Eater

Health is Relative, or Food for Thought

Narcissus and His Echo

Cutting Loose