Cars in Dar

It's done!

A cityscape of Dar es Salaam with a few of the noticeable or well-known buildings such as the main Mosque in town, the Lutheran church, the ugly peach colored (what was wrong with white?) colonial buildings, high risers, and the winged Exim Tower. The cars with all the windshields covered in stickers are an extreme but it's not unusual! In Tanzania, car registration/insurance and a bunch of other things need to be plastered to the windshield. There are so many square and circle stickers on everyone's cars it's a little ridiculous. If you have all of them on, they can take up to 6 inches of space from top to bottom corner of one side of the window. I also used the old number plate system with the TZ followed by the plate number. It was a cool system, you could see which were the newer cars by the larger numbers. Eventually they added letters onto the TZ in alphabetical order. So if a TZB came out, you knew it was a newly purchased car. Now the number looks random like it does in the States.

Click here for the WIP post.

Sketchbook Project - "And Suddenly..." installation 1

Here is the first installment of photos of the Sketchbook Project sketchbook. My theme is "And Suddenly...". I basically drew either the anticipation of something about to happen or something that did just happen.

(I photographed the dinosaurs properly so I reposted the pic)

AH!


Spontaneous Dance Party


The idea with the chameleon was that his tongue is sneaking up behind the fly before grabbing it. But I guess if it were shooting out in a straight line that would probably worked better.


...shhhh....


...and the alarm sounds.


"All hail the mighty, honorable Stomach Virus followed by his trusted army of grossness."


...Chen realized too late that the pool was empty.


Whoosh.



...unable to hold it anymore, Bertha popped a squat in 3 seconds flat.


While behaving wild and playing her character's part, the wind changed and her face froze.


Carol had a sudden urge to balance on a beach ball.

WIP - Cars in Dar

A Work in Progress - WIP. Cityscape of Dar es Salaam with a few of the noticeable or well-known buildings such as the main Mosque in town, the Lutheran church, the peachy colored colonial buildings, high risers, and Exim Tower (the building with wings). The foreground which is nowhere near being finished is a mass of cars with all the windshields covered in stickers. In Tanzania, car registration/insurance and a bunch of other things need to be plastered to the windshield. There are so many square and circle stickers on everyone's cars it's a little ridiculous. If you have all of them on, they can take up to 6 inches of space from top to bottom corner of one side of the window.

My drawing is obviously an extreme. My dad keeps 2-3 on our cars and puts the rest in the glove compartment!

Anyway, this is one of the things I've been working on at home, hope to have it finished tomorrow. Need to get cracking on some sketching too.

Environmental pet peeve: Overfishing - REVISED

I spent some time fixing up my Environmental Pet Peeve project from Concept and Composition class. I like it better now.

Link to the original version

Note: I seem to have lost some of the detail cause of the limitation of webcolors. if you could see it properly, the fish have scales and more subtle light changes.

and suddenly...

AH!

pen and gouache in the Moleskine sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project.

Dog with the Longest Tongue

14 x 11 inches
watercolor and pen on printmaking paper

World Record was the last assignment from Professor Krepel for Concept and Composition. We had to pick a world record or make one up and illustrate it. The image had to be strong enough to stand on its own without text. I looked up world records online and they only have sample since they want you to buy the book. I wanted to do something around animals or body parts. Inspired by "dog with the longest ears", I decided to do "dog with the longest tongue". I tossed out many many many ideas such as a dog sneakily grabbing dinner off the table with his tongue, or licking his owner's face from across the room, or a dog cowboy using his tongue as a lasso to catch bonecattle. The final image came from the idea of the lasso tongue.

3D Illustration: John Lennon and his Rickenbacker

John Lennon
16.5 inches
wire, gouache, acrylic, gesso, aluminum foil, felt, pins, liquid laminate

For our final Illustration Techniques I project we had to make a 3D illustration of a musician to potentially go in Rolling Stone Magazine. I narrowed my list of artists down to David Bowie and John Lennon, and ultimately chose Lennon. I took pictures with my phone while I made him. It was more fun that I was expecting it to be, and definitely more rewarding towards the end when everything started coming together. At times I felt like a surgeon reattaching extremities, and other times I felt like a tailor, cutting out and piecing together the felt for the suit. I had to cut the pieces much like clothing patterns for them to drape properly.

Lennon was sculpted from this material called Paperclay. It is essentially airdrying clay made from volcanic ash, paper pulp and a few other random things. It was easy and hard to work with depending on situation. I made a basic frame from armature wire, covered it in aluminum foil then applied the clay to the structure. At some point I had to adjust the posture a little so that he can stand. I painted John with gouache, and added liquid laminate to his shoes for the shine. The suit is made from felt. The guitar is paperclay painted with gesso, acrylic paint. I used thin wire wrapped on tiny pins for the strings and tuners.

My professor, Ed Briant put up the pictures he took of the project on his website.

John joins the Mantel Collection:

Work in progress:

MMS - Mini Moleskine Sketches

watercolor sketches

The closet corner of my room.


View into the living room from my desk in the bedroom. (its very out of proportion)


Standing in the kitchen doorway looking in.


I had bought a pocket size watercolor Moleskine sketch book some time ago. I did one doodle in it and didn't use it again, not sure why. I came across it the other day and was trying to decide what I want to put in it so it just sat on my desk for a while. Today, I was looking through my classmate Min's sketch book and really liked some of her line drawings of streets, buildings, interiors etc which she had drawn in pen then went back into it later with watercolor or pastel. I thought it was perfect idea for the mini Moleskine. So here are three quick ones I did today.

Computer Art 2007

I "unearthed" these works in my files while I was searching for some portfolio worthy work. I apologise in advance for the tiny files, I didn't have time to find the original files and make them so that when you click on the thumbnails, you get a nice larger image to view.

Assignment: time. I did a past, present, future type image. Babies grow on trees and over time, these trees become more and more robotic and space-agey. I don't remember how I came up with this idea.

Digital
8.5 x 11 inches


Assignment: Self portrait. Using many many MANY layers in Photoshop, I created a watery surface with my reflection in it.

Digital
11 x 8.5 inches


Assignment: something to do with perspective and place. I wanted to show what Florence, Italy, could look like if it was over grown with greenery (something it is lacking in the city itself, not including the parks).

Digital
8 x 10 inches (or around there)

Assignment: from what I remember, take a part of a song, and illustrate the rhythm. The song: Ants Marching by Dave Matthews Band

Digital
13 x 18 inches


Assignment: show movement. This is my cousin-in-law, Kelly, and a jar of Christmas chocolate.

Digital
17 x 11 inches