1,000th Post: Sharing Some Illustrations & Design I've Done
- Thread starter TheIronMonkey
- Start date
SmokingPipes.com Updates
Watch for Updates Twice a Week
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Site Sponsors
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
PipesMagazine Approved Sponsor
Thanks for taking the time to look.
There’s a little bit of back story with regard to Michael Jordan and Sports Illustrated covers. If I recall correctly, Jordan objected to something SI had written about him at some point, and he was able to exert some influence and prevent the magazine from using photos of him on the cover, which worked out for me doing illustrations of him.
It was a great pleasure and honour to be able to work on book covers for Fuminori Nakamura—I’ve been fortunate enough in my career to have created book covers for several authors whose work I collect. It’s a fun and weird feeling to kind of become part of your own collection.
Very talented Jeff, I'm glad I didn't delve too deep into this thread before secret santa, because if I did I would I have felt like a gift for an artist of such stature would be impossible to pick 
Inspired by how much I enjoyed doing a real, physical piece of art (as opposed to digital) for @sablebrush52 , I made a Valentine’s gift for Susan yesterday (a painting of our dog, Wasabi). It went over very well and she wants to get it framed.
I wish I had any artistic ability at all, beautiful work and Wasabi looks like a happy little doggy.
How does one get started in improving their doodling/painting? I see your amazing handiwork and wonder if you had a book or resource that you would point somebody toward, if they were trying to improve their drawing skills.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, is a pretty interesting book that can help unlock potential—it's got some cool exercises. One comes to mind of copying a Picasso drawing of Igor Stravinsky, but, it's upside down. This forces you to look at the lines and their relationships to each other in the abstract as opposed what you think you know in terms of a face, where you make assumptions about where you think elements like the ears, eyes, nose, etc., should be.
The best way to improve your drawing is to draw from life, and keep doing that more. It helps to observe and measure and check the relationship between things you see and pay attention to the space between them. I'm sure you've seen old cartoons of artists holding their thumbs up when viewing a model and drawing. What they're actually doing is measuring what they see in front of them and marking the corresponding measurement on the paper—I would use my pencil and hold it up to what I see, use my thumb to mark how long an arm might be against the pencil, then use that measurement to make a mark that matches the arm length I'm drawing on the paper. Now, I have a unit of measure that I can check other parts of the body against. Is the other thing two arms? Half an arm? You can check various things and angles by measuring their relationships to each other.
If you're drawing a box in perspective and there is a vertical line (the corner of the box), you can check the diagonals and think of it like hands on a clock. Is it 2:30? Is it 11:50?
I was an aspiring tattoo artist whilst in high school, the best thing I can say when it comes to pencil, color pencil or pen, tagging and painting. I tell my daughter always draw what you see, your eyes or memories are showing you the picture. If you can execute the outline the shade and the detail of a drawing even if it isn't perfect you will get something worth your time. Draw every line you see in your head if you can see it or vision it, it can be drawn.
When I was painting matte paintings in the Disney matte department, every easel was equipped with a matching freestanding support that held a large mirror which could be positioned so that we could look at the painting in reverse to see if it was still working. One would instantly be able to see what was off.
We often get hypnotized by what we're working on and fail to see where we've taken a bad detour.
This one is especially for @OzPiper and @tklee
I was going to post this image in the thread where you were talking about identifying or not wanting to identify as bananas, but, it got locked before I was able to access the computer on which this file resided. I did this self-portrait about twenty years ago in 2003, when I used to run a digital art forum.
I was going to post this image in the thread where you were talking about identifying or not wanting to identify as bananas, but, it got locked before I was able to access the computer on which this file resided. I did this self-portrait about twenty years ago in 2003, when I used to run a digital art forum.
It looks a bit lewd but in a good way
I'm a lot less sensitive now about how I'm perceived than I was in my teens
