Terrible Yellow Eyes - Chalk Thing

A while ago I found a little piece of blue chalk. I brought it home and drew on the driveway with it.


Erin ended up getting me a whole little tub of sidewalk chalk but then fall came and winter came and I never really used it.

Then a couple weekends ago we were babysitting my nephew and playing outside. I had just cleaned out the garage that day and rediscovered the chalk. A perfect storm for monster drawing on the driveway. I'd like to think I used the time in between ventures to adapt and improve my methods :

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Truthfully, I've been so busy at work and there's been so much going on I wasn't able to get together the piece I meant to for Terrible Yellow Eyes today. So, one again with speed in mind and taking up chalk in hand, I set forth to render my contribution in the very inconstant, temporary, and unenduring medium of sidewalk chalk. Behold, my final piece :

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Click over to check out all the amazing invited artist contributions today!!!

Terrible Yellow Eyes - teaser

Here's a little teaser of my contribution for Terrible Yellow Eyes tomorrow.


Be sure and check back tomorrow to see the full piece. Also we've got some incredible contributing artists tomorrow. It's going to be a good Friday for Wild Things!

final drawing scan :

Here's a scan of the finished drawing for the Kale's commission.

drawing for the Kales :

Here's the final drawing for the Kale's commission (pending approval)

At this point the drawing looks a little flat but all of the texture and rendering will come from the painting and watercolor (the next step)

Once again, here's the color study.

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I'm just so pleased to be doing a project for someone that's almost exactly like what I'd be doing on my own.

Terrible Yellow Eyes - preliminary work : Summer

Again, so as to not abandon my blog while I focus on Terrible Yellow Eyes, I am posting the preliminary work for the new piece posted over there.


First off, I started with this doodled idea :



From there, I went and made this rough, a little tighter version of the above doodle.


From there I went on to do the final drawing.


Click over to the see the final painting!

io9 TYE article

Here's a really kind article (with some interesting comments!) written about my project, Terrible Yellow Eyes over on i09 :

baby kale color studies

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Some color studies for the Kales. I think the first two are my favorites. Probably the second is my most favorite.

girl and dinosaur

A while back, you may remember, I was interviewed about Ticket. The good man on the other end of the phone was named Clayton. During the interview my phone died and unrelatedly, my lamp exploded across my desk. It was an exciting interview to say the least.

Clayton and his wife are expecting a little girl and they have commissioned me to do a piece for them - with dinosaurs! I'll be blogging the process here over the next few weeks.

Enjoy the first round of rough thumbnails. We have yet to determine a direction :

1. Collecting flowers : This has the girl standing on the head of a long necked dinosaur. She's made a crown of flowers for it and herself and she's collecting more. There's flowers, butterflies, trees, vines.

2. Tyrannosaur tea party : This has the girl toasting the dinosaur (they both have a crown of flowers, I just liked the image) clouds, warm day, pterodactyls flying in the sky.

3. "Put it down" : This has the girl in a boat on the lake and a plesiosaur has risen up and picked up her boat. Girl's expression is cross, pointing down, to "put it down."

4. Triceratops Serenade : This has the girl, again in a boat this time with a friend serenading her on a guitar. Flying fish pop out of the water. Girl stands bold at the bow.

electric blue sidewalk chalk.

The Art Dept.!

Awesome! We scored a hot mention over on Irene Gallo's blog, The Art Department.

Irene had some very kind things to say about my little project and I thank her. We can't hope to fill the shoes, but we sure do love them.

Terrible Yellow Eyes - preliminary work : Water Thing

Again, so as to not abandon my blog while I focus on Terrible Yellow Eyes, I am posting the preliminary work for the new piece posted over there.

Thumbnail.

Original watercolor and drawing.

First stage of the digital work :
Click over to see the final!

Terrible Yellow Eyes - teaser

Need to get your Terrible Yellow Eyes fix before tomorrow? You're in luck! -- my buddy Chad Frye is blogging the creation of his contribution (which will debut on TYE next Friday) and has posted some of his work in progress roughs, and thumbnails. Joy!

Where for art thou Zune Arts?

This is a quick PSA. I noticed the other day that the Zune Arts site was down, gone, or lost to interwebs. Since I had "le Cadeau du Temps" over on the sidebar the video was also down, gone, or lost to the interwebs.

In a proactive move, I uploaded an HD version to vimeo to re-post on the sidebar. Unfortunately, it screwed things up a little. But. We've gotten The Gift of Time back, which is worth it to me.

dedication.

I'd like to dedicate this Tuesday post to my lonely visitor in the Atlantic.

Thank you for checking my blog, even while in the ocean.



Unrelatedly, I think, I have a nice Chinese speaking man named "Ed" who has been spamming the heck out of my blog with links to inappropriate materials. Just so you know, Ed is bad man. Do not click on his links.

life portraits.

For the last few Monday nights I've been going to a life drawing class. I've been focusing on portraits and the face. Here are a few from the last couple nights that I liked.

Terrible Yellow Eyes - preliminary work : Shadows

Again, so as to not abandon my blog while I focus on Terrible Yellow Eyes, I am posting the preliminary work for the new piece posted over there.

Drawing with a little digital value.

Figuring the shadows in photoshop.

Click over to see the final!

Grimm review over in the RR

Andrew Peterson is an all-around great guy, and possibly, even better writer. He did a little write-up about my recent Grimm show over his blog The Rabbit Room.

"... all conspired to give me a flutter in the stomach that I only get when I’m at Disney World..."

I'll take it. Very kind.

Terrible Yellow Eyes - preliminary work

I want to be sure that my blog is not abandoned while I focus on Terrible Yellow Eyes for the next couple weeks. So, what I'll be doing is posting the work/studies here and the finals over there.

For starters, here's the drawing and thumbnail for the first moonlit parade I posted :

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"Almost Over a Year"

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See more at Sendak tribute art at
www.terribleyelloweyes.com !

Illustration Friday : "Hierarchy"

From my recent "Grimm and Other Folk Tales Exhibition" more information here.

From The Three Billy Goats Gruff : to see the original, exhaustively documented development post for this piece go here.

I enjoy imagining the troll's life, what he's like, and what's the hierarchy of the land. Obviously trolls eat goats, but the troll (upper class) is overthrown in the story by the goat (peasant) but is the troll necessarily the bad guy? Everything's got to eat something. Maybe he can't digest grass. All the same, I reject the school of thought that would subscribe to the inherent virtue of the under-privileged and the inherent vice of the privileged.

The troll is ultimately more interesting to me than the goat. Justin had an idea that maybe the troll lost a wager with a king and was cursed to live under the bridge.

I like to draw trolls and monsters. And if you were to ask I'd tell you that I'm pretty traditionally minded in regards to the depiction of trolls, dragons, and monsters. I don't like "fractured" fairy tales or deconstructionist retelling of classic stories. That being said, I can appreciate when a classic story is retold in the interest of looking at the story or characters in a different light -- not when it's done for jokes or poking fun at fairy tale conventions.

An idea I had about the story (and this is something of a digression here) is maybe the troll is the protagonist of the story, not the goats. The troll is reputable, clean, and decent. He owns the bridge, owns the land. He tends for it, cares for it, but these interlopers, these reckless, filthy goats unseat him and squat, ultimately ruining the land and moving on when its worthless. (Admittedly this probably has something to do with my own thoughts on order and decency as opposed to the Marxist notion of the inherent virtue of the under-privileged and the inherent vice of the privileged.)

Ultimately this is not the route I chose to go with for the piece, I went with the traditional. Though in my piece the troll isn't bad, just annoyed.

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The Troll
from The Three Billy Goats

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Unrelatedly, if you like, check out my most recent project! : Terrible Yellow Eyes