Portfolio

http://thosdowling.carbonmade.com/

Hello everyone, this should be my only update ever with no pictures attached. I just wanted to announce that I have put together a Carbonmade portfolio, because it's all professional like. So go on and check it out, there'll be a lot of things that you can see on this blog. However, unless you've plumbed all the way back to my first post, you'll probably see some new stuff.

It's a work in progress, as I work on finding my "best work."

The progress on my busts has been slow due to various factors, so there are no updates today, but hopefully at the beginning of next week.

Lady Bust

Here's my work in progress shot for this week. Her hair's a mess, and now that I'm looking at this photo, she may be looking a little mannish from the lips down. These things will be worked on and more.

A bit more work has been done on my other sculpture but I'll be posting work completed pics when they are both done.

Busty

Hello, still not doing as much of that regular updating thing as I've been intending to do. Anyway, tonight was a lovely Autumn night following a few productive days of sculpting.

About 95% finished with this guy and thought I'd share a few shots of it. Thank you for stopping by, and as always, I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Digital Sketchbooks

In an effort to expand into the community a little bit, I have spent this week updating an online sketchbook at CGHub.com. This is a great place where I go to be inspired by the work of professionals and students alike. I'm a bit shy to start really commenting on other people's sketchbooks, but eventually, the better I get to know people there, the more we can share critiques and advice.

What I've emphasized this week in my sketching is that a return to the basics can always do you some good. Especially after a drawn out break like the one I just took. Not only is it good practice to warm back up again, but even more importantly is the emphasis on things that I may have missed the last I did a study on the basics, and may not have been practicing in my most recent artwork.

If you're interested, this is a link to my sketchbook.

Also, I don't like posting here without something to show, so this is a page of studies based on the figures within Andrew Loomis' book, "Figure Drawing For All Its Worth."

Faces of Garda

 You may just want to skip the text walls and look at the pictures, you may not. I place the choice at your fingertips.

Last time I posted, my claim to have returned to the world of art making appears to have been a little bit of a fake out. So I decided that next time I wanted to be sure that I'd been drawing again for more than a few days before announcing the end of my post-Senior year hiatus. So, I believe that this is it, sick of working my dead end cashier job, I feel I ought to get back into my portfolio in earnest.

Firstly, because I'd be doing myself a great disservice if I didn't do some refresher exercises I set into a project I'd been meaning to do for some time. So I set out to practice drawing my faces, and I've drawn a bunch this past week, of which I will present a few here. To give the project a touch of inspiration for myself, I decided to theme each set of portraits as groups of people you'd meet in the world of Garda. I would like to note however, that a great deal has changed these last few months, as I've also been rewriting the history of Garda and the nature of her people. So names of people and places that are familiar from previous posts may mean something new now. Nothing will be revealed until things are more definite, but if I'm successful as an artist you may be able to glean some things from the portraits.

The Varang Kol

Pellidarans

Vitruscans

I'm Back!

Okay, it's time to end my unannounced hiatus from art and stuff. I know, I know, not very professional of me at all. Riding on my post-graduation enthusiasm only made me feel good for so long, because then it was back to my day job, because I need to pay rent.

All that aside, I have to find new projects to work on. Opportunities to get in touch with the people I need to know have been presented, and I would be fool to not take them. Plus, a friend has urged me to apply to Dreamworks. You know, a real company that does stuff and people have heard about. Scary for a newbie out of college like me! However, what do I have to lose, at the very least I can send them my portfolio. So this is the thought that is giving me focus, to create the most badass concept art portfolio I can, and I'm starting now! Okay, that's a lie, but in a good way. I've already started.

Lastly however, I never posted the finished works of my character designs from way back when. This is about to be rectified:

The Proposal

This was the first painting of this semester, besides a few practice ones. Definitely feel like my style needs work, but I am pretty happy with the progress from the semester before or last year.

Thesis Exhibit

I ought to have announced on my blog that the opening for my senior thesis exhibit happened this last Friday. I was only able to be there for a short amount but that time was great. I got to stand by talking to friends and professors while people leaned over to ask, "Are you the artist?" My answers were mostly shy and nervous and deferential to any praise, which I was happy to receive. This also wraps up a good six years of college, and a very informative two and a half years at MECA, where I learned that drive, and creating "prolific" amount of artwork are the best tools to becoming a better artist (go figure). I'm not really contemplating the next step yet, but you will be seeing more art from me all the time (except when I'm away for Army stuff). Who knows, perhaps in the absence of school I'll even develop a logic to my posting schedule.

Here are some pics taken by my wonderful professor, Jamie Hogan.

 

Evolution of a Drawing

Sometimes I forget to talk about what this blog was meant for. As my crude subtitle would suggest this is meant to chronicle my journey from being the slacker of an artist and person I used to be to becoming... something more. It's a journey that is still in the making, and it involves long days with a pencil or a stylus but is more rewarding than any other thing I've set myself to in the past. Soon I am wrapping up a phase of my life that has lasted a long time, preparing to graduate from the Maine College of Art. Wrapping up with my thesis work has kept me from posting as much as I otherwise might like to and I still have a bit to do, but I thought it might be cool to share the evolution of my most recent piece from thumbnail to final.

So here it is, feel free to skip the words and just look at the pictures:

The first is one of about 10 to 12 thumbnail sketches I did, it wasn't my favorite but my independent study mentor saw promise in it so I went on to develop it.

 

 I had to turn out a full illustration from this point in two weeks, which is a tight deadline for me. Perfect in that I need to speed up my process though. So I went straight to the computer and started to change around the composition in order to get something more dynamic.

  

 I decided the direction was promising but I wasn't convinced about the perspective or my giant's (whom you may recognize from previous posts) intention to harm these little barbarian spearmen. So after a bunch more sketching frustration I ended up with this sketch.

 So this is where I am at now, with a fur coat type thing added in I believe I hit the mark a lot closer to what I was trying to achieve than I would've not all that long ago, and in a shorter time frame. My next lesson though? It's time to learn to render in Photoshop from life, something I haven't given myself a great chance to do and something that ought to make the below image achieve something far greater than it is now, so that I can spend more time worrying about what's being said than trying to get metal to read as metal.

It's all about the detail shots!

Here's a bunch of pics of a just next to finished sculpt of my little giant.

The last one is a scale shot for all you D&D nerds like myself. I believe that this guy falls into the colossal category on the play mat.

Skeletons are Neat

Sometimes a shot of something or a part of something in progress is as cool as the finish, in some cases possibly cooler. I kinda hope this isn't one of those but I strongly suspect it is... either way I'm pretty certain this awesome metal hand doesn't go with the rest of the sculpture.

A few hours ago it looked like this:

  

Now it looks like this:

 

It's still in need of some tender loving care to get just quite right, and hopefully by the end of all this sculpting (tomorrow perhaps!?) it'll look more awesome than his bionic hand.

Here's a picture of the full figure...:

...and a lovely mugshot:

He's missing a few teeth right now but that will be fixed soon enough.

Picknit

Here are the most recent updates to some of the character drawings I've done. Some have minor adjustments from recent postings on this blog, while I believe most are brand new here but have received major editing within the last week, particularly as I discovered how bad the first two characters I drew were after the experience of drawing the last six.

So (re)introducing; a Nobleman from Nortmark, distinguished veteran of many a border skirmish, a Noblewoman from Pellidar, groomed in the lap of luxury, a High Priestess from Vitrusca, whose decree can set a nation to war, and an elvish Mercenary of the Nula'Hiashk, whose centuries of practice with blade and magic make her a foe to be reckoned with.

In this second set; a Warrior from the barbarous tribes of the Varang Kol, who refused to just die when a raid destroyed all she loved, a Stonemason from the Underkingdom Schutgreich, an artisan with as much delicacy as strength, a mysterious Lord among the Wild Elves, whose sinister deeds are more vile than most would care to know, and finally an Orc Elite from the Fel'Krag Badlands, whose most prized possession is the belt of shrunken heads he's collected from the fields of slaughter.

A Giant!

Alright, so just a quick little update on some of the work from my neck of the woods.

Working on a little sculpture of a giant... I've gotten some odd looks when I describe my "giant sculpture" as being about a foot tall.

Going to be figuring out the hands and the feet tomorrow and laying in some armature for those.

 Here's what it looked like after the armature was about done

...and here it is with a few pounds of Sculpey on top. After the hands and feet it oughtn't take too long to rough the rest in.

Hopefully major updates soon!

For Real New Drawings

I feel like it's been a while since I've had more or less complete sketches to show, but here some are.

The first is an Elvish "Vampire" Lord. The second is an Elvish Mercenary, known as the Nula'Hiashk or "Unhorned" by their wilder kin. The third is a member of the Orcish Warrior Elite

Enjoy!

Little Heads

Okay, so you haven't heard much from my camp lately. So between moving last week and losing my internet for the better part of that week and heading home for St. Patty's day corned beef and cabbage, I haven't had much of a chance to post, nor anything much to post for that matter. So, last few days I've been cranking out some of the character designs I have to do (eight in total, including the four already seen here) and getting set up for success later in the semester.

So here is a sampling of all the characters I've worked on thus far and some of their latest drawings. I usually like to work it so that you don't have to click on the image in order to see the details, but that's probably necessary in this case.

Some still have a lot of work to go in terms of fully deciding on details and to fix anatomy, such as the preponderance of small heads to the right, but they are getting there.

Oh, and my new place totally rocks.

Warpaint & Beards

 

Working on a little bit of character development and getting as much individuality and personality as I can into these portraits for some character designs.