What (Taco-induced) Dreams May Come

Let's kick this post off with another student-inspired drawing. No, I've never taught a student who looked like this (though I bet nobody would mess with that kid), but as I occasionally do, I asked for student input for my next project. In an unprecedented turn of events, I got only two suggestions: a robot and a monster.  Since both ideas clicked when I heard them, I drew both. In retrospect, I think the metal jaw was probably at least partially inspired by the character Trap Jaw from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, one of my favorite childhood (and adulthood) cartoons.

I went with a almost completely black eye and exaggerated musculature and brow to play up his monster portion, and of course the metal lower jaw and cybernetic eye to give him his robotic aspect. The jaw was a little plain, so I added weld lines to give it a more gritty, metallic look.

 As I've expressed in earlier posts, my mind can be a strange place.  My dreams are often even more strange. This thing is directly from a dream I had, which may or may not have been influenced by eating fast food tacos too close to bedtime. As is apparent it is come sort of water-dwelling creature. To give you an idea of the scale of it, in the dream I was roughly as tall as this things nostril.  I'm more than six feet tall, so this thing was monstrously huge. It's face was flat when viewed at profile, and it's skin was translucent grey-green. Other than that, I recall that in spite of it's gargantuan proportions and grim visage, I didn't feel threatened by it at all.
The translucency of the body and fins (or flippers or whatever you'd call them) was an interesting challenge. I'm not sure I'd do it the same way a second time, but I suppose I'm satisfied enough with the results. I really like the way the tail turned out, as well.

This last one, for my younger readers, is a television.  This is what they looked like before they evolved into the flat panel, high-definition, admittedly much better incarnations that are the norm today.  This was another exercise in stepping outside of my comfort zone and drawing something that has a defined shape and very defined proportions. It was drawn at the suggestion of another of the youth group kids from church and, along with my Japanese spider crab, bulldog, and a dirt-bike (to be posted at a later date) became a compilation drawing that I gave copies of to the kids who inspired it.  I'll probably post that compilation sometime as well. 

Even though I wasn't crazy about the subject matter, I did get to draw a little of my relaxation-inducing meticulous details in the wood grain of the cabinet housing. I also drew a "Hamptronic" brand plate to the middle of the speakers to add a little visual interest.

That's it for today's post.  Wired Wednesday continues this week so check back then. Also, I'm still waiting to see who is willing to step outside of their comfort bubble and take the challenge I threw out there a while back.  Remember, even if you absolutely can't bring yourself to share your art with the world, I guarantee you know someone who is willing.  I encourage you to point them in this direction. Hope to hear from you all and receive those drawings soon!

Stay creative,

AH!

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, or Some Combination Thereof?

I think that title describes these pictures well.
This first drawing was a way to stretch my wings a bit (if you'll forgive the pun) by drawing a close-up of a hawk's head.  Of course, drawing a bird meant drawing feathers, which is not only a pretty relaxing activity but also excellent practice in drawing repeated, similar shapes. The difficult part is keeping the feathers similar in shape, while still including their natural variations so they don't look artificial.  There's very little shading in the feathers, which is another step outside of my comfort area.  The great part is that the angles of the feathers show the contour of the bird, rendering shading (again forgive the pun) virtually unnecessary.

The tree that is below is the result of the visual artist's equivalent of writer's block.  I can't really complain though, since I ended up with a really detailed illustration of a ficus tree.  The leaves look better in person, but you can see I employed a similar method to that of the hawk's feathers.  The leaves are similar to each other, but show a degree of variation as well.  The difference being that I wanted the feathers to show the contours of the hawk's head. If the leaves were all similarly angled, the tree would look more like a topiary than a naturally growing ficus. I should also point out that this particular ficus is an evil ficus.  You really have to watch out for them, since they look just like any other ficus.

One Sunday morning I had the bright idea to ask several kids in my church's youth group to throw out some ideas for strange things to draw. One of them, Nash R., really delivered. While I'm not sure I'd spontaneously choose to draw a Japanese spider crab, in retrospect I'm glad I did.  Keeping the legs in proportion to each other was a huge pain, but as with any trial, it paid me with experience. I couldn't have asked for a much better result for this decapod.  If you've never heard of these things, I suggest reading up on them. You can't get a much more intimidating crustacean than a 12 foot, 40 pound crab.

In case the fact hasn't become obvious yet, I greatly prefer drawing organic shapes (e.g. animals) to drawing more angular objects with set proportions (e.g. buildings or automobiles). This is an exception to that rule.  This was another requested drawing, and in this case it was one of my students who made the request unsolicited.  He wanted me to draw a robot dog.  Now, those who know me also know that I'm a bit of a pushover when it comes to polite requests from kids (or adults for that matter), so after only a very slight hesitation I agreed. Thus was born (constructed?) the robotic dog. In case he ever happens to stumble across this particular blog post, I'd like to say to him "Thank you, Ethan S. for pushing me outside of my artistic comfort zone.  I really like the way this little pup turned out, and would likely have never tried it without your tenacious coaxing."

That about does it for this episode.  Tune in next post, same bat-time, same bat-channel.

-AH!