Just an aside about colored pencils.

I really enjoyed working with colored pencil. If you get a good set, they least a while and they flow like paint almost.

Sure, this piece is very small, but I have taken a liking to it.

My Google Doodle on the other hand, felt forced. I like my technical execution of it, but I wish I had had a better concept to flourish with.

Project Four - Leaders of Glue (Or "We Used All of Mike's Matte Medium")

This project made me want to scream. I spent hours and hours rifling through magazines and cutting out tiny segments of color and shape. Until the wee hours of the morning I strained my eyes to see the patterns converge into a graphic I might use for my final pieces.

Turns out I didn't use a single piece from any of my original 10 pattern collages. I felt cheated.

But, all in all, it was interesting to use a medium of which I had no prior experience with. That fact alone may account for some of my difficulty with it.

Here is the best one of the finished collages. I feel I could have done better on it, like making the figure more interesting or fixing the bottom up a little, but after what seemed like a glue-filled eternity I was ready to be done with this one.

Project 3: Monster Maker

This project was also one that I really enjoyed, partially because I've had more practice with watercolor than colored pencil, but mostly because I love illustrating people and creatures the most. If I'm doing art for fun, 9 times out of ten I'm going to be drawing some weird or spooky creature.

This project took around 5 hours of work, but that isn't including the brainstorming, which took up the bulk of the effort. In today's age of monster movies and video games, getting farther away from the already-been-done is ever difficult. 

Here is the final product. It turned out better than I thought, but still not good enough. Not to mention it's difficult to get high quality images of work that is too large to be casually scanned.

Although, a writer friend for whom I did a book cover saw this and suggested we co-create a children's book. 

Neat.

Project One - The Eyes Have It

This project was very zen. I would estimate it took me around 15 hoursto complete, and most of that time was spent in that quiet zone of calm focus. I felt I could hear the graphite whispering me it's secrets.


Anyway, here is the final product.

The most difficult part of it was forcing myself to stop putting marks on it.

I liked this project quite a bit.