Old Gesture Pages - Part 1

I think a lot of these are already on the blog, butI know a lot aren't. Just some gesture pages. 

Got a Hankerin'

Tonight I really got the itch to oil paint. I think it was all that staring at amazing art on Ryan Wood, Adam Ford, Mark Behm, Dave McClellan, Dave Malan, and a ton of other's bolgs. They amaze me. Makes me want to paint and draw more and more. Man, I need it. This is oil on paper. I began using oil on paper in college, and fell in love with it. It is somewhat smooth, but keeps a bit of a tooth, shows the brush strokes a bit from the gesso, and is light and easy to store. I remembered something the hard way tonight...don't use Ivory Black as your black when doing a grisaille painting...it turns blue when mixed with white! Mars Black all the way. Doing this tonight was punishing...but worth it. I needed it, and I need to get better, that's for sure. 

One of my greatest pieces of art...

This is one of the greatest pieces of art I think I have ever created...or helped create - my son, Will on the Oregon Coast last week. 

Portland's Japanese Gardens

Last week I took my family up to Oregon for a family reunion. While we were there, we visited Portland's Japanese Gardens. They were absolutely breathtaking. I'm going to have to paint some of these pictures. My wife made fun of me because I was taking so many pictures and drooling. I could live there. 

Animation:Master 2005 Training DVD

About a year and a half ago, I was asked to teach a character animation class at Brigham Young University. I ended up teaching the class in Hash's Animation:Master, which is beautifully simple for animation, especially character animation. The only problem was that it was in a Mac lab, and A:M didn't exactly perform well on the Mac. So it was painfully slow and very frustrating for the students. Since they had never touched the software before, and I didn't want to waste time teaching them the basic fundamentals of how to use it, I began making tutorials that they could watch on their own time, so we would be able to focus on animation in class. I began the tutorials explaining everything as if they had never seen the software before. They liked them so much, they wanted me to make more. So I did. Many of them, the students never got to see, but it's what I wished I would have known picking up A:M. I have compiled the tutorials into DVD-ROMs now and they are available for purchase at my website:

http://bzundel.googlepages.com/

Some Newer Figures...Continued

Some more...

20 minute Study - NuPastel on Newsprint
This was kind of interesting. This was the firest figure drawing I had done from a model in quite a while, and I was looking forward to trying to get back into "shape". Unfortunately, the model wore a "fairy" costume, complete with wings and a frilly flowing outfit. Couldn't see the forms of her body at all. So this was more of a foray into drawing drapery...a prety bad foray. NuPastel on paper.
This one I'm really not fond of, but I guess it's good to see the bad with the good, if there is any good. This model could not hold still if her life depended on it. She was very nice, but could not stop talking to us about her other modeling jobs, and once again, the dress was a frilly, almost Victorian gown with lace everywhere. Needless to say, this is not one of my favorites. NuPastel on paper. 

Some Newer Figures

Here's a few recent figure drawings done at work. I finally got around to bringing my camera to work so I could take pictures. All images are on 18x24 paper.

This first image is graphite on paper. I now know why graphite is used on SMALL drawings. It took forever to get the darks, and I'm not too happy with it. The entire image turned out pretty good, but the hand on her lap is a bit small and unfinished. This image took 2 hours.
In this image, I was using conte, which I love for how dark it is, but at the same time I loathe for how hard it is to pick up with an eraser. However, I really liked the line quality I got with the conte.
This is a 5 minute gesture study. NuPastel on paper
This was a study where I just wasn't drawing well. The proportions are a bit off, the line is not what I wanted, and once again, I was braving the ever-daunting task of drawing with Conte. This was about 45 minutes.  

The Daily Sketch...Again...

I'm starting again. It's so funny how it never seems to stick. Life gets busy, work envelops you, and the first thing you do is drop what is making you a living. Weird. Here's a 5 minute sketch in Painter. Don't know what it is. I just shrugged my shoulders, and began drawing someone shrugging theirs. No reference used.

Some Oil Paintings

So here are a few oil paintings. Not quite as good as Dave McClellan's plein air, but I'm trying.

This is a painting of the cove in Shaver Lake, California that we go to every other year with my wife's family. It is 3'x5'.

This is a painting of Whale Cove, near Lincoln City, Oregon, one of my favorite places in the world. Only 2 weeks and I'm there! This is 12"x24" on canvas, and about 4 hours of work. I haven't touched it for about 2 months. Still needs about 20 more hours.

Some More recent Figures

Here are a few figure drawings that were from 3-4 years ago:

Old Art

Tonight I was digging through some of my old art in the basement and I found some trash...I mean jems. Here they are for your laughing, er, viewing pleasure. Some of these really crack me up!


This is a figure in Oil that's 3'x5'. It was my first foray into painting the figure from life. For 8 weeks, two times a week, I worked on this. Man, that hand is terrible. The sad thing is that I look at that and think, "Man, I wish I could paint like that!" Hence the need to get back into painting...beat my freshman self!

This is a piece that I did for an illustration class where we had to use photo reference. It's only about 6"x8" Acrylic. I learned very quickly that painting with acrylics in Utah is a race: Can you paint a stroke, mix a color, and get back to the canvas before it is dry. The face is mine...well...kind of. I have always loved The Hobbit, so I did this. I look at it now and cringe, but it's only up from here (hopefully).

More! More ART I tell you!

I know, I know, I've been slacking. Been a bit busy. I'll get some more sketches up in the next day or so. I'm trying to get into painting...again. Look at Dave McClellan's stuff in my links. The guy is an amazing painter. (Que the "Be Like Mike" music) I WANNA BE LIKE DAVE! (And Ryan, Adam, Todd, etc.

Aaaah. Corporate America!

Leave it up to corporate America to pay for 3 people to fly to your office, stay in a ritzy hotel, and come in to tell you how unergonomic your office is. Then you need a doctor's note to get an "ergonomic" chair. All that because they are too cheap to just buy you the $100 chair that would help your back and knees. Sheeeeesh.

Witch Drawing

Here's a random sketch that I was working on for an art challenge. I like the drawing, but I'm not going to post the painting until it's reworked. Needless to say, it's pretty bad. My painting and drawing skills have all been going to pot lately. I really need to get back into it.

New Links!

I just added a bunch of links of artists I work with that totally kick my trash. They are amazing artists and I feel that I can't keep up with them no matter how hard I try. I feel pretty inadequate around them, but I love working with them and learning from them. Check them out!

Some new drawings

These are a few new drawings that I did taking a break at work. Most are original, but I copied a few of the heads from John Nevarez to try to mimic his style...not so easy. He's an amazing draughtsman, that's for sure. Lately I've been trying to get away from the "mechanical pencil" look that I always seem to fall back on. I get such better results when I use my entire arm instead of just my fingertips to get a drawing down.

Fun little animation test...

This was a test that I am working on. It's mainly just the keyframes with no inbetweens. But I loved the quote...I had to do it.

Animation Rotoscoping Test

This was an animation test where we filmed ourselves doing something and then rotoscoped the motion to see where we go wrong. It was eye opening. I jumped off the trampoline in my backyard. When you watch the original video, it looks totally normal. But watching the rotoscoped animation, which is spot on to the reference, it looks slow and too fluid...no snappiness. Looks like animation really is the "illusion of life", and not life exactly. If it were so, animation would be painfully stale.

Painting Study

Here's just a study I did today for a painting that I am considering doing. It's amazing when you use a model how much you realize that what you DO draw from memory is SO wrong. It's a rough, but I'm pleased with how it came out.

Joust Remake

This month, the challenge at work was to do some new art for a classic game. I never was a gamer when I was younger. We had a Coleco Vision with a million games and the adapter to play Atari 2600 games, but my gaming experience stopped there. All my friends moved on to the NES and I later got a Sega Master System, but Altered Beast and Outrun were as far as I got. So my knowledge of games quickly diminished, as I had to rely on trips to my friends houses to see what the new games were. Some may think I was a deprived child, but I think it was better that I was outside, where I love every minute of nature. Here are a few sketches that I am working on putting together for a remake of "Joust." Man, my abilities sure stink compared to my colleagues. Makes me sick, they are so good. I'm going to attempt to paint this one up for the challenge

Just Another Monster

This is just another monster idea. Seems pretty good, but I feel like I haven't put enough into it. I think I'm going to paint this one up. I'll post that soon.

First Final Painter 9 Portrait

So it's final. I decided to stop noodling it and just pump it out. I think it turned out pretty good for my first foray into digital portrait painting. By the way, did I mention that I LOVE undo? It beats painting on a canvas and constantly scraping, repainting, scraping, repainting, sanding, repainting until it's right. But there is still that physical touch of paint on a canvas that I think Painter, no matter how good, can duplicate. So I'll keep at it. Hopefully I can get quicker from here. If I take as long on other images as I did with this one, I'll never get any better.

Portrait in Progress

This is a portrait that I am working on in Painter just for kicks. It's my first time really trying to get colors right on the computer, so I cheated a bit. I have never been able to pick out sublties in color, so I thought I would experiment. What I did was use the eyedropper tool on the actual picture to see what colors were REALLY there versus what I thought was there. I was amazed how poor my choices were. So this has really been a learning experience. The portrait is of my wife, but for those who know her, it doesn't look a whole lot like her. The drawing that I did was actually really good, but while zoomed in and painting, I accidentally moved the painting layer a tiny bit down, and didn't catch it until I was way too far into the painting, so here it is. I'll post a few more pictures of the progress in the near future.

Few More Sketches

Just a few sketches in my free time for an art challenge at work. Man, I haven't done this in a while...It was great to do but all too revealing at how much I need to improve. Hopefully I'll continue to improve, but unfortunately that'll take another 10,000 drawings.

Painter Character Test

Here's just a little attempt at coloring a drawing in Painter. I'm not liking the composition much, and the painting is unfinished, but I think it's ok. The title of this is "A child's first encounter with his imaginary friend". That could be the big bully's imaginary friend is a pip-squeak bean-alien, or the kid alien's imaginary friend is a big oafy kid.