Only you.....can prevent bear maulings

This is my final for inking.

The Power is On!

This is my illustration I final, and my favorite piece that I've ever done....mostly for subject matter. It's a mock poster for the 2nd annual Power morphicon this summer at the Pasadena convention center in California. I wish I could go.....so bad.

Gabo and Michelle

So I've been really loving photoshop as a life drawing tool as of late. I can experiment wth color and compositions and capture the information that i need in a quicker amount of time then i can by hand. I still love the feeling of traditional media far more, but it's nice to be able to get a nice colored sketch of my friends while we're just casually hanging out.

It's also great because it allows me to experiment with different palettes without wasting materials. Which is AWESOME.

Muhahhahahha

My illustration teacher was sick today, and she told us to go with Warren Linn's visual journalism class and sketch from life. I took this opportunity to respond to my buddy Craig Bower's 4 page spread. That's right! 6 page spread ! It's just of a floor on the University of Baltimore campus. Not nearly as exciting as Craig's......but mine is 6 pages.

I also came to the terrifying and exciting conclusion that I have to start writing my thesis now in order to get it done during senior year.

The grumpiest Cat

Okay so...little known fact that only my high school art teacher knows. I hate watercolor and chalk pastels. Having said this I began to notice that my pastel drawing improved as my knowledge of color theory expanded. I was wondering if the same were true about watercolor, and I have to say the answer is also yes. Granted, I haven't touched this stuff since freshmen year of high school when i swore it was the devil.

I'm Not Dead!

Sorry about not posting in so long, here, look at this. It's about 3ft x 6ft and the medium is pastel. The top right is not complete, but you get the idea. I think it's my best drawing ever. I did it for life drawing last week. I'll also do another post soon for my illustration homework.....I will....I don't need your sass....

To Be Or Not To Be

Here's a poster I did for an imaginary Hamlet performance. My assignment was to draw it in a "cartoony" style with crowquil. It didn't go over very well. In fact, I was asked to redo it.

......... I'm not looking forward to that.

In other news I'm working on a zine for one of my classes. Stay tuned for more info.

SEIZE THE DAY

Okay, so Baltimore comic con was awesome. Everyone linked in my blog, short of Amy Hadley was there (that's cause my brain would've exploded if she had). 

Seriously, Jo Chen, Brian Stelfreeze, Eric Canete, and Sanford Greene. This year's comic con was a sight to behold. Just...wow, and Brian and Sanford gave me the greatest advice after checking out my sketchbook. Any improvement from here on out I owe them for. 

Anyway on an unrelated note. I finished my most recent illustration. 

The assignment was to do dvd art in the style of the criterion collection, so I naturally picked Josh Frisch's Z-Day. It was a fun experience, and I really enjoyed forcing myself to work in media that I don't feel comfortable with. You may see more of this type of work from me.

Sparkley Vampires

So I really am not a fan of vampires, but I had to draw one in a unique way for inking class. So I took the advice of my friend David Carpenter, and took inspiration from Nosferatu. That is to say this vampire doesn't feed on blood, but life energy. This was a 3 week project , we had to color using selections and a texture (i used a cafeteria napkin). Even-though, I didn't enjoy the assignment I'm mostly happy with the way it came out. 

michelangelo IS A PARTY DUDE!

This is my second inking assignment for inking class. We had to do ballpoint portraits from the shoulders up with clouds in the background. It was hell on me. SO outside of my comfort zone. I like that about it though. 

Dr. Sketchy's anti-art school made me cry

So I went to Dr. Sketchy's at the wind up space, for the first time. It was overall a good time. They did quick sexy poses, the best kind.....

This little baby above won the draw with your non-dominant hand contest, the first contest of the night.We were given 5 minutes, as we we're for the other non-contest poses I posted. The only downside was that winning the contest meant I won a shot....which I could not drink.....because I am only 18 (I don't drink anyway...so it was a lame prize for me)....so I got no prize.....

*sighs

I gave my 24 year old roommate the shot instead.

...and then they had Brandon Ragnar Johnson's baby tatooville book for the next contest that I did'nt win.....forget the aforementioned joy..... emo bitterness is all I feel.....

Despite the burning anger of not having My name Ragnar Johnson's book, I will be going back to Dr. Sketchy's next week....

Black Bird

So this was my first assignment for John Malloy's studio remix: inking class. It's a great class. This assignment was just to draw something from a flickr stream he gave us, and ink it, how we normally would. 

This was my first time using my light box and i enjoyed it a lot. I stretched out the composition because I didn't quite care for the reference photo's. I am very much aware of the glaring flaw in this though. The fore ground and background aren't really separating. I'm going to explore different ways of solving that issue this fall.

He's now breaking us out of our comfort zones to teach us different techniques. This is definitely the MICA class to take for anyone wanting to draw comics.

The Strongest Bite force!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm back in school now. So the blog will be updated even faster then before. 

These are excerpts from my first illustration I assignment. The assignment was to draw 100 illustrations of the same thing. I wanted to pick dinosaurs, but seeing as how I did that pretty recently I thought that would be lame. Instead I did something totally different......Alligators!

I did research on these majestic creatures of course as I was drawing. Did you know that crocodilia  have the strongest bite force of any creature on earth?.....I couldn't find out which exactly was stronger between the alligator and the croc.....it's very close, but I can tell you this

They both have a bite force that's over 2000 lbs per square inch (yes....I wish it was over 9000).....

To put that in perspective...a large great white shark has about 400 lbs per square inch...

If your still wondering how EPIC that makes them......check out this!

Breaking the Habit

So Sangram told me one thing I should work on is focusing on the environment of paintings as much as the figures in them. He said one thing that would be a good exercise would be doing a few environmental paintings. For me this means stepping wayyy out of my comfort zone, but it's definitely worth pursuing if I want to rock as hard as I want to at comics. 

So I decided to take on these 3 different environment types as well as palettes.

I think the good thing that can be said about these is that they are much better then I thought they would be...It helped alot to just think about the composition and palette. I learned alot of neat texture tricks on these that you should look forward to seeing in my future work.

Hmph... Go-on Gold

Yea, G0-onger is an awesome show, so I did a quick fan art of go-on gold. I've got a few plans for projects to finish up before school starts. I'm going to illustrate Shin ken red from shinkenger (possibly in acrylic), finish a comic (or at least finish penciling a comic), and get a few environment focused pieces done. That should take me to the rest of the summer.

In related news, I visited Orange Element, a design firm in Baltimore to get my portfolio reviewed by the art director as well as some of the designers and interns. It went really well. They really liked my fish piece a lot and were really curious about the process behind it. It was great to know that my hard work is paying off. They also helped me realize what the unifying elements of all my art, my 'style' if you will.  I think having a better understanding of that will help me build a stronger body of work in the future.

This Ain't Sea World! THIS IS REAL AS IT GETS!!

I felt like painting fish.

This piece was an interesting experience to the end. I'm really enjoying the journey my art is taking this summer. At the same time, I really wish I could figure out how to combine my love comic art and my new found passion for painting. I guess all I can do is continue to experiment. 

I'm finding that my artistic thought process streams much more spontaneously during the summer, probably because I can focus more on the task at hand. I need to find a way of working this efficiently (preferably better) in less time. 

It's going to be interesting to see how my oil painting and inking sensibilities will change after working in photoshop exclusively for the past couple months. 

More then meets the eye!

Greetings true believers, I decided to work on a subject matter that has always intimidated me a bit.... Roboto paintings!......I did it because it's something I hate to do......but I hate weakness more......

I took inspiration from this painter whose work I found at a beach gallery last week named Pino 

I was more satisfied with the painting in this piece then the drawing. The mark making and the color was about where I wanted it to be, but my draftsmanship needs to catch up.

RIP Michael Jackson.....and FALCON PUNCH!

I did some photoshop sketches over the weekend. Working on my color as well as loosening up my drawing hand. As for subject matter, what could be better then the king of pop and the king of Epic.

I learned from these. The captain falcon sketch was me trying to implement some of the solutions that I saw in the street fighter tribute book to the whole rendering with line art thing.

SUMMER COMIC!!

So I did this little 4 pager over the last week cause I was bored.

It is essentially a trailer of how my life would be if I was'nt an artist.  My co-stars are Josh Frisch and Rebecca Mock.

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page4

Best week so far.... Next post will be a painting, and maybe some other surprises.   

Triceratops!!!

 Guess who went to the zoo and sketched like a good art student?

Shoryuken !!!

Hey I'm back again, and I have to say the two books I just bought this last week are amazing.

street fighter tribute

and 

popgun 3

The cool part was that two artist that I know were in popgun (Sam Bosma and Maximo Lorenzo), and Bryan Lee O'malley was in the street fighter tribute along with a plethora of other amazing artists.

Anyways my tidbit about myself for this entry....the only things I did that I liked from this year.

.....my foundation show piece for next year.....

               

and my most successful illustration for the year......Darth Hilton

Tyrannosaurus!!!

Hi I'm Brandon J. Wallace. Maybe you've heard of me....maybe not.....either way I hope you enjoy my blog. I'll try to update every other week.