Dino-Power!

Rise of the FIRE BEAST!

2011-07-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

Hey. Finished this a while ago, but I was at precollege. This is the painting that I did sketches earlier. The painting is acrylic on canvas and about 2ft by 2.5ft (i think).

Fire Beast Sketches

2011-06-08T17:30:00.001-07:00

1.

2.

3.

Hey guys, I worked up some sketches for the piece I'm working on. Which should I go with?

Summer sketches.

2011-06-08T17:30:00.000-07:00

Just some observational sketchbook pages from this summer. I'm really looking forward to my second run at precollege in a couple weeks.

Fire Beast Concept Thumbnails

2011-06-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hey guys I'm working on a painting of a giant fire beast, so I whipped up some thumbnails. Critique much appreciated.

Sailor Moon Movie Posters

2011-04-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

Sailor Moon R

Sailor Moon S

Sailor Moon Super S

The last assignment for my concepts II class was a triptych of our choosing but for a particular market (ie. games, movies, music, etc.). I chose to do fake movie posters for the three Sailor Moon movies. These pieces started out as 18x24 acrylic paintings then i scanned them and finished them in photoshop. It was something different for me and overall I enjoy the results. I've still got some issues with them that I'd like to resolve at some point, but I most likely will not get to address them during this last week of school, due to the time crunch I'm in. Critics and compliments are equally welcomed.

Tron Legacy Rolling Stone Album Review Illustration

2011-03-25T23:34:00.000-07:00

Another concepts II assignment

Concepts stuff

2011-03-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

These are 2 of my 3 assignments from concepts II thus far (the last post I did being the third).

The first image was our first assignment was an editorial illustration. The topic being the repeal of don't ask don't tell. It's an ink wash drawing and i tweaked the levels in photoshop.

The lower image is a book cover for the metamorphosis. It's charcoal and acrylic. I didn't attempt anything with fonts or lettering because I don't feel quite comfortable with that aspect of design at the moment and it wasn't required.

Words on Wheels

2011-02-28T22:51:00.001-08:00

This was for Words on Wheels, a partnership MICA has with the Baltimore grade schools. The students write poems and then some are given to the students in some of the Concepts II classes to illustrate.

Exterminate!!!!

2011-02-20T15:47:00.000-08:00

Charcoal demo I gave for Danamarie's illustration II class. Dalek's are cool.

The Day Marta left

2011-02-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

This was a 2 week assignment for Advanced Sequential Art class. The first week was for writing and thumb nailing. The second for drawing. The story had to be based off of one photo from Alissandra Sanguinetti's photo series "the life that came". I chose "Three O'clock Soap Opera". I'm generally happy with what I did ( minus a panel or two, and my atrocious lettering). The assignment was basically for Alain Corbel to get an idea of how we worked because for the rest of the class we will be working on one story that we've written ourselves. I'm really excited for the upcoming project, hopefully I'll show all I've learned about dramatic writing, comic pacing, and action.

CRAB BOSS Version 2.0!

2011-01-26T18:24:00.000-08:00

I reworked my favorite final for character design a little for the upcoming society of illustrators competition.

Character Design Finals!

2010-12-18T23:04:00.000-08:00

So yea, this is what I did for for the rest of my character design class. The piece at the top was our second to last assignment, we had to draw an environment, so I drew the scene from Aladdin where the stolen Djinn creates a palace for the sorcerer. The second two pieces were my final project. We had to create new characters for our imaginary Arabian Nights movie and present them in any way we chose, so I decided to illustrate to scenes from the Sinbad portion of our movie. I created a Sea Queen who lusts for Sinbad and seduces him while in human form (which explains his success as a pirate). The Sea KING, however, is rightfully displeased upon discovering this and attemps to take his revenge on the pirate.

Snow Queen

2010-11-02T19:24:00.001-07:00

My Depiction of the Snow Queen. Graphite, Acrylic and Photoshop.

The Long Arms of the Mossad

2010-11-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

This is an editorial illustration I did about the mossad, Israel's secret service. You can read the article here . Charcoal and Photoshop.

Sorcerer!

2010-11-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

This is my redesign of the Sorcerer from Aladdin for character design.

Thief!

2010-09-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

This is my first finished character design for advanced character design class. He's one of the 40 thieves from Alibaba and the 40 thieves. Our class was split up into groups depending on weather we wanted out concept art to be more about animation, video games, or live action film. My group is live action so we are doing character designs for an imaginary film adaptation of 1001 arabian nights.

*Update: I changed the head and the knife from before.

The Journey

2010-09-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

These are environments for my studio Remix: The Snow Queen class. The class is taught by illustrator Marcos Chin and director David Drake, and we are going to create our own interpretation of the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale. The first half of the semester we are doing concept art for the production and the second half we are creating the actual production. For our first assignment I had to illustrate Baltimore city in the snow and an ice rink. I think I learned alot about the way I think about composition from these, and it was a fun and rewarding exercise to create spaces from my head.

Slay the Beast!

2010-09-01T13:52:00.000-07:00

This is one of my personal projects from the summer. It was for a James and the Giant Peach contest on.......deviantart. The contest was to draw where you escape to when you daydream. Obviously, I am a Power Ranger when I daydream, so this was what I drew.

GOJIRA!

2010-08-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

Testing out my sweet new scanner. This is one of the crayon doordecks I made for my awesome community at precollege. Emilio, Robert, Scott, and Tomas are pretty cool guys, they work really hard and doesnt afraid of anything. I miss em already.

Batwoman Birthday Blast!

2010-08-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

This piece was a birthday present for my best friend. I put many hours into this piece.....and dealt with the Satanic scanning prices of Kinko's. My initial goal was to try and do an Adam Hughes type of piece, I dont know if I was successful or not in that, but overall though it was great learning experience, and I'm happy with the way it looks.

Illustration friday: Caged

2010-08-09T20:39:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, precollege was awesome and I really enjoyed being a TARC. I really think it has changed me as an artist for the better.

I did a little tweaking to the template. Hope you don't mind.

This little piece is my first foray into the illustration Friday thing, so I tried something a tad different. The assignment was to illustrate the word "caged", so I tried to create a piece that really showed the emotion behind once freed creatures who are locked up and put on display. My only regret is that my lack of a scanner kept me from doing this piece traditionally.

T-Rex and Angel

2010-07-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

Hilariously enough, these are both observational drawings. The angel is a statue in the national portrait gallery, and the trex scene is from a small scale Jurassic period set in the museum of natural hitory (the colors were added to the original ink drawing later and from my head).They are both 2 page spreads in my 11x14 sketchbook.

Charm City Rollerz!

2010-07-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

So my job at precollege is going really well. It's super fun. Part of the job is being a teaching assistant for an illustration class. It's super cool and the students are awesome. They're last assignment was to draw an image to accompany an article about the charm city roller girls, so I decided to do it too.

Je Veux Ton Amour Et Je Veux Ton Revenge

2010-06-14T07:33:00.000-07:00

So seriously been listening to bad romance atleast ten times a day since summer break started....but I guess it did get me out of the art rut I've been in. I just whipped this up yesterday in photoshop. Trying to work out this stiffness issue that keeps being addressed in my crits.

Starting next week I'm going to be a teaching assistant/ resident coordinator (TARC) for MICA's precollege program. I'm really excited about the opportunity to help high school art students with their transition into college.

Enviornments

2010-05-10T13:18:00.001-07:00

These landscapes each embody a different word.

Deadly

Intimate

Vast

Comic Final

2010-04-28T21:09:00.000-07:00

This is a comic I had to do for a final in narrative illustration. It was done in 3 weeks. I know I could create something better given more time, especially on the writing end of things, but I did think this exercise was a good learning experience as far as pacing and composition goes.

Visual Journalism at Camden Yards

2010-04-27T14:37:00.001-07:00

Visual Journalism on the light rail

2010-04-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)

2010-03-16T00:28:00.000-07:00

So for my most recent narrative assignment I was asked to illustrate album art for a song of my choice. I was subsequently challenged to draw a sexy lady by a classmate, due to the fact that it's not my subject matter of choice.

Spring Break caused these to become the most labor intensive pieces I've done for an illustration class to date. Time to sleep.

Narwal-Man

2010-03-02T20:11:00.001-08:00

Here is my favorite of 3 images I had to do for narrative illustration class about a story I created called The Astounding Narwal-Man.

Martin Strehl!

2010-03-01T09:22:00.001-08:00

Martin Strehl is the man who swam the Amazon, making him the furthest swimming human to date.

"On his swims his swims he drinks two bottles of wine, made from his own grapes, every day and even more when he's on dry land."

"Strehl is a star in his native Slovenia. Women of a certain age blush and giggle at the mention of his name."
"Hanging out with Strehl, I could quickly feel in my bloated belly exactly how he puts that lost river weight back on.

We ate and ate and ate-and we drank and drank and drank"

These quotes are from an article in Outside magazine, called Glorious Bastard. It was written by W. Hodding Carter.

Well That's Unexpected?!

2010-02-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

Hey guys sorry for not updating in a while. Snowpocalypse..... Well anyway here's my favorite piece from illustration II so far. We had to do a few illustrations of the theme "well that's unexpected". What is more unexpected then tiny Godzilla's being chased by a giant japanese businessman. I know what your thinking. Sinestro betraying the green lantern corps.....I did that one too, but I think that one is not as funny to the many non comic reading associates I have.

Life drawing

2010-02-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

So here are my two favorite drawings from the previous semester. They're both pastel pieces from life drawing. I'm currently trying to think of ways to translate the sense of light i gained from these into my ink work.

Back to Life Back to reality

2010-01-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

So school has started officially this week. It's going well so far. My classes seem awesome. I have felt a little stiff with my work though. I saw that some of my friends we're doing grey scale sketches in photoshop for their class with my life drawing teacher from last semester, Tony Shore. I decided to try and do him proud and attempt to capture my likeness in 2 hours. I don't think It's quite up to the standards he held me by, however, it's the right direction I think.

Only you.....can prevent bear maulings

2009-12-21T10:39:00.000-08:00

This is my final for inking.

The Power is On!

2009-12-12T19:46:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-24T11:49:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-23T16:07:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-11-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-03T13:39:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-09-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-14T20:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-12T10:24:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-09-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-25T16:22:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-20T10:21:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-07-13T15:59:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-06-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-06-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

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.

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

Triceratops!!!

2009-06-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

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

Shoryuken !!!

2009-05-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2009-05-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

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.