Mackenzie

Monday, February 18, 2013

Faux by Josh Bryant

This little dude is drawn by a good friend of mine, Josh Bryant. He asked me to paint his little Faux character. It was a honor to paint his little character. HE'S SO CUTE.

medium: Pencil, ink. watercolor

After I graduated college in October 2012, I decided to go back to school for 3 months. In that 3 months I took a Children's Book Illustration class. One of the best decisions I have ever made. The class taught me how to story board, character designing, and finally putting a book together. I already learned character designing and storyboarding back at Ex'pression but, we didn't get as detailed as I had hoped.

One of the assignments was to to draw your own Big Bad Wolf from the Three Little Piggies story. I usually start out with drawing a bunch of heads and from there I choose my top 2-3 heads. After the heads comes the drawing of the bodies. I had a hard time with choosing between the hillbilly Wolf and the nerdy Wolf. My classmates and teacher Arden chose for me. They liked how the hillbilly Wolf looked and asked me to continue on with him. The next step for the assignment was COLOR! :D I absolutely love color! I have about 4 different types of watercolors. I used angora water colors for the Wolf and it turned out really cool. I've never used angora. I've always used Newton. Any who, everyone got a kick out the final version of the Big Bad Wolf.

The last image is a sneak peek. I'm putting together a 3 panel story for the Big Bad Wolf. Color will be next once I finish the last panel for this story. I'll post the pencil and final version up later :D.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Night Creatures

Lately, I’ve been getting burnt out on drawing make believe characters. I want to get out of my comfort zone and try to draw more realistic characters but still keep them in my style. So far, it’s working out great! These guys are called “Night Creatures”. To your left, is the great vulture, middle is a fruit bat and to your top right, is a crow. The crow isn't a real night time creature but he should be haha. The crow is part of a short story that I’m working on right now.

medium: pencil, Photoshop CS5

What would a child dream of

In June of 2012, I started working on my reel/portfolio. I started my portfolio with Sprout and his character packet (which I’ll show later on). If I could go back with what I know now, I would have concentrated in Character Development instead of Concept Artist. But that’s in the past and I just gotta keep skipping onward.

These 3 images are what would a child (5-10 years old) dream of. The child in these dreams is the Fox. The first dream is a teapot pirate ship in space; the second dream is the child and his pal the beetle, which is caring the little home the Fox lives in when he’s traveling on land; the final dream is the Fox that is steering the mouse submarine. The Fox is on the search for the mystical giant Squad (Cat and Squid in one word). This last one gave me trouble. I wanted to have the focus on the Squad’s eyes but the lighting and overall outcome is a bit meh-ish.

I’m decent at photoshop but I’m gonna to get better at it as time goes by. For now, I’m trying a new program; it’s called Corel Painter. It’s a program for those who love traditional painting. I just got it a couple of days ago and so far, it’s fantastic.

medium: pencil, Photoshop CS5

Friday, February 15, 2013

First round of Sprout

Back in August of 2011, I was in a class called Creative Pre Pro. The class was broken down like this: create a main character and one other, pitch a story for that character, illustrate a 5 point turn around of that main character, make a animatic for your character’s story and finally make a maquette of your character. I had to complete all of this in 5 weeks (Ask me in person about my school).

This little dude, is Sprout. He’s a gourd. His story is that he has to find his lantern. In the little village he lives in, everyone has to find their unique lantern. It’s kind of like finding out who you really are sort of story.

I have more sketches of Sprout because he was such a HUGE success I didn’t start drawing him again until June of 2012 for my reel class. I’ll post his current illustrations later. I just wanted to show ya’ll what he looked like in his beginning stages.

medium: ink, super sculpey, photoshop

The story of a wonderful friendship with water colors and the story of “Anatomy”

I started watercoloring when I was just 8 years old. My teacher Eve taught me to just go with the flow when working with watercolors. Don’t worry about messing up because if you do, you can spice it up with more vivid colors. That was 13 years ago and from then on, I kept those sacred words in my mind whenever I painted. Any who, that’s just a bit of history with how I became best friends with water colors.

Back in December of 2010, I got the opportunity to present a painting at a show called Chillin’ Productions. The show was at the Mezzanie in San Francisco. How I got into the show, was due to a simple reply to a post on Facebook. My friend Rene Castro asked her fellow artist friends if they wanted to be part of a show. I can’t remember if she had mentioned the Mezzanie but I had to reply. I’ve always wanted to be apart of a show! She hooked me up with Irene Hernandez-Feiks. Irene is just so sweet. She was excited for me and I was excited that I was presenting myself in my 1st art show! I had about a few weeks to complete and matte a painting. At that time, I was in school studying Animation and Visual Effects so, it was a bit hard for me to balance 2 different things at once. At the end, everything turned out great. The night of my 1st show had arrived. I invited my folks and friends to come see what I had created. I arrived to the show early and when I got there, I couldn’t believe how COLORFUL it was. There were so many different styles and people! It was packed. It felt liked I was partying in a sarden box or something haha. Any who, the event was awesome. This piece didn’t sell but I didn’t mind. I just wanted to be able to present my art.