Full Circle

This semester, I took a writing class that focused on graphic novels. We read Watchmen, Maus and many others. I also read on my own a novel called Blankets by Craig Thompson, which is was my absolute favorite (go, read it now!). It has been a really cool class because I had never actually read a graphic novel before that (pretty pathetic for an artist huh?). Anyway, our final in the class was to draw a comic about a paper we had written earlier in the semester. My paper had been on my experience in becoming a Christian and getting into ministry. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun with this assignment... if you would like to read it, the pages are below.

Just trying to keep sketching...

Let's Go Adventure!

This is my friend Megan Sobocinski (She is the one on the right in the picture). She was very persistent about this caricature, so I am glad to be done just so she will leave me alone... I am actually very happy how this one turned out :)

Random Sketches

It's over... and it's just beginning!

It's done... I decided to end my college basketball career... It has to do with a lot of things, one of which is that this blog has been very empty for a while, meaning I have barely has any time to do art. I have sacrificed art for basketball since I have been playing it, and I am excited at the prospect of being able to do more of it. Hopefully, there will much more frequent posting happening to this blog. Here are some pieces I did quickly last night, just enjoying my new found freedom!

Here is my comic for the school newspaper this week as well:

New Job

So this last week I got a position at the school newspaper to draw comics every once in a while. Here is my first comic. Please, no comments in terms of subject matter. This is a sketch blog, not a political rant blog. Click the image to view it bigger.

I'm going green! Kinda...

I have been seeing a lot of artists using that brown recycled paper and I finally found a place to
buy some of it at. So I bought some and have been enjoying the affects of being able to use a
white charcoal pencil. This is not a great drawing but I thought I would put it up to show the
effect

More Jack Bauer Inspiration

Just a page of sketching from watching 24 tonight.

Childhood is the wellspring of creativity

I recently stumbled upon a blog by the name of Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty, and it is awesome! It is the drawings of 3 kids and it is actually very inspiring. I had forgotten how creative kids really are. I feel alot of times as we get older, even though are skills get better, our creativity can lose some of its power. Anyway, they invited people to take their drawings and do their own take on them. Here is mine. I tried some new things artistically with this one, and I am semi pleased with how it came out.

original:

My take:

Jack Bauer is my Muse

So I went on vacation this last week to Oregon, which was nice a relaxing. I a period of 3 days, I watched an entire season of 24, which I consider to be quite an accomplishment. Here are some of the sketches I did while I was watching.

Just keep swimming...

I was looking through deviant art contests and one particularly caught my eye. It was called "kick your own ass". Seeing this title first conjured up images of seemingly impossible physical feats. However, this contest is really about seeing how far you have come by remaking an art piece from your past. You can look at the winners HERE. The results are truly inspiring. As a young artist, it is often discouraging to look at other artists that you admire, thinking "I'll never get there". What I am beginning to realize though is just how much improvement you can really make over such a short period of time. Go check the winners out and be prepared to be encouraged by the amount of improvement most have them have made in 4 years.

New Wacom!!!!

I just got a new Wacom Intuos 4 and it rocks! I have been playing with it and it is so much better than using the old graphire I have had for 5 years. The pencil on paper feel is particularly nice. Anyway, I joined a drawing group called "Though Faucet" where they post new topics everyday, every week and every month. So they throw all these ideas at you and you go where you will with it. I have been wanting to post, but have not had time, but finally I did a drawing. The word is "Lizard King". I am pretty unfamiliar with Digital Painting, but I am starting to practice doing it more.

They think I do not know a buttload of crap about the Gospel, but I do!

HAHA I Love Nacho Libre! Ok, I admit that had nothing to do with my art, but it makes me laugh and I pretty much run the show here. I have been studying up on some anatomy books (Go google Andrew Loomis. All his books are out there for free and they rock!). Anyway, I have been trying to more figure out what is important to study, so I don't actually have alot of drawings from that. Although I do have some new caricatures to post!





On another note, I sold another one of my paintings at Ces't La Vie (the flowers pictured a few posts down). So thats 2 down, 1 to go!

What the?

I have not drawn been drawing enough monsters lately, which is a shame because they are my favorite thing to draw. Ironically, I drew this while watching Monsters Inc. with my sister (LOVE that movie). It was also fun to get back into shading. I have made a departure from it ever since I started pursuing more cartoon/animation endeavors.

A cool new excercise

I recently signed up for Stephen Silver's character design class over at Schoolism.com. He talks about drawing from photo references and using them as a guideline rather that to copy. One exercise he talked about was to first quickly copy the drawing, the take away the first drawing and reference. Then you do another drawing of the same pose, but just from what you remember from the original sketch. The energy, the basic pose, etc. From there, you take it wherever you want. I was doing this this morning and the original pose spoke to me and took me in a TOTALLY different direction. Here is a quick sketch of what came out of this excercise this morning:
Not exactely a masterpiece, but I told myself that I would put my quick morning sketches up, whether I liked them or not.

Where Have I been?

I know, I have not really been keeping up on posting like I said, which I hope to fix here, but I have been super busy. Actually, I have been making alot of art and then going on vacation, so I just havn't had the time to put stuff up. I was crazy busy preparing for two art shows that I had in my local area. One was in a local trinket shop my mom works at and the paintings I did were a little different than what I normally do. A little more abstract I guess you could say. I actually sold one of them too! My first sold painting ever! Here are the 3 pieces I made for that:



They are actually really big in real life, and I used a TON of modeling paste to create texture. So you can't really get a full feel of it on the computer but whatever. Also, I was doing some art for a show I have in the city center. They needed a "youth" to display art there and they remembered me from when I won the poster contest last year. I actually didn't bother to scan alot of the art before putting it up, especially the new stuff, but here is one of the pieces:


And finally, I have been doing caricatures for some of my friends. I am still not satisfied with where I am at, but looking at where I was even a couple of months ago with this, I am pretty happy with the progress I am making. Here are a few samples of those:



Like I said, I will be updating more often now that things are less crazy. The straight truth is that I really need to be sketching more, so expect to see just some sketches coming up soon.

Dylan

Monkeys And Tigers And Polar Bears... Oh My!

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it does it? More fun from the series. The Tiger I tried to use the same style I used earlier, playing off Justin Coffee. I also tried to go for a more retro look with the polar bear, but only half succeeded :/

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

Another picture for my new series of animals playing instruments. He is playing those finger cymbal things, whatever they are called. This one I tried a technique that I have seen in Kei Acedera's work. Base color put down with Gouache and then used colored pencils to do most of the shading. I am actually very happy with the results on this one and will for sure try this method again.

Rock Out With Your Crock Out!

HAHA That title has been stuck in my head ever since I conceived of this piece. If you don't get the joke, don't ask...

This is one of the pictures in a series that I have been working on of animals playing instruments. Don't ask me where that idea came from, because I don't even know. It is more of a way to get practice with designing characters and experiment with some different coloring techniques in illustrator.

Not even going to pretend...

...that I am good at drawing girls. I have just been seeing so many of them being drawn by other people, I just was doodling it and it turned into more. My hands are still bad, but baby steps right? just so you guys know, drawing humans is kind of a new thing for me sadly enough, because I foolishly avoided drawing them the last few years because I am not good at drawing them.

I feel like doctor Frankenstein...

So I tried an experiment, and it did not go to well. I was attempting a style that I have been seeing around. It is a cool style, and I definitely don't do it justice. If you want to see the effect I was actually going for, check out Justin Coffee. I think I will definitely keep at it because I think it is a nice effect. And no, it is not finished. I decided not to beat a dead horse.

Is he arthritic?

No, I just can't draw hands. Gotta work on that. This is supposed to be the combined character of all the geniuses I have guarded through the years in basketball. Let's just say they were not the smartest...

I learned something about myself today...

I learned today that I have almost no patience. Let me show you my picture then I will tell you what I mean:

So if you click on it, you can see a bigger version of it. If you do that, you will be able to tell that I tried stippling on this image... Possibly for the last time. Putting a million dots down tries my patience. I was ready to be done after I got done just shaded the head!

Anyway, enough whining. This is my first painting using Gouache paints, which I rather enjoyed. I will probably be using them quite a bit in the future.

Introduction

Hey Guys!

This is Dylan O'Neil. If you are looking at this blog, then you probably know me. If not, I am grateful that you have found this! I started this blog not because I think that people will flock to it because they love my art. If only on of my close friends ever looks at it, that's fine. It is more of a thing to help me improve my own art. It is motivation just to draw. I have been looking at other peoples blogs, and they just post scribbles they did that day. I have always been to afraid about what others think of my art to post anything except what I thought was my best work. But those days are over! I realize that if I want to be good, I have to fail. So this blog will chronicle my failures as an artist I guess you could say.

This blog is not meant to be an ego stroke for me, so don't feel like you should leave nice comments, although they are welcome if you a so inclined. Also, please feel free to give constructive criticism or suggestions. Don't worry, I can take it :)

Enjoy
Dylan