Post-It Notes!

Heya.

Here are my contributions to the 6th annual Post-It note show put on by Giant Robot. If your in the LA area stop by GR2 and check them out in all their post-it glory.

Bells and Whistles

O herro.

Waking up to the phone ringing at 8:30am is usually not a pleasant experience. However, if it's SooJin Buzelli from PLANSPONSOR magazine on the other line offering you a job, the lingering magnetism of sleep is quickly dissipated. Working on this project was a good learning experience among other things and I think it helped me to gain more perspective on the strengths/paths/discontents/possibilities of how an illustration can communicate to it's audience.

Below I've gleaned some pieces from my process in case anyone is interested in how this piece came to be.

SooJin has somewhat of a reputation (a good one) for being a great art director in terms of the freedom she gives to illustrators. I was doing some pretty boring sketches at first. It took me a while to really push what I was doing past the more obvious solutions. Here's the sketch that we agreed upon.

Here I'm trying to figure out the placement of the astronauts.

Here is a piece of the final drawing. I transferred my sketch to a piece of Rives BFK (which I'm getting sick of using) by blowing up my sketch and putting compressed charcoal on the back of the paper. I then traced certain parts of the sketch. I don't do this so much to save time or for the ease of tracing but because the resulting lines have a nice texture to them, weathered and strained. I think it's important to really consider the application of mediums throughout the entire process. A single texture in one place is ok by itself but when it comes together with the other parts of the piece the varying textures can really add depth and interest to the piece. Plus, people won't be able to tell how you did what you did!

Before I went onto this step in which I added some acrylic and gel pen, I scanned the drawing in the previous stage. I do this so I can use the line work at a later time in the digital world if need be.

Add some digital coloring, a dash of Hokusai influence gradients in the background and, of course, some arbitrary floaties on the surface of the image and it's a wrap.


PSYCH.

This piece got rejected. The powers at be felt it wasn't my strongest piece and I must say, I agree. Sometimes things just don't click and this happened to be one of those times. I actually relished the opportunity to give it another shot. Art school has given me enough of a tough skin to not really take any criticism personally (about my art that is).

This time around I likened "Bells and Whistles" to having an excessive and complicated synth collection, something I dream about regularly.

Here I'm trying to figure out how I want to have this figure interacting with the space. I envisioned some flat bodied lunatic raving over his collection. I chose to go simple with him in order to keep the piece from being too busy since the background is almost filled entirely with tiny synthesizer bits.

Here's an alternate color version. I think I like this one better.....nothing to be done about that now I suppose.

This one made the cut. You can view it in the September issue of PLANSPONSOR magazine (if you can find one). Or at their website! Thanks to SooJin for pushing me on this.


Hope you guys found this helpful/interesting. Until next time!

New Bike!

I love craigslist. I'm an inch away from abandoning all other forms of transaction in favor of the low-res, half-assed car salesman style of advertisement of this beautiful site. Not really, but really - I got a great deal on this bike. It's a Raleigh Rush Hour with a Brooks B17 seat and some Specialized mountain grips. The crank is upgraded too. Just took it out today for a nice spin and it rides really nicely. Minus spending close to 30 min trying to get the thing to fit in my car on the way home when I bought it, I'm a very satisfied customer.

Fashion's Night Out LA final

Finished this. Things are falling into place...maybe. Many mediums went into this one and I finally feel like they aren't fighting each other. I'll be doing more pieces in this manner to hopefully get some idea of a consistent process.

You can see detail shots here

Check back soon for updates! Comments and feedback greatly appreciated :D

Fashion's Night Out sketch

here's the final sketch for a piece I'm doing about the LA "Fashion's Night Out". Done entirely in photoshop

New painting for sale

Hey all. I did the painting in a mad rush after Gary told me about a show he was in that had a one day deadline about the apocalypse. It turns out I won't be able to participate in the show due to time constraints but I managed to finish the painting anyways. In an effort to save time, I created the initial layer as a photo collage in PS. I've done this type of digital work before for band posters in the past. I like the strong contrast between the two languages so I'll definitely be doing more of these soon.

Also, this painting is for sale.



"Famine", Oil on Letra paper w/ toner transfer, 4"x 6"

It's going for $200.00 and comes floated in a nice and simple black frame with glass. Leave me a message or shoot me an email at camfloyd@gmail.com if you're interested.

till next time!

Figure Drawings

Symbolism and new sketches

Hey everyone! In the interest of maintaining a more regularly updated blog and in the hopes of bolstering my own research, I've decided to started posting about artists I'm looking at, books I've bought, and other happenings in my super-exciting-non-stop-thrill ride-action-adventure art life. Thus we begin.There is an amazing book store in Santa Monica by the name of Hennessy and Ingalls that has a massive collection of art books - both common and rare. I recently went to look up some artists which were recommended to me by Jose Villarrubia - I think my query was something along the lines of "a mix between realism, surrealism, and graphic elements". He came up with a nice list of artists, most of which seemed to be associated with the Symbolist movement. My knowledge of Symbolism is still cursory but one of the main points of the movement was a reaction to Realism. Specifically, that it restrained the artist from utilizing his inner vision. This seemed to hit home for me as I have always been struggling with melding observational images with those imagined. They also tended to be heavy with metaphor and implication, preferring to ask questions indirectly in their work.

Gustave Moreau - "Jupiter and Semele (detail), oil on canvas, 1894
Coincidentally, I stumbled upon Moreau while reading "2666" by Roberto Bolaño. The design of this cover is just amazing. The intricacy and lushness of his images will keep you looking at them time and time again, always finding something new.
"Night, Atlantic Poem" oil on canvas, 1917 Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre
This image looks so modern! The design of the fish-monsters looks straight out of "The Punisher". I especially love the colors and luminosity. Even without knowing the context of the image there is a strong mood and implied narrative - qualities that are necessary to any good illustration.

Those guys are a tough act to follow but here are some recent sketches of mine. These images are super hi-res compared to my normal posts in case you are interested in seeing my pencil/pen work.


Next time, I'll be covering Hiroshige!

Attack! 2

Hello all, glad you could stop by! I have a lot work in progress that I have been neglecting to document properly on the interwebs. Hopefully I can work regular updating into my schedule because I usually make work fairly consistently.

Anyways, the piece is a continuation of the idea in "Attack!" which you can view at my portfolio site. Even though I'm happy with how this piece turned out, the process was a little too reserved lending to the overly graphic quality to it. The next pieces I do will probably be much looser.

I'll update tomorrow with some new sketches!

SKETCHES KAPOW!!!

Wowza! That's a lot of sketches! No, I'm not super productive and obsessively confined to constant scribbling in my worn and tired sketchbooks. In fact, just the opposite. I have merely been on a few months hiatus from updating, making a post like this quite overdue.