Hallo-Kitty

Hey everyone, Its been a while since my last update. Here is the Halloween Illustration I created for the Fool's Mansion Art show In downtown Salem,MA for the Halloween season.

Self Promo for my Perseus children's book

Well here is the finish done in the Greek red figure style.

Self Promo

Working on a more finished and developed painting to advertise my children's book in the Greek red figure style of a more accurate telling of the story of Perseus. I'm using some of my new techniques, like I have been with the cat illustrations. This time I did the pencil drawing at about 11x17 first, then scanned it into photoshop and cleaned up the line work, I then printed it out on my watercolor paper and painted in all the solid black sections with acrylic gouache, which is the second image you see. Now I'm in the process of painting the color sections in watercolor. I will post it when its finished.

Color study update!

Here are some color studies I have been working on lately. I have been experimenting with printing out sketches I posted earlier onto watercolor paper and playing with the style and colors. So far I pretty happy with the results, the printer I'm using for this is working well, the inks don't really run when I hit them down with washes of watercolor as long as I don't start off to heavy and I don't print the lines too dark. I think I have found a nice balance so far. Also I wanted to play with what the final color of the cat would be. Its a black cat, but like the real life animal he was never completely black, rather shades of brown to make a rich black color. I may play around with him more but for now it works for me.

Vote for my Design!

Hey Everyone, Please vote for my Threadless design so I can get printed! I need enough votes by the end of the 7 days!

http://www.threadless.com/submission/359566/Cat_thulhu

Cat-thuluh

Oops, well been busy for a while there with other projects and vacation and all. Well..I do have something to show now. Here is the project I did for the Fool's Mansion Art show in Salem. The theme was H.P. Lovecraft, and I did a fun little experiment with scanning my line drawing and tweeking it in Photoshop and printing it on my watercolor paper so I could paint and keep my original drawing. It worked out pretty well, the ink from the printer did smudge a little bit at first, but once I had enough layers of paint on that stopped. I think I'm going to try playing with this method more, I still need to find the right balance.

Weekly Sketch update!

More Character designs, More cats!..this time of the main character

Weekly sketches up date

Ok, so I did do some urban sketching with Pete again this past week..but there not very good this week. Mostly I think because I was really excited about the character designs I was working of for the new children's book dummy I'm working on based off a story April is writing that involves our favorite thing...Cats! So enjoy!

Weekly sketches up date!

On going Sketch Blog

Ok, So now I'm going to keep an on going blog of my weekly sketches to get into the habit!

Playing with printers

Hey all! I 'm finally back to my blog. I've been doing a lot of sketching lately so I will be posting them as they come now to keep my blog fresh. I recently tried to print out my sketches on watercolor paper in a light grey scale so I would no have to transfer or redraw my finished sketch the old way. I found not only did I loose a lot of the line quality but it never really came out as nice as my original sketch. Also It will save my poor wrist from the pain of pressing into the watercolor paper through the photocopy that has messy graphite on the back of it. So here is my test, the lines my printer produced did not really smudge when I applied water and paint! I think with a better (and larger) printer in time it will work even better.

Postcards are in!!

Just got my new self promotional postcards in. I will be sending them out to potential publishers and art directors soon. Thanks to Kelly and Antoine for the design help!

Website!!

Hey Everyone, Check out my website. It's finally up and running thanks to my wife April!

http://www.pauldemakes.com

Medusa

Hey Gang, well Medusa is Done!

Silly Goose!

yeah, I know its been a while since my last post...but Iv'e been busy making art and working on finals :P So here is one of my latest pieces for illustration seminar. Silly Goose...I think it speaks for itself....Enjoy.

The Show

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I have been busy working on our senior show and a few other projects! The Show turned out great, everyone in our group worked really hard and did an awesome job. It was great seeing all my work from the year up on the wall. Special thanks to my wife and family for all the help with hanging the show and making food.

3rd Ruby in the Smoke

3rd finish of 3 final Ruby in the Smoke illustrations

Birth of Athena

My 4th thesis illustration, The Birth of Athena.

Ghost Baby!!!

Here is my annoying sound illustration for Seminar. Its that sound at 3 or 4am when the cat comes walking into your bedroom with toy mouse in mouth while letting out muffled meows which sound like a ghost baby haunting your room....enjoy.

Next thesis sketch

Thesis illustration #4 will be Athena, had her birth from Zeus's forehead fully armed with sword and shield with her owl like the myth.

Finally finished Lamia!

Here is my finished Lamia illustration for thesis. After 2 false starts the 3rd time proved to be the charm. I had so many problems with stylizing the figure the way I wanted, but most of all the rocks! I use actual rocks I took pictures of when I was in Greece. I really liked the look of some of the greyish brown rocks at the beach in Mykonos, and how they all seemed to jet out at a 45 degree angle. Overall this piece is a bit more realistic in the way that I rendered it making it a bit of a hybrid, I think for the next piece I want to do more of a stylized figure like in my Pandora piece. But that being said I think it works well for this piece.

Ruby in the Smoke Spot

Here is my Ruby in the Smoke chapter header spot illustration finish. I decided to got with Sally's gun that she keeps in her purse and the Ruby itself just as a fun little spot to go on the top of each chapter title to round off the project. This is done in black and white watercolor like the others. Next, chapter #3!

Ruby in the Smoke 2

Well here is my finish of #2 of #3 illustrations for Ruby in the Smoke with Sally Lockheart. In this scene I had a lot of fun researching Hansom Cab's of the 1870's in London, as well as the costumes and look of the time. I really wanted to play with the light on the character and the mood. This piece is in black and white watercolor like the first, now just one more to go and a spot for the chapter header.

Lamia final sketch

Here is my final sketch for Lamia the baby eating half serpent woman that hangs out by the rocky coasts by day and seeks out babies by night. She is a sort of Boogyman in Greek culture. Zeus had an affair with her (nothing new) and Hera punished her by making by making her eat her own children and turned her into a creature with a serpent lower half with an insatiable hunger for babies...creepy.

Ruby in the Smoke

Here is some finished work from my independent study with Kelly. We are working on black and white chapter illustrations for young adult books. The is one of 3 pieces I'm working on for Ruby in the Smoke, the Sally Lockheart series. I'm working on my character style and still painting in watercolor.

Finished my next Thesis illustration. Theseus and the Minotaur. I wanted to keep with the same format at Pandora to continue the series in a vignette. I wanted originally to show the path to the center of the labyrinth with a red string, but during the class critique my fellow thesis mates suggested I see what it looked like finished without the string and ad it later in photoshop. I'm still on the fence a bit. I think I like it without, but I'm posting it both ways to let you be the judge.

Fortune Cookie Project

Here is my finished Fortune Cookie project, for illustration seminar. We each got a cookie in class and had to do an illustration based off of the fortune inside. My fortune was "If you have no critics you'll likely have no success". I decided to keep with my theme from thesis so I could use this as another piece for my show. I wanted to have a bit of fun with the idea and play with how I could show the fortune. So I went with Leonidas and the battle of Thermopylae. I wanted to use a more muted pallet this time and colors I normally don't use. I made the silhouette of the thumbs down subtle so it would take the viewer a few seconds to notice it. I didn't want it to be an obvious photo real hand.

Pandora Finish

I finished Pandora. I added the red to the serpent and some of the yellows as well, I also added some blue to Pandoras dress which helped the tie in the over all color of the piece. I also rendered her hands and arms to a more finished level. I'm pretty happy with it, I want to break my old habits and stop now so I don't over render.

Final sketch

I feel like I have locked down a design that really pleases me. I decided to do a vignette with this design to try something I have never really tried before. I wanted to keep the elongated squared off shape so I made the serpents create the boarder for me. I wanted to keep with the blocky design of the serpents and keep them in the style of the old red figure from the pottery. When I paint them I will keep them soft and set back, and have them start off a bit smokey as they emerge from the box, but they will not become fully solid at the head.

pandora's Box Illustration

My first Thesis illustration will be of the story of Pandora's Box I'm going to do this one in full color, but my figures will be a more evolved version of the style I used in my Greek red figure pieces. I like how the character is working with my style, but I'm still trying to figure out the environment. I was thinking of representing the evil that comes out of the box in the form of serpents similar to how they were drawn on greek pottery. This is a rough sketch so far, I'm still working on the composition. Any feed back will be helpful.