Damien Sandow, Vitruvian Man

Here's a goofy illustration I made today. It's Damien Sandow, Savior of the Masses. I first became entranced after seeing his Rotation of Illumination. But the true testament to his greatness came from the perfection that is the Elbow of Disdain.

Site Update!

Not a huge change or anything,  but I added a new page's worth of work. Check it out: http://novastuart.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have to admit I meant to finish this piece over a year ago. Well, one way or another here it is. I'm thankful for a couple of people in my life who have really been a true source of support and stability.

Lloose Lleash Graphics

A couple of months ago I responded to a call for artists to submit their work to a company that deals in brand development. Their goal is to bring a more illustrative, fine art aesthetic to corporate branding. The call was a "Doodle-a-Day" challenge, where a different piece of art is featured daily.

I was asked if I would be the Lloose Lleash Graphics artist of the month for November. I'm very proud and honored to have been asked, Lloose Lleash is a very cool company with a very meaningful objective.

The feature is currently running on the home page here: http://www.llooselleashgraphics.com, but I encourage you to check out their Facebook page as well as subscribe to their Twitter.

Dog Series : No. 2 "Yorkie"

Here's a really simple ink drawing, No. 2 of my doggie series, "Yorkie." We had one of these when I was little named Charlie. For some reason, my five-year-old memory only recalls his soft hair and bad breath.

Dog Series: No. 1 "Pug"

I've enjoyed abstract expressionism, classical portraiture, and contemporary satire. So it's about time I did doggie paintings. Here's my first finished piece (but 6th or so attempt):

This was a very simple ink drawing with a wash of watercolor on Eames Vellum cover paper. I really like the simplicity and silliness of this sweet dog. The original doggie is really a million times cuter with its sad little eyes, but here's my attempt to recreate the cute.

The original piece is here on ebay.

Why Portraits

It seems the most common question for any working artist is "How do you find inspiration/what inspires your work?" or any variant question on the theme of pulling of some grounded idea from the vast fabric of every day life.

Well, I personally find "inspiration" a fleeting feeling. Maybe I can feel some superiority by adhering to Chuck Close's advice that "Inspiration is for amateurs," but either way, it's not easy. Frankly, finding the drive or creative spark to start a project is sort of like experiencing the same frustration you would have teaching a toddler a foreign language.

 

But why I personally find creating portraits to be good times? Like any other piece of art, the possibilities and solutions for determining the given space for a portrait work are limitless. But with portraits, there is the one particular goal of making a single facet of the piece relatively objective: the face.

 

The portrait artist must innately capture the facial features of a subject, there is only success or failure in this aspect. I have spent years and years (most of my life, actually) struggling with my perfectionism, and eventually yielding to its necessity in this field.

 

I think it's very important to realize and come to terms with the fact that even in these times of lightning-quick turnover and unbelievably short deadlines, great work (and artwork) cannot be rushed. For anything in this world to have longevity, there must be thought put into every aspect of its construction.

 

 I believe that portraits, free from the limitations of photography technology, can truly capture a human essence that would be lost with time and age. It is almost a spiritual practice to give life to something through manual recreation; it cannot be duplicated with a machine. Perhaps the age of flat and soulless photographs ala Terry Richardson are what we are living through now, but that work does not adequately capture life as a person of depth knows it. So sticking to my guns with traditionally hand-created portraiture, satisfies my need for something authentic in a world saturated with assembly line iPads and drunken Facebook photos. Call me old-fashioned.

 

 

 

The Story of Dyannie

I'm a huge sucker for kiddie movies and musicals, so when I finally watched Annie [for the first time a year ago] my mind was pretty much blown. Like, I got goosebumps during "Hard Knock Life" even after the 38th time of rewinding it. I know, it's ridiculous, 1982 is calling me and wants its pop culture reference back, Aileen Quinn is on Medicare by now, etc. I don't care!

Now, when I was 21-23, I had a huge obsession with Bob Dylan. The poetry from his first several albums appropriately struck me at the time in an incredibly significant way. To me, there was a great deal of comfort in knowing that abstracted language and themes of youthful restlessness and cynicism could be so timeless. I was so grateful for the gift of Dylan in the way his work was an elegant homage to the silliness of pretension.

So, what do you think the first thing I thought of was when I saw this screen shot:

Um, that's what I thought. So I created this portrait as a result:

  

 
Does anyone else see the resemblance? Maybe I'm the only one who's watched Annie in 25 years anyhow, but it still kills me every time I watch it. Look, I know the movie is based on the classic comic then Broadway play. But I like to think that Bob Dylan stole the "moth-eaten thrift store sweater and teased curly fro" look and the costume department just had to throw their hands up and roll with it.

Pin Up Academy

I've been working on this request for a piece, a pin up girl in WWII garb against a spade background. It occurred to me that the colloquial term "cheesecake" for a piece of of pin up art has the connotation of being light, airy and undisciplined.

But besides the obvious one-note subject matter, pin up art is some of the most consistently academic portraiture of the 20th century. And truly, how one-note can an image be when the sex appeal is neither vulgar nor exaggerated, but the work of a subtle blend of the ethereal lines of feminine beauty?

Take a look at this image I use for reference:

I mean, such a stunning painting. Certainly, executed quickly for a fast turnover, but the effortlessness and ease of the style of this piece is so telling of the mastery of the artist. The figure is lush and intangibly attractive, but she is grounded in the reality of imperfection and rendered with a rather loose command of the brush. The lighting is not truly realistic either; it's simply been used as a reference guide to flatter the most classical shapes of the female form.

But every element of these pieces are tied to the traditional techniques of academic painting. Just because the subject is a woman in a (perhaps) provocative pose, can we really afford to cast these artworks off as mindless fluff? If we can get past the (admittedly threateningly) gorgeous image of a woman being sensually alluring, we can see pin up art as an incredibly disciplined vehicle for expression that we can all react to with feeling.

Connor

Many months ago, the TeamConnor foundation came and spoke at my dad's work. He was so moved by their presentation, he asked me to do a portrait of the little boy that inspired their work. He loved baseball, so I created a portrait of him as an old well-loved baseball card.

I have to say, knowing some of this child's story made this difficult to work on. But I do hope it it does just a little to honor his memory.

Shading Tutorial

I have a new video tutorial! It's a very basic lesson on shading, using the rose drawing from the previous tutorial I made. Hope you like it!

Prints for Sale!

Really, this has been a looooooong time coming, but we've finally got a small library of prints up for sale at ebay and etsy. Currently, we're offering 8 1/2" x 11" sized prints, but we'll soon have 11" x 14" prints as well.

Prints come on 120lb Eames Canvas Cover paper in either Pure White or Natural. This is a great heavyweight paper with a neat canvas-like texture. Pure White is true to the original color while Natural has an antique look.

Check out ebay and etsy for a listing of prints, I'll be listing more every month.

Eraser v. Eraser

In my last video tutorial I recommended using a pliable, or kneaded eraser for the drawing we were doing. I wanted to be more specific about why this type of eraser is so good to use for drawing.

Here I shaded four test boxes with a 2B graphite pencil.

Pliable or kneaded eraser

As you can see, our kneaded eraser can be molded to fit any shape you need. It's also very thorough in its erasing. These shaded boxes are holding a lot of graphite and the eraser still pulls it off with no mess.

Pros:
- flexible and mold-able
- clean and thorough
- bounces when rolled into a ball

Cons:
- will eventually become sticky and useless





Here we have a basic rubber eraser in cube form. I worked at the test box using a good amount of elbow grease, and still it does a weak job removing the graphite. Also, look at the mess left behind (these are tiny fragments of rubber).

Pros:
- easy to get your hands on these for cheap
- they will eventually erase

Cons:
- extremely messy
- not particularly effective at erasing
- awkward shape

Ah, good old Red Rubber. This type of eraser is very similar to the rubber above, but it is slightly firmer and therefore slightly better at erasing. On the other hand, it's just as messy.

Pros:
- most common type of eraser
- pretty good at erasing, especially large areas
- reminder of the good old days

Cons:
- again, quite messy
- takes a lot of effort to get it to work in fine details

This pencil eraser made of vinyl, is pretty excellent for erasing tiny details. However, it takes so much elbow grease to erase that I find I frequently have to re-sharpen the tip, quickly ending up with a tiny stump of a pencil. Vinyl erasers tend to be cleaner than rubbers, but they also tend to glide on the surface of graphite, smearing it rather than erasing it.

Pros:
- slightly cleaner than rubber
- pencil tip gets into fine details

Cons:
- not necessarily excellent at erasing




I think you know where I stand with erasers, and what I recommend and prefer for myself. But you know what they say about opinions. Every eraser will have its place at one point or another, and you should experiment and see what works for you. 

And of course, enjoy drawing! No one says you have to erase anything anyway. Drawings that show every line of progress are extremely fascinating. Go for it!

How To Draw a Simple Rose

I've been wanting to make drawing video tutorials for some time now. It seems my most practical education has come from watching other folks' video tutorials, and I'm so glad to finally get to give it a shot.

Bradburnnegut

For Brad's birthday this year I made him an original t-shirt with a graphic reminiscent of two of his favorite authors:  Ray Bradbury (with his face, signature and something of this style of drawing) and Kurt Vonnegut (the image inspired by his famous self portrait).

1) Again, I hand-painted the line drawing onto a piece of a piece of acetate (projector or clear plastic paper), after I made a pencil sketch.

2) I coated a silk screen with photo emulsion fluid and used a 200-watt bulb to expose the image onto the screen (if anyone is curious about the silk screening process, I can do a tutorial as well as provide links to some excellent videos/articles).

3) After washing out the positive image on the screen and letting it dry, I set the screen face down on the shirt to line it up (without proper equipment this is a little difficult) and ran some blue ink through the screen.

4) Letting that dry and washing and drying the screen of that color, I did another run of black ink slightly offset from the blue to give the print some dimension. I let that layer dry and set the ink with heat.

To be safe, wash your shirt once before you silk screen and turn it inside out every time you wash it. If you set it with high enough heat, the ink shouldn't budge, but hang onto your original drawing just in case (don't learn that the hard way like me)!

And if anyone is interested in getting this shirt, feel free to email me at novastuart@gmail.com.

Samurai Drunk Poster

I created this poster for the local improv group "Samurai Drunk." I seem to call them "Drunk Samurai" equally as often, which really puts my mom's habit of calling everything by a weird broken name (including her precious "Little Miss Kitty" collection) to shame.

1) I started by creating a graphic logo on a piece of acetate which I silk screened onto a handkerchief.

2) Shopping around for a cool little bottle of sake to make the Molotov cocktail, I found them either too large, too expensive, or both. I did, however, love the logo for the Tentaka Kuni "Hawk In the Heavens" sake, and honestly it wasn't that expensive. But I knew it wouldn't really be my cup of tea to drink and I could find an alternative (aka Photoshop!).

3) I ended up pouring out a bottle of Kikkoman soy sauce and stuffing my handkerchief into that (yes, I smelled the sauce for hours) then photographed the bottle in a light tent with matches strewn about. The soy sauce was great to work with, it loved trying different daring poses.

4) Finding this image to be my favorite, I tweaked it in Photoshop a bit by pulling out the contrast on the logo and layering the Tentaka Kuni label atop the original label (to add interest and skirt copyright infringement issues). I also slightly blurred out the edges of the light tent but left enough to keep it a little rough.  

5) Since this was meant for print, I created a standard size poster document in InDesign with bleed, and exported as a high-resolution .pdf file. I also made a smaller sized .jpeg for sharing, which is what you see here.

 I hope if you're in the area, you'll check out Samurai Drunk. They're an incredibly smart improv group and fun to watch as well.