Inspiration

Inspiration is something that I think is essential to have if you’re an artist.  What’s interesting about inspiration is that you can get it from anything, a picture, person, landscape, music etc... 

What I want to do is simply make a running list week by week of things and people that inspire me to do what I do.

The first source of inspiration is no other than my favorite artist, ALEX ROSS

my first serious clay maquette

A couple of years ago when I was trying to make a conceptart.org profile, I started getting inspired by all the extraordinary clay model work I saw on the site.  Professionals and amateurs alike posting all of these models on the form really blow me away with the detail of their creations.  The amount of money, time and planning it takes just to make and construct one was really interesting.  Drawing inspiration from the site I started practicing and investing money into tools.

Super sculpey firm - better than regular super sculpey 

Pasta machine - for blending colors and sculpey together

Detailing tools - wooden sculpting tools work really well when starting out

Armature wire - is wire that you braid that becomes the skeleton of your model

Aluminum foil - used to wrap around the wire after you form the skeleton of your model

Plumbers glue - great for sealing the wire together, and fixing cracks

Youtube - to see how its done



What I found in making this one was that the most important part of any model is the structure underneath the clay.  Making sure everything is as tight as possible, can stand and support weight.  Too much aluminum foil and you limit the amount of clay that can go in specific areas.  If the wire is not strong enough the whole thing can start to fall apart.  The one thing I learned from this one was to not overdo it.  Having tried to paint it and failing I primed it and sprayed it again with a solid color.  Doing this several times started to take away from the overall detail I had put into it.  That and I found that there is a cracking problem I need to address somehow after baking it.  Once I have money to buy more clay, I will do a more up to date Marquette with a step by step guide documenting my process.

Here’s some pictures of the process I went through with my first one.

                                                

Trying to drill a hole in one of the hands lead to me accidently breaking the hand in half.  That’s were the plumbers glue comes in handy.

At this point I already painted it about two times and did not like the results.  So I went with a golden brown finish and left it at that.  All in all what I took away from this one was to have a solid plan of what I want to do from the start.

 

The Sleeper Has Awaken

Welcome to the blog, not sure if I like the blog title or not but I can play with that later.  Well never been one to write this much about myself but I tend to take art personally, not sure if that’s good or bad yet.  For those of you who have been around me, already know that I’m a real quiet and humble person.  Mostly because I like to sit back and go through life at a slow pace, to absorb information and inspiration from others around me.  Always been the kind of guy more interested in how another artist or animator works and thinks in terms of his or her own thought process when designing and creating.

The reason for a blog now is that I feel that it’s time to really refocus myself in terms of being an artist. I’ve always looked at art being more than a way to express yourself, but kind of like a journal of where you’ve been in life and the experience’s that influence your art style and ideas.  I loved going to the Art Institute of Washington and having that feeling of wanting to hang out with people who had the same passion for making characters, stories and artwork that I did.  I was always the kid that was good at drawing, when I was in 3^rd grade I already know what I wanted to do in life.  Knowing you have the edge in doing something better than someone else at an early age really shapes what you focus on growing up.

The self-esteem started going down for me after being dealt some bad hands in my career, the fire in me started to go away.  All the job interviews not working out, to me feeling lost in the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do anymore were really starting to mess with my head.  Then I’ve started having this competitive feeling again after some conversations with friends and my family.  All of a sudden this sickening feeling of realizing that I’m throwing away all my potential hit me.  And then one day I woke up and came to the realization that the only person stopping me was myself.

So I plan on using the blog to really open up my mind creatively, for all to see my though process in creating characters, clay modeling, animations, comics you name it.  And to really show how much work an artist puts into making that character or animation look good.  For those who have worked with me before know that art brings out the kid in me.  So if you happen to follow me you can look forward to some interesting posts of me jumping around from drawing, animating, making clay models to painting.  I have big plans on doing some things never done before, that I'm holding pretty close to the chest, but before I can get there I need to get myself back in the game.    

THE RICHEST PLACE IN THE WORLD!

If I were to ask you, ‘‘Where is the richest place in the world?’’ I am sure that some would say the mint in Washington, D.C. Others would say Fort Knox, and others would say the gold and diamond mines that populate the African continent. But all would be wrong.

The richest place in the world is the graveyard! That’s right, the graveyard. In it lie all the people who had great ideas that would have made them wealthy, but they listened instead to some negative person who used the word ‘‘can’t’’ and they believed them. Then they took those great ideas with them to their graves! Their best song . . . unsung! Their best invention . . . undone! Their best book . . . unwritten!