Rolling on

Here are this and last week's illustrations for the Advocate and their process sketches.

It's Time To Retire 'Growing Jobs' From Our Vocabulary

Slinging Mudville, Mighty George Strikes Out

March March March

It's been a busy month and there is lots to share!  So, here are recent illustrations for the Advocate accompanied by their process sketches:

Article: Even If I Wanted You Dead, Science Wouldn't Allow It

Cover for our issue that published on Leap Day 2012

Article: Can the President Kill Without Due Process?

Article: UC Personality: Seth Walker (April Fool's Issue)

Article: Interoffice romances are overrated (April Fool's Issue)

I've been venturing into coloring with watercolors as opposed to Photoshop, and so far I'm pretty happy with the results.  I'm also inking just about everything these days with a #3 brush and Higgins ink.  Pens still help me out a little, but I'm trying to go the path Will Eisner.  Exceptions to the ink and watercolor approach are the Leap Day cover, which I did all digitally, and the Obama piece, which I inked with the Pentel brush pen and then colored in Photoshop (because the Pentel ink bleeds when re-wetted, not the case with the marvelous Higgins waterproof).  I'm also trying to color more and more sketchbook work with watercolor to build up the skills.  

In addition to illustrating, I also wrote for the April Fool's issue of the Advocate, a couple of pieces that are pretty amusing:

Denver Police Department to implement rewards program

Auraria's hidden avant-garde (co-written with Katie Sammons)

Hooray!

More Advocate Illos Hoohah!

The latest works for the paper and some warm up sketches.  Creepy sketches. 

And here are the links to the articles:

Divas Dish It Out

Advising

New Year's Smorgasbord

Happy New Year!  Following suit to last year, I got caught up in all the craziness of the end of the semester and neglected my blog.  In my defense, not having Internet in your place of residence does not help such matters.  However, dear readers, I will now hopefully rectify myself with a big whopping post full of new exciting things! 

 

 Suggested Reading:

Over my break from school I have been experimenting quite a bit with media that I had never felt comfortable with until recently: ink and gouache.  I had started to ease into it with my work for the Advocate with the help of some nice Bristol paper, some choice pens, and Photoshop, but I decided to be a little braver with it during my time off. 

At the beginning of break I was perusing Goodwill and found some interesting Life Nature Library books from the 1960s.  These were filled with some great animal photographs as well as some amazingly brash captions that can only be found in an age prior to sensitivity.  As you would expect, these appealed to my curiosity and dark sense of humor.  With a barrage of tantalizing subject matter to translate, I began working feverishly in my sketchbook.

Posted here are the results of my explorations.  I started by trying to render things in simple black and white, and then moved on to ink washes and the infiltration of painting with white gouache.  With the serendipitous effect of some bleeding red ink, I started to crave some color, which I appeased by investing in some brown inks and breaking out the neglected watercolor set from a couple of summers ago.  Also thrown into the mix where a few layers of colored pencil, which performed wonderfully on top of the dried ink and gouache. 

And there you have it:  the beginning of a new love affair.  What is most enticing about ink, gouache, and watercolor is that you can let them dry up and then reanimate them later with water.  This is immensely useful for time and money’s sake.  I’m hoping to keep up this momentum and utilize these techniques this semester in my work for the Advocate.  It’s been a really refreshing advancement so far.  Thanks for reading,

- Blake

P.S. Further inspiration that drove me to this madness: Aaron Horkey, Frankenstein – Mary Shelley, From Hell – Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell, V for Vendetta – Alan Moore/David Lloyd, MAUS – Art Speigelman, Stitches – David Small, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and the Will Eisner documentary Profession: Cartoonist. 

More Advocate Illos

I just put these on my website as well, but here are a couple more illustrations I've done for recent issues of The Advocate.  October's been a pretty busy month so far with school, work, illustrating, and everything in between.  It's been hard to stop and post!
The first one is for an article about education and the recession (and maybe even depression).
The second is about bachelorette parties.

I included the scans of the ink drawings as well.  I've been pretty happy with how those have been coming along, getting more comfortable with the medium.