Jon Snow

As portrayed by Kit Harrington in Game of Thrones.

Maltese Falcon

As part of my final project, I've been watching tons of Noir films and researching 1940's graphic design. Here's a scene from the Maltese Falcon re-imagined as a poster by AM Cassandre. Both of the source images below.

Gaston

Here's a little painting I did for fun over the past week. It's what I imagine the puppy that I had last summer might look like today. I gave him back to my mother, who is a dog breeder, which hopefully doesn't sound too heartless. He really was the love of my life for the week I had him, but the idea of leaving him in a cage in my apartment during my 9-5 was too much to bear. (how boring!) He ended up going with his puppy brother to a home with two little old ladies that probably give him a whole lot of love. And plenty of cigarettes?

...Anyway I had finished the clothing part and then almost scrapped the painting because I was running out of time (more on that below) but really his face and arms wasn't so hard. I also have been wanting to spray a matte finish on something and then put a high gloss varnish in certain areas on a painting for a while, so this was a good opportunity to test it out. Although you can't see in this digital image AT ALL, I glossed the "smoke" and his eyes and nose. It's a cool effect that I'll use again.

Now the other part is that I'm moving to Raleigh tomorrow to embark on a new adventure: the graduate animation program at North Carolina State University. Wish me luck!

80 Dlist Boys: Clavicle & Reed. THE END

Here's the last two. It feels great to be finished with this project, as it's been a year and a half in the works. Some times it was like a weight on my shoulder, calling me to finish it and others it was a great way to express some creativity on the fly... I started it for a couple reasons:

1. I wanted to practice mark making and become more confident in my marks.
2. An opportunity to play with portraiture and test the limits of distortion against recognition. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but because this was a sketchbook project it was easy for me to not get hung up on the guffaws.
3. Playing with beauty... how is it that these 80 men can all be beautiful but all be so very different looking? As my friend Maggie said about the difference between faces, "it's all about the spacing."
4. A productive time waster: when I started this I had a hole in my schedule everyday that I needed to fill.

80 Dlist Boys: riverwestchi, trippppp, ibader, mmaraaron

The end is near...

80 Dlist Boys: glowstars, pw417, ikuku, slopehead

More more more. This is an interesting group because I've met all four of the gentlemen in question. Here are some notes:

1. Glowstars is a dear friend of mine from Milwaukee. He is also an artist/designer and has a blog.
   
2. pw417 is a cool guy from Chicago that I met several months ago and humorously bumped into recently.
3. ikuku is far more handsome and masculine in reality. Somehow the drawing got a little squirelly. He's from Poland and I had the pleasure of sharing a few drinks with him while he was in the US back in April.
4. Slopehead was possibly the first dlister that I met - he gave me free lodging (and an amazing welcome to Brooklyn with a homemade steak & asparagus dinner) a few years ago the first time I went to NYC.

80 Dlist Boys: awesleyc, johnny_bebop, jperkins, sloc0898

4 more. Kind of wish I could have gotten johnny_bebop & sloc0898 on adjoining pages because of their tall hair!

80 Dlist Boys: xelamonster, BenPhilBeck, OshKosh, ralowe

4 more as promised. A few comments:

1. I've been looking forward to drawing BenPhilBeck for about a year now, carrying around a little picture of him in my sketchbook and really muffed up the likeness. In his photos he's got a really fantastic Don Draper chin and an optimistic look to him. Somehow I ended up drawing him really devious. Rats!
2. The reason ralowe is upside down is because his DList photo is upside down. I actually drew him upside down, as well, for an extra challenge.

80 Dlist Boys: QueerRocket, Serpentine, thebenjamin, bikeculture

Here's my next batch of four (still have a couple up my sleeve and only 8 left to draw for the entire series). I decided to start drawing in the people from DList that I've actually met in reality. Thebenjamin is a cooky fellow from Raleigh and bikeculture is one of my favorite people up in Madison. (although I really missed the point with his portrait, he's much easier to look at that I have drawn him)

80 Dlist Boys: heartbeat_city, javad, socialwhore, dizeek

I've been lagging behind online, but not in reality. I've got 10 more dlist boys ready for action after this post. Keep looking for more.

Clavicle

Here's a painting I did, meant to be the third in the set with Handhearts & XYZach. I don't think it fits, though, so I'll do something else!

80 Dlist Boys: yeehaw83, bluelines

The latest two drawings. I wasn't ever planning on drawing myself into this project, but then I did. Doing a self portrait proved to be very difficult within the context of the rest of the drawings because I have been attempting to capture the beauty in each Dlist boy from a single photograph by carefully focusing on proportion and scale of features. For no. 53, it was hard to draw what I saw as opposed to what I know.

80 Dlist Boys: bw12343, zaceman, brahm, berkhippy

A few more in the sketchbook. I'm pleased with these 4... I think the combine the confidence and expressive mark-making that I started doing in nos. 37-40 with the exactness and refined qualities from the first quarter of the book. Berkhippy's hair was a nice challenge after drawing so many wavy wonderful haircuts.

80 Dlist Boys: hashlover, spanishguy, parklife, perquin

Some more... Tried to do a chubby pen/minimalist thing with parklife and was disappointed with the results. To add insult to injury I wrote the wrong name on his page... sad. I'm so close to finishing this project, I can taste it.

Dlist Boys: newbie123, taxthetime, dinodave, thevero

White

Here are some fashion studies I did a week ago. First time I've painted traditionally in several months... felt good!

80 Dlist Boys: GetInnocuous, XOffender, penknife, xyzach

These four represent a really exciting moment in my sketchbook project - I started "sketching" instead of "drawing" and I feel like I hit a real high with number 39. It has just the right amount of confidence, energy, and uniqueness. XYZach is #40, the halfway point of the project.