chow #144

Ok, so last post was a character of the week submission at conceptart.org. So is this one. I'll give a quick rundown on what that means. CA is a web community of artists, illustrators, concept artists, and (mostly) wannabes (like me). The forum community is huge with people from all over the world helping each other out for the most part giving critiques and such. Anyway, its cool. they have weekly activities there. Character of the Week, Environment of the Week, Creature of the Week, etc. they have a moderator that comes up with an idea say par example: post nuclear apocalyptic siamese twins that work as protectionists, extortionist, and mercenaries. Then every one illustrates this idea and submits it on sunday. there are specific rules like it has to be at least 3/4 figure and so on. After it gets submitted a moderator makes cuts and then members vote on their favorite. Typically its the professionals (or near pros) that win. I have yet to make it to the voting round. Im not too worried I have only entered two, the siamese twins (above) and the caterpillar (below). Actually, its only pissing me off in a good way. I just want to work harder. It gives me competition. I like it. My current goal is to make it to the voting round, then win one.


On another note, NateShawArt.com is going to be seeing a major facelift in the coming days... Look for it next week, its going to be sweet.

Also, don't forget about the Everglades Comic...

chow

An illustraion I did for the weekly character contest at conceptart.org.

My imaging of the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland.

Adobe Illustrator

So I have long been using photoshop and Painter to make pictures but I never tried out Illustrator. Maybe it was because I didn't know what graphic design was until about half way through college or maybe I just never needed to use any vector drawing. Well anyway this is my first attempt at using Illustrator.

I really struggled with the user interface and the controls. I guess I went into it expecting Photoshop and its definitely not the same. It is kind of neat the way you have a workspace around the active picture area. It felt a lot like making a collage in real life. The eagle is from a photo I took of a lamp post at Union Station in DC.

Some Sketches

Some prep sketches. I needed a drawing of a girl sleeping for a larger drawing I was working on but it can be hard to get models. So I photographed myself and then did sketches from the pictures and eventually settled on one. That one I re-drew and changed the gender. and voila! Here are two of the many self portraits and the sketch I did of the girl.

clouds

some cloud studies I did today from my roof

Everglades Comic

I have decided to update my main website and put up the weekly everglades comic there. Just go to nateshawart.com and then follow the links to see it. Basically it is about two exotics interns at Everglades National Park. Their job is to kill off plants that are non-native to the area to prevent them from taking over the environment. It will be a weekly comic updated Sunday night or monday night. Or whenever I feel like it, so get off my back. Enjoy!

Everglades Exotics Exterminators

The debut of my newest project. It should be a weekly comic so check every Monday (at least) for the new comic! So its a working title. Hopefully I will be able to think of a better one soon. Enjoy!
I'm having some trouble getting the link to the comic to work... stay tuned, I'll figure something out.