Hello friends.
Once again, apologies for the lack of updates. I've been producing work aplenty, it's just hard to find time to get on here and post.
I'll start with some process work for a series I'm finishing up for my Honors Studio class this semester. The "theme" of the work revolves around the father-son relationship and its universality. The topics are drawn from experiences of my own relationship with my father. However, the series is by no means an autobiographical one, just personally influenced. Hopefully there will be four parts to the series, each dealing with some type of emotion found within the paternal relationship as a whole. This first work is titled
Isolation and Transference of Values.
Obviously first comes the thumbnail.
I've been partial to distorting perspective lately, and I thought for this particular piece it would greatly assist in conveying the idea/feeling of this topic. I especially like the tension it creates in a scene that is so still. After I settled on the composition I shot some reference and penciled the drawing.
I was (for the most part) satisfied with it. There are a couple places that I retouched the linework in photoshop after I scanned in the drawing. And last comes the fun part, coloring!
I went through a couple different color schemes and settled on a green/red compliment. Also I've been trying to implement more painted texture into my digital pieces so they don't come off as flat as alot of digital work does nowadays (not to mention I just flat out miss painting). I was really satisfied with the effect here, but I'm still working to see how far I can push the idea.
On a lighter note, I'm taking a Science-Fiction/Fantasy Illustration course this semester and it is so fun to draw things that don't necessarily have to have these deep-seeded meanings. I told my friend the other day,
BJ, it's like I'm back in middle school doodling the things I used to doodle, except now I'm just way better at drawing then I used to be haha. This one's called
Space Zombies from Hell.
I had a good idea for incorporating text into the illustration (the assignment was to design a book cover), but alas I ran out of time before the critique (and it wasn't required). Once all this crazyness slows down with school I'll definitely go back and drop the text in.
Again, here you can see my attempts at incorporating hand-painted elements in my digital work. I think it's relatively successful here too.
I have so many projects either in the works or finished, but I suppose that's for another time. I'll keep this updated over the next few weeks and post more process work again. As always, comments and criticism are welcome.
-Matthew
I was pretty satisfied with the final product as an abstract concept being represented visually. 
