Monday, January 23, 2012

Fall 2011- Character Design with Mark McDonell

I have this dream of some day writing/illustrating a children's book. One reason is that it seems like such a great creative outlet and it would give a tangible result, and two, because I have such admiration for Astrid Lindgren and now that I have children myself there's a lot of stories to be told.
So to that end, since I would want to illustrate it myself:-) I keep plugging away at getting better at drawing characters....which is a better idea than just making a story about trees and rocks I think?...so I took this class at LAAFA (Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art) with Mark McDonell this fall.
It was a great class and Mark is so incredibly full of ideas and enthusiastic about this craft. And, it was also incredibly challenging at the same time...I'd spend a good amount of time on our homework to where I felt like "hey this is pretty good...." and then I'd bring my work to class, look around at all the talent in the room and think "Oh cr.. :-) I don't really know what I'm doing...?"...but such is my journey as an artist. There's always someone who's better and someone who's worse and I just have to keep going and focus on what I can do better. Here's some of the sketches from that class.
Sketches for a female lead with some marks to clarify the design by Mark
Creating an additional character for The Neverland Pirates
Some sketches for an assignment where I drew mostly baby gorillas
Creating a female villain with the inspiration of sea creatures