Georgetown Shoot

This weekend I had the opportunity to go to Georgetown in Washington, D.C. to take some photos for an IB Art project. I don't feel like posting all of them but the one above is my favorite. You can see the rest of the photos in my deviantART gallery at this link.

Struan Shields

For an IB Art assignment, we had to do a piece in the style of another artist. I choose the famous American quasi-pop artist Alex Katz. While Katz is a painter his simple style is pretty similar to my vector style so it was a natural choice. For the portrait I took at snapshot of a friend and then worked on it in Adobe Illustrator CS3 for a couple hours. I kept it pretty simple because I have to do three more people for the assignment. You can expect those soon.

King of Nothing

Keeping in line with Emilio's post, I too had the same assignment. This 24"x36" piece is comprised of 5 layers, it took a long time to get the right picture of me for it, but in the end I am really satisfied. The idea for the wallpaper background came from 2 artists, Kehinde Wiley, and Orticanoodles. So far I am really satisfied with the piece, this picture however doesn't do justice to the actual black, which is actually black, but you can imagine.

I'll leave the interpretation up to you.

Grid Self-Portrait

This is a self portrait that I did for IBH Art. The assignment was to do a piece in the same vein as one of your favorite self portrait. I choose Chuck Close's 'Self-Portrait.' I've always wanted to do something based around pixelation and this was my opportunity.

I took an emotive self portrait using a point and shoot. Took it into Photoshop CS3 where I shrunk it to 17x30 pixels. Then I blew it back up again and printed it. I was left with a highly pixelated grid of 510 boxes. I recreated this then on a piece of paper and armed with a wide variety of pencils: 6B, 2B, B, H, F, 2H that i can remember I got to work. 4 hours later I had this.

Metro Mk. II

When I first created the Metro Map design shirt earlier , I realized that it would be really difficult to put that design onto a silkscreen. This iteration of the design addresses this issue by adding a pleasing gradient to the end of each line. This will eventually be available for purchase on a shirt.

Nicholson Two Lower Football Club

This is a design concept for the crest of my brother's college intramural soccer team. This design is based mostly off of the crests of English soccer clubs. This took me like two seconds in Inkscape.

When Boarding, Please Move to the Center of the Car

This is the latest idea I've had for the t-shirts i'm thinking about selling, although this would be a pretty complex silk screen job... It's the DC Metro subway system map without all of the stop labeled and everything. I really like the concept of the shirt and hopefully someday it will find its way onto something. It was done in about two hours in Inkscape.

The Invasion of Paris

This summer, my family and I went to Europe for a vacation. We spent a week in London and then took a train to Paris. While I was in Paris, I was able to find some of Invader's work scattered around the city. Invader is a street artist whose work consists of tiles glued to the sides of buildings and other fixtures in public areas in cities. The tiles are arranged to represent pixels and form characters from various vintage video games. They're usually from Space Invaders, hence his name. I was able to find three although there are many many more in many more cities.

Quai d'Orléans

Le Louvre

Rue de l'Opera

Wage Peace Mk. II

This is an update of one of my favorite pieces, Wage Peace. I decided to start from scratch with it and take it in a different direction, I get more of a modern feel from it then the 1960's vibe from the other (from the style and type).

Although I began original work on Wage Peace before I had seen ~russoturisto 's piece .A.U.T.O.M.A.T. logotype, found here, I was slightly influenced by it this time around even though ~russoturisto (gallery here ) is far superior :). I hope like for the original, that this will end up on t-shirts so i included a TON of variations for different styles and colors.

Click on it to see it in a bigger size (it's pretty big).

Jack and Nina

Taken with an old Canon F-1 35mm SLR using Ilford HP5 film. It was really sunny out so i think the exposure time was 1000 with the aperture at f/16. I love the way the picture came out and absolutely no post work needed to be done on it. I really like this one.

Gem Practice

I drew this gem/ jewel icon for practice for doing reflective surfaces as well as for having it for my huge upcoming project that I can't talk about until May or so :). Anyway, I found a great online tutorial, available at the DesignCast Blog. It walks you through the process in about half an hour. Overall I'm pretty pleased with the way it came out.

Warning, Emotional Children Near

I got the idea to do a comical warning after browsing through deviantART one day. My inspiration comes from =SRotherham's piece, Ennui. It was just a fun little doodle that only took me about half an hour.

New Sig

After drawing this in my school notebooks for months, I finally decided to turn this design into a vector. It's actually if you look closely my name, let's see if you can figure it out.

Something Big's Coming

I've been kinda of inactive on the blog lately, more active on deviantART anyway. Well my friend's sweet sixteen is in August and I want to give her something special. I already vectored her (it's Sasha) before but I'm overhauling my style. Before I used to do more of a cutout style for the hair, but know I've taken on the daunting task of vectoring each strand individually...yeah. I've already put in over 4 hours of work and I'm really exciting in how it looks.

Bottles

This is a photo I took of the different bottles I have laying around in my room. They are from a few different countries (Japan, Chile, and USA). Later I might post the color version.

Street Art of Chile

I´m writing this post from a computer in Santiago, Chile right now. Yesterday I travelled to the main port city, Valpariso. There the streets were full of street art that I tried to photograph. However my photos don´t really capture how freaking awesome this sutf is. I apologize in advance if there is any glare on the photos, I had to shoot on a moving tour bus.

Chilean Exchange

This weekend, I'll be leaving to go live in Chile, South America for two weeks. There I'll be living with a guy named Angel who's about my age. I'll be experiencing and submerging myself in the Chilean culture for what will hopefully be some good times. I'll be bringing a camera so I'll try to post lots of pictures. Unfortunately I won't have my laptop so i won't be able to get any vectors done, but I'll be pretty busy.

Kelley

Yet another vector of a friend. This one took about three hours to complete in Inkscape. The a little bit tricky and I decided not to add her freckles because it would have taken forever...

Oh and Shirts

As much as I hate to do it, prostitution alone can't pay for supplies. So, to keep me alive, buy my shirts and make me happy. Email me at filter.man@gmail.com to get sizing and color info and such. $20+5 for shipping. Unless I can walk to your house...

New Work Coming Soon

Since Emilio won't stop incessantly nagging me I'll post up some new work soon. For now I'll post the main mural from the recent JV show. The BlogSpot image resizing sucks however. Click on the image to expand... However if your curious as to how the life of me goes anyway, a painting of mine (Submit) is set to be in a book that's published this June, I'm working on an album cover for an electronic artist, and I have a series of prints up my sleeves.

Corina

This one is way way way way way overdue, Corina was the first person to ask me to draw her :/ :). But here it is finally :). This one didn't take as long, just some fiddling with the hair took a while. Overall, about 2.5 hours of work. I'm still not crazy about the way the hair turned out though, its the hardest part...:/

Sasha

This is probably the hardest vector I've done, especially when working with her multi-dimensional hair. Thats the last time I'll vector a blonde :P. I really like the way it came out, almost exactly like the photo I used. I'm still wondering whether I should put more work into the hair though. It took about 5 hours in Inkscape. Leave your thoughts in the comments :)

Heather

This is probably my best vector portrait yet. I really had a good time drawing her, even though she is my best friends girlfriend :P. I think I did the best job on the face that I've done in a while. It took me about 4-5 hours in Inkscape and I really like the end result. Please leave a comment and tell me what you think.

Lauren

This is a simple vector "cut out" of a friend. It doesn't have as much detail as the other ones but i still like the way it came out. It took about two hours working on and off in Inkscape. It was challenging though because the source image was not that large to begin with so that made the hair especially difficult so I cut down on details there.

Annie

This is my third stab at vector portraits and i really like the way it came out. I'm totally digging the way that her glasses came out with a simple gradient. As always leave comments.

Grace

This vector is my second stab at a person focusing on their hair. This is one of my friends that i decided to vector. I think that it came out better than my other person because it used more colors but I'm still not 100% satisfied with the outcome. Guess I have to keep practicing. It took me about three hours in Inkscape.

This That & Struan Shields goes under the pen

This vector portrait is of the front man to my favorite local band, This That & Struan Shields, none other than Struan Shields. This vector was a challenge because I'm really bad at doing hair. I like the way the vector came out overall and gives me a good starting point for drawing people. It took about three hours in Inkscape. Be sure to comment and check out This That & Struan Shields at their MySpace at: http://www.myspace.com/struanshields.

Master Chief Inked

This is a vector of Master Chief from the Halo series that a drew a while ago. I put both the colored and uncolored versions for comparison. I personally like the monochrome one better though. I can't remember how long this took me but it was a while in Inkscape. Enjoy.

Nils Cometh

Wherever you are, you sole reader of this blog, put your hands together for the new member of this now two man team, Nils. Nils is a friend of mine, and together we hope to put up some sweet. You might have also noticed, that we have a new name, theFsCene. This blog is rededicating itself to not just my vectors, but to work of other artists in our area.

Wage Peace

This piece was done on the same wave of thinking as the last post, protests and all that. I imagined this being worn on shirts and buttons at anti-war rallies and the like. It took me about an hour and a half in Inkscape. I'll add the link to the deviantART deviant when i get the chance. Comments are appreciated.

Drop Beats Not Bombs

This was a vector I did as a t shirt idea. I really like the way this turned out, especially the font. It took about an hour and a half from start to end in Inkscape. Let me know if you like it in the comments.

T Shirts Anyone?

If enough people start frequenting the site, I'll probably start adding links to Cafepress so I can turn this little side project into some lucrativeness :). Let me know in the comments. Please. I may sound a little desperate but this is the first day out and I'm going to be whoring this site out really hard :). So until I get established...spread the word. Please.

Clone Trooper Doodle: If George Lucas was into weebles...

Soon after completing my previous vector I wanted to do almost a caricature of a Clone Trooper. After a quick sketch, scan, and inking in Inkscape, this is what I had. A cutesy little trooper on the outskirts of a plain and simple Geonosis. Hit up the link for the deviant and comments with thoughts.

Link to deviantART

Clone Trooper: The First(second) Post

After cruising around deviantART for a while checking out STAR WARS stuff I got the urge to draw a trooper. For this vector I simply found a picture of a trooper, and made him all sexy-like. This took me a couple of hours in a program called Inkscape (think Illustrator for poor people). Hope you all enjoy. Leave comments wherever with thoughts.

Hello World

Hey all,

I'm not sure how many of you there are anyway, probably zero now :), but welcome to what will soon become the dumping ground for my artwork. I'm doing this for kicks but also to hopefully receive some constructive criticism and all that jazz. I'm going to have a hard time choosing what to put up first but it'll be up in a couple minutes. Here's to lots of art and all that other stuff and having a good time doing it. w00t.