Monday, November 30, 2009

Overdue Posts



A couple of recent commissions that slipped under my nose. D'oh!

Scrap Pieces!

This is a side project that I decided to take on as a way to entertain the ideas that I sometimes jot down but don't know what to do with.

This should give you the general tone of what you're in store for:

Check out more irreverent goodness; I'm kicking it off with not one, not two, but THREE STAGGERING INSTALLMENTS!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Another Round of Sketchcards.

These are the latest drawings from my travel/anti-mooch/overall well-being fundraising endeavor.



I'm finishing this up soon so I can actually prepare for my trip to Chicago next week.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The Fundraising Continues!

So, I'm still raising money so my upcoming trip to Chicago doesn't turn into a freezing, horrible moochfest.

Nobody likes a mooch. Especially a mooch from out of town...

I thank those who have already responded, and am asking anyone who is interested in some cool original art for the cheap to give me a holler at me@derrickdent.com and tell me what you want drawn. Click on this link, then click on the bottom image (the astronaut head) to place your $10 payment through Paypal. Once I get confirmation of your request and payment, then I'll get to work on your 5.5"x7.5" thing of beauty. Bring it on! No request is too silly! No subject matter off limits (so far..)!

Here's a few examples of what I've done so far:


Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Travel Fundraiser!

Whenever the opportunity arises, I love to travel. Unfortunately, the funds for doing so aren't always there, due to everyday expenses, monthly expenses, and pretty much expenses in general. This is where you come in.
Here's the deal:
I have these nifty 5.5"x7.5" blank sketchcards.



I'll draw ANYTHING YOU WANT on one. And you can totally keep it for $10. Ten U.S. dollars. Very good deal for original art from, well... anybody. Just email me your request to me@derrickdent.com, and click on the image below to send your payment through Paypal (it'll be a secure transaction, I swear!). Once I get confirmation of your payment with your request, I will toil away on your drawing. If you're in the Memphis area, you can meet up with me Saturday (the 14th) @ Otherlands at about 6ish to pick up your drawing, or if you're from Not Memphis, let me know about having it shipped to you. We'll work something out.






Thanks,
Derrick

Monday, November 2, 2009

Playing around with larger sheets of paper. I used to work on 9x12, mainly because it's easy to transport on bike and it's less of a chore to scan, but there's nothing like having that having the extra arm room to make those big sweeping marks. Especially when you have a big bamboo brush to play with. This guy is 14"x21" and 5 scans strong.

Long Overdue Process Post

I've always loved it when illustrators make posts about how they create their images. If anything, it demystifies their process and reveals a great deal of work and planning that goes behind every picture- that illustrations don't just come out of thin air. Also it helps to have someone else's process to refer to when you're trying to find one that suits you. That said, I'm gonna give you a run-through of how I made this image:

It starts with idea generation, otherwise known as writing stuff in a notebook. For this illustration, I was given the prompt "too much family" and from there I was free to do whatever. That's a lot of freedom, but without any direction, it's hard to figure out where to start. So I wrote the prompt down, and from there jotted down words and phrases that I associated with it. This is kind of a stream of consciousness thing, so editing takes a back seat. The more I can "blurt" out, the better. This page is a fairly restricted version of this step:


As you can probably see in the picture, I then start circling words that kind of stick or relate more directly to the prompt, and from there I make a sentence from those words. This is my point of departure to begin drawing. How literally I interpret this sentence depends on what I'm working on (or who I'm working for).

Thumbnails come next, and I'm admittedly learning to take more time making these. Doing so helps me come up with a idea of how I am going to arrange certain visual elements and create a compelling composition.


I pick my favorite,then scan and enlarge it a bit. If I wasn't given so much freedom with this assignment, this would be the point where I would email this to see if it gets the yea/nay.


The next step is pretty cool, because I get to use a donated relic of MCA's design department: an old Artograph 1000-J projector, otherwise known as the "Lucy".


I take my selected thumbnail, already enlarged, and blow it up even more on a larger sheet of paper. From here, I get a refined sketch.


Once the pencils are laid out, I move on the the lightbox. The sketch is taped down to keep it from slipping while I'm inking. Same story for the paper that I'm using for the inked drawing.




This is where I get REALLY meticulous. I made a few attempts to record this part of the process. If there is heavy breathing and sighs, I apologize.





This is the finished black and white drawing:


The drawing is scanned in piece by piece (my scanner is too small to capture the entire image). Also scanned are some failed inkjet prints, to use as textures. I then proceed to Photoshop to color the illustration. For the sake of keeping this post fairly condensed, I will save my Photoshop process for a later post. Fast forward through hours of red-eyed labor and we come back to the finished image.