Drew from a model in class for a few days using colored pencil. We started out sketching the figure in graphite first, then we went over the drawing lightly with a dark colored pencil. The graphite was then erased and we proceeded to render the figure with both a dark… Read More »Colored pencil figure drawing
I really like how this Illustration came out. I knew that I wanted to paint sushi, but if I was going to spend fifty hours on a painting, it needed to be something really interesting and befitting of my unique sense of humor. So I just went for it. I… Read More »Fish People
Black and white pencil illustration of a scene from Jack and the Beanstalk. When Jack traded away his family’s last possession, a cow, for magic beans from a stranger, his mother, in anger, threw them out the window. The next day, Jack found that the beans had sprouted into a… Read More »Jack and the Beanstalk
This is a pencil drawing illustrating a scene from the story of Noah’s Arc. When the great biblical flood was over, it is written that God sent down a rainbow as a signal that he would never flood the earth again. This is the scene where Noah, his family, and… Read More »Noah’s Arc
My RA had a henna program. And I ended up drawing on everyone. 😀 Good time. Here’s what I drew on myself.
Here is the finished painting of my first project done in acrylic inks. I know I already posted the second one, but I had to wait for my professor to hand this one back before I could scan it. The assignment was to paint a part of my head as… Read More »Grape Hair
Hey now. This is the second published CD packaging that I have designed and illustrated. But this–technically an EP–is special, because it is the work of my little brother, Eric Leva. I get to say little because he is younger than me. Anyway, I’ll talk briefly about the music in… Read More »The Scheme Of Things -EP Available Now.
So hopefully you’ve already seen my centaur skeleton. If not you can take a look at it here. But this is the second half of that assignment of drawing mythical creatures. For this half, we had to put our creature in his or her natural environment. I decided to depict… Read More »Centaur part II
I completed this painting a few weeks ago, but didn’t post it on the web because it was a SURPRISE for my friend. You may have seen the black and white practice version posted here not long ago, but now, here is the totally separate color painting. This is the… Read More »Portrait of a Friend
This latest illustration was done using both transparent and opaque acrylic inks. Our assignment was to do an illustration of a “fade-away” figure, where an aspect of the figure blends into the background to create flat areas that contrast with rendered, round areas. At the beginning of the semester, I… Read More »Corseted Wallflower
The assignment was to choose a mythical animal, and draw what its skeleton would look like, pretending we were scientific illustrators for National Geographic or something. Being a Sagittarius myself, I choose the Centaur. It has a horse’s body, but where the horse’s neck begins, starts the pelvis of a… Read More »Centaur Part 1
I have another practice painting to post! This is the same self portrait of myself that I did monochromatically, but this time, I am using colored glazes to build up the painting. I started on a white gessoed board, and put in the darks with a thin layer of fairly… Read More »Oil Paint Practice Piece: Glazes.
I have taken some photos of my practice oil paintings for your entertainment. Before this class, I knew nothing at all about oil paint. And I am still very clueless, but at least not totally hopeless. We have been learning how to use the paint by doing a whole bunch… Read More »Learning Oils
My classes were really uneventful today. I learned how to use a proportion wheel this morning (easy & kind of boring because its fractions), my night class was cancelled, and in my afternoon class we learned how to draw horses. To help us draw them in proper perspective, we… Read More »What I did today
Hello everyone, I have decided to move my manga blog to one of my subdomains so that I can play around with editing options there. My manga blog is one that I almost never update, so I thought that it would be a safe way to try out something new.… Read More »Manga Blog Moved
Happy Valentine’s day. Thanks for reading. <3 First off, the poll results are in and the people want a mailing list. So I have created a mailing list. Now I want all those people to join the mailing list!!! I promise not to spam anyone. In fact, I will probably… Read More »Semester Update
The semester has just begun and we’ve already had so much snow that I’ve missed at least five classes, and today I will be missing more! Not that I don’t love snow days, I do. But they’ve been all lumped together which means that none of my classes have even… Read More »Excessive Snow-Days Have Halted Productivity.
Finally, my last project of 2010! Its a set of twelve Zodiac Pin-up girls. I have depicted each sign of the Zodiac (Prior to 2011) using a very specific format; each sign is personified with a pin-up girl who embodies some of the alleged characteristics of the sign. The girl… Read More »Zodiac Pin-up Girls
etzy listing Some of you have been waiting a long time for these to be put online! Well, here they are; a handmade deck of corset themed playing cards. Reproductions now available for sale! See the bottom of the post for details on purchasing a deck. A set of playing… Read More »Hand-Made Corset Playing Cards
Just completed a commission for a repeat client. It’s a drawing of a house, with a few light washes of watercolor over it. This painting was quick and inexpensive. If anyone needs a painting of a house, I would definitely take a commission like this again.
Here are the final figure drawings from this semester’s figure drawing class. I do like these two drawings because I was finally comfortable doing something a little different. I went back to conte for these last drawings because I have really enjoyed the range of values that I am able… Read More »Last Batch of Figure Drawings For A While
Two new digital paintings are up in the digital gallery. Both of these paintings were done in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet. Both paintings are composed of many layers which separate out the different elements in each painting, making it easy to make changes. The first painting is of my… Read More »Digital Paintings
I have a thing for dark humor. The painting below is my final watercolor piece of the fall semester, 2010. Our assignment was to do a painting where the main subject matter is an egg. That was the only requirement; other than containing an egg, the painting could be about… Read More »Eggs, Anyone?
Here is my first watercolor from this semester. I did not post it sooner because I was waiting to get it back from my professor so that I could scan it. Then winter break came along and I had all of this other work to post, and so this painting… Read More »Fruit Mice
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!. Crunchy numbers A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,800… Read More »2010 in review
Here are some figure drawings done in monochromatic watercolor and ink wash! This first one is more of a portrait than a figure drawing like the ones you are used to seeing from me. But the model did not show up to class that day so we had to paint… Read More »Figure Drawing with Ink and Watercolor
Typically when you set out to draw something, you draw with a relatively short utensil, using your dominant hand. This is how everyone learns to draw, and it is what is most comfortable. But for these drawings we weren’t supposed to be comfortable. No, we were supposed to struggle and… Read More »Uncomfortably Drawing the Figure
I just finished my first real course in Digital Illustration. I learned how to create images in photoshop on my own over six years ago with the help of online tutorials, but this was my first time getting real face-to-face instructions on using the program. Fortunately most of the basics… Read More »New Digital Artwork!
Here is another batch of figure drawings from this semesters figure drawing class. The first few drawings in this lengthy post are done in pencil. I hadn’t used much pencil in this class before the midterm, and so I wanted to make sure that I got enough practice with pencil… Read More »Drawing the figure with pencil and charcoal
Ah! I’m finally home for winter break. Five eighths of the way done with college. This semester I took four studio classes and only one academic; that means that I have made a whole lot of work this year! Some of which still isn’t up on my site but I… Read More »What I learned this semester
I’m making the switch! I am finally switching web hosts. I have been with 1&1 web hosting for 6 years now, and they were great 6 years ago; they were even great 3 years ago back when customers could still insert their own HTML into the web builder. But ever… Read More »Big Changes On The Way
Last study for figure drawing complete! And it’s feet! Or my foot, seen from three views. I have always liked drawing feet. Everyone always says they’re so difficult, but I bet that’s because they don’t draw them very often. The more you draw feet, the easier it becomes. I promise.… Read More »And now I drew some feet
New watercolor piece complete! Just in time to give me a breather for the Thanksgiving holiday. This painting took a lot of work; half of the project was research! Our assignment was to illustrate a scene from an opera, and we were given a list of composers to choose from.… Read More »Die Valkyrie
Part of drawing the figure is drawing the hands. Hands are often said to be one of the most difficult parts of the figure to draw, and though I’ve never thought them particularly easy either, I always thought that faces were much harder than hands. Drawing a hand is like… Read More »Drew some hands.
Wow! It seems like its been such a long time since my last post! Things have been really crazy at school with midterms and final projects starting up. I actually have a lot of work that I need to post but there hasn’t been enough sun to photograph it all.… Read More »Copy of Comtesse D-Haussonville by Ingres
For homework in figure drawing class, we have been drawing different parts of the head in our sketch books. This week, we were assigned to put all of those parts together and do a self-portrait. I typically have a lot of trouble with self portraits because of the way the… Read More »Self portrait
I like working in series! I have an obsessive personality, and when I get on an idea I like to work through it until I am utterly sick of that subject matter. Fortunately, I never stay sick of anything and eventually my creativity will catch up with me and I… Read More »New Series: Treasure
We had less time than usual to draw each of these drawings, so they are all a little more gestural. I however, do not mind this. It is easy to get caught up in the details when given too much time to complete a drawing. The one above is probably… Read More »Oh hey, more figure drawing.
The title says it all.
My drawing teacher bought a bunch of half-dead sunflowers for us to draw in class one evening. It was almost as big as I was, and there was a lot going on with the item. So when we were only given an hour or so to draw, it was clear… Read More »Big, Floppy, Sunflower.
Good morning everyone. I drew some ears. Pencil. All from the same person. Would you like to see some other doodles? Well then you should look on my Flickr Account under doodles.
Here we have the second piece to come from the idea of dealing solely with shadow. If you recall, for the first piece of this nature, I drew the shadows cast by my belongings in my dorm room, but I removed my objects from the space. You can find that… Read More »Describing with Shadows part II
Warning: This post contains drawings of nude figure models for academic purposes. More figure drawing. One of them is more vine charcoal on warm gray paper, and the other is conte pencil on cool gray paper. The thing I like best about the latter, is that we drew the same… Read More »More Figure drawing. This time conte pencils are awesome
Watercolor is getting easier. I guess it just takes a lot of practice. There are many different techniques to learn and try before you can decide which one works best for you. Because watercolors are translucent, you can either build up your colors, mixing them on the paper, or you… Read More »Learning to use watercolors.
I’ve been keeping a sketchbook consistantly this semester to organize all of my thoughts, thumbnails, and small studies from my four studio classes in one place. Oftentimes, ideas I generate for one class work well in another and help me to focus my thoughts. In previous semesters, I kept notes… Read More »Keeping a Sketch Book
This is pretty straight forward. This charcoal drawing was done in figure drawing class, from a live model, in about 2 hours.We worked on gray paper so that we could bring out the highlights with a white charcoal pencil. I worked up the drawing with vine charcoal first, and then… Read More »Portrait in Charcoal
Warning: This post contains drawings of nude models for academic purposes. I have been cranking out work lately. I guess that makes sense when I am enrolled in more studio classes at once than ever before. The class that turns out finished drawings most rapidly is figure drawing, because for… Read More »Drawing the Figure.
In figure drawing class, besides drawing the figure, we are working on weekly assignments that focus on one part of the body at a time. Here we have the skull. I chose to work in pencil because it is clean. I do not care for charcoal, even if it is… Read More »Skull Studies
Drawing from Life: it’s my fourth studio class this semester. My “elective,” even though I have to take another studio class. So far, so good in the course. We’ve met three times and the professor seems very nice and I think she loves what she does, so that’s always a… Read More »Describing with Shadows.
This semester, as part of my illustration major, I am taking a course in watercolors. I have dealt with watercolors in the past, but this course will go into a whole new level of technique and detail for me. It’s been a few years since I’ve touched a watercolor set,… Read More »Watercolor class.