Paul's Blog

Sinat Michael Jackson: The Prodigy

2010-02-28T20:24:00.000-08:00

Here's a stained glass window of Michael Jackson as a child and a saint.

Lazercutter Redprints

2010-02-24T23:10:00.000-08:00

This is my Sins of the Internet that I put through the lasercutter. It looks pretty cool on cardboard. It was a prototype as I will be trying to find out a way of making an actual stained glass window of this and future designs soon.

Sins of the Internet

2010-02-24T23:02:00.000-08:00

What I'm working on right now for the end of the term (and my new BFA project?) is based on canonization (the period of time with stained glass windows, manuiscripts, reliquaries, etc). I want to play with traditional Biblical themes in modern settings, the saintification of modern do-gooders and the near saint quality we attribute to celebrities. I know that's a lot, but I'm just gonna play with it all at first and go with whichever produces the strongest work. This first stained glass piece is from the foremost category, where the Seven Sins are represented through a man's interaction with the computer and the internet. The are (from left to right, top to bottom)

Vanity (Myspace), Lust (Pornography), Coveting (Cyber-Piracy), Greed (Ebay), Gluttony and Sloth (lounging and pigging out at the computer) and Anger (swearing on forums)

I find that projects I do well on are either based off of humor, a narrative, and my faith. So let's see how this goes.

SHARK WEEK!

2010-02-24T23:01:00.000-08:00

This was my sister's gift for Christmas. She loves sharks and believes that you should live every week like it's "Shark Week." So I made he a mug with this image wrapped around it.

The Hatter

2010-02-24T22:57:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed, I have been doing a lot of penned sketches lately. I just came into possession of a few Photo-Blue Pencils which have been awesome. Basically I just draw something out with them, then trace over them in pen. When I scan the drawing into Photoshop I can get rid of the cyan tone with just a little layer mask. This character is from my Dreamer poster and comic.

Urban Font

2010-02-24T22:55:00.000-08:00

For my Urban Survival Guide (which is now on hiatus) I designed a font using http://www.yourfonts.com/print.html. Basically you print of a template, write the characters in and scan it back in. The site analyzes the template and creates a custom, handwritten font for you. It then e-mails the font back to for about $10. I thought it was pretty cool.

Raptor

2010-02-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

This is sketch of a robot from the aforementioned sci-fi comic with the bug motif. At some point an ancient robotic race will be unleashed that a hybrid of birds and locusts (symbolically speaking at least) called Raptors. The birds as in they are the seemingly unstoppable predators of insects, and locusts because they are the bugs notorious for wiping entire kingdoms clean of all food. Since they were robots I wanted them to look a little more sinister and actually resemble the raptor/locust hybrid but not blatantly. I think this Raptor turned out well between the pointed head and the 6 claw-appendages.

Fly

2010-02-24T22:41:00.000-08:00

Another comic I have in the works takes place in Sci-Fi universe where different psionic powers and abilities have led to similar behaviors and characteristics found in insects. For example, this main character named Keenan (I think, not sure. Might name him Connor) is a Fly. He can run and jump on walls through manipulating his gravitational orientation, and is able to see invisible rays when he puts on his compound goggles. He is also very short (like a hobbit) even though he is in his mid twenties. He is not able to fly though (not yet at least).

Guitarist

2010-02-24T22:12:00.000-08:00

This was meant to be my brother's gift. He likes the guitar so I was gonna make him a vinyl shirt with this design. I haven't made it for him yet though because I still don't know how (it's ok, he hasn't gotten me anything yet for Christmas too).

The Common Loon

2010-02-24T22:08:00.000-08:00

For my family's secret Santa I drew my Uncle Bob. I heard he liked the Common Loon (kind of random, but whatever) so I decided to make him a framed illustration. Come to think of it, is there any other animal that has both stripes and spots? I can't think of anything except maybe the Tazmanian Tiger? I don't know.

Ark

2010-02-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I made most of my family their various gifts. I made my mom a little tote bag from zazzle.com with an illustration of Noah's Ark. As you may have guessed my Biblical interests and beliefs stem from my upbringing.

2010-02-24T21:39:00.000-08:00

Another side project I've been working on. As can be seen in several of my other projects, the Armageddon is something that I find interesting. There's a comic that I'm working on (it's slow going, even though I most of it all planned out in my head) where the events that happen in the Bible are reinterpreted in a parallel universe, but where divinity/holy spirit is conveyed through color. For example, God is the ColorMaker, and mankind has lost it's color, etc. Anyways, the four horses of the Apocalypse are conveniently color coded already, so it was easy to transfer them over (in my story they're called the Generals instead of the Horsemen). From top to bottom there's the Pale General of Death, The Black General of Famine, and the Red General of War. I didn't know how best to color the color of Pale, so I went with Pale blue. As you may have noticed as well, I only have three. There's only three because I think that the first horsemen is actually Jesus prophecied to come back for Rapture. I know that traditionally (at least in American culture, narrative and cinema) that the other horsemen is "Pestilence", but in the passage of Revelations he is called "The Conqueror." Maybe the Bible mentions somewhere else about the whole pestilence thing, but oh well. I personally think that as the Apocalypse grew in popularity in stories that having "Jesus" wasn't epic enough, so they swapped him out for Pestilence. Maybe I should into that. I attached the passage below

"I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest."
Revelation 6:1-2

Anyways, long story. But these are some designs of the three other Generals that I was hoping to put on a new pair of shoes.

PS I also wanted to have the four generals (in this case including The Conqueror) represent the cherubim mentioned in Ezekiel, the one with the face of a man, ram, lion and eagle. So the White Rider would be the Man, the Red Rider has the mane of a Lion, the Black Rider the horn of a Ram (to call forth the winds of Famine) and the Pale Rider has the wings of an eagle. Anyways, this was a long post. Later!

The Lion of Judah Beta

2010-02-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

This is something I just started working on. It uses the words of various words and verses from the Bible describing God as a Lion. Many times I think we Christians think of Jesus as a meek little lamb, but forget that he is also described as this fierce and strong Lion (like Aslan!). I certainly like the idea, but am gonna start again with a different approach. I'm gonna redo this with more of a full body shape so that I can use just one color of text and you could still tell that it's a lion. Right now if you make all of the text the same color it just looks like a blob.

Site Design

2010-02-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

I've been working on my new site for a while now, and this is my current design for it. It's subject to change, but fortunately I'm redoing my site with templates so if I want to change it later I will just need to edit the template. Then all of my pages will be updated automatically! :) By the way, my new site is www.griffinblue.com and it still under construction.

GAH! I NEED TO POST STUFF!

2010-02-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I haven't posted to this blog in a while. I just got a little behind in posting stuff, and kept putting it off and didn't want to play catch up. But I should and will, so prepare to amazed as I throw everything up that I've been working on this term!

Site Designs

2010-02-02T10:02:00.000-08:00

Hey! Here's another possible design for my site.
http://www.griffinblue.com/html/test.html

New Site

2010-02-01T23:19:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't been posting a lot to my blog lately, but no worries. I have been doing a lot, just haven't gotten around to posting images/links here yet. A lot of my new stuff I have been posting to my new site, www.griffinblue.com. Please check it out.

The Dreamer

2009-12-08T20:33:00.000-08:00

Here is my finished version of the "Dreamer" poster.

Vector Poster

2009-12-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Ah, I love vector artwork a lot (if that is not already rampantly apparent). I just like the clean look of it and that I can scale it to whatever size I want. Perfect for printing!

This was just a poster I designed for my girlfriend.

Struzan Inspired Poster

2009-12-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody! This is a poster to supplement a paper that I'm writing on Drew Struzan. For those of you who do not know, Drew Struzan was a very famous Movie Poster artist. I say was because he is now retired :(. Many of his works included Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, Back to Future and much much more. You can check out his gallery at http://www.drewstruzan.com/

So I made a poster for one of own stories in his style. It's a pretty developed story, but I'll just give the bare bones about it. It's an animated film which centers around a young Latina girl who discovers that she has the power go into other people's dreams instead of her own. Since it's all in a dream world the setting is very random and illogical, teetering between bright and vibrant to dark and dreary. I really like Tim Burton mixed with Sesame Street (I'm sure I'll find a better image to explain it later).

I could really go much more in depth about the story, but I'll save that for the next update I do with this poster.

Personal Logo

2009-11-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

We've been designing things for the end of the year show for a little bit now, and we've decided that we are all going to have our own personal logos for the website. They will be simplified and iconic of our work, so this is the logo I've designed for myself. It's similar to my other pieces for the BFA, so I like it.

Finished LOTR Poster

2009-11-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

I finished the poster! I cranked out about 5 hours on Saturday to finish it, but I like it a lot. Fortunately my sister likes it a lot too. The original dimensions for this poster was 42x20, so it looked really nice blown up big.

Updated LOTR Poster

2009-11-09T20:05:00.001-08:00

Here is my most updated rendition of the Lord of the Rings poster. As you can see it is beginning to fill out nicely. I should hopefully have it done soon.

Luminous Deer Designs 2

2009-11-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

Here is another possible design for our upcoming show that I recently came up with. The other day Matt brought in some antlers and attached them to a light fixture. I really liked the metaphor, and began to create a lamp with antlers as well. I like it a lot, and think that there's a lot of potential for expanding on this to other lamps and lights.

11/7 Pokemon Team

2009-11-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

As many of you no doubt know, I'm a huge geek. And as such, I have several like-minded geeky friends. For one such friend I created a Pokemon based poster, which I think turned out really well. I drew out the characters in pencil first, then scanned them in. Then I traced over them in Illustrator, giving them two-toned color. I have found that giving vector images the second tone really makes them pop out a whole lot more, and it still retains it simple form.

11/4 Wizard of O's

2009-11-09T02:33:00.000-08:00

The other day in class we saw a very funny and clever film, "The Wizard of O's." I was inspired to make it my laptop background, but Alexiev didn't have a straight up picture on his site. So I was able to cobble together one by taking two screenshots of his site and merging them in photoshop. I don't think Alexiev would mind. Even if he did, no worries because I was not able to handle the color and brightness for long, as I took it down a few days afterwards.

11/1 Stained Glass Windows

2009-11-09T02:25:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend has been lamenting the fact that her apartment walls have been pretty bare as of late. So I decided to design her some vectorized posters to help clothe them. She really likes traditional artwork, so I went with creating a few stained glass designs. So I found a few pictures online and traced over them in Illustrator, and I think it turned out pretty well. And she likes them a lot too. :)

10/28 Luminous Deer Designs

2009-11-09T01:57:00.000-08:00

In class we discussed a few different possibilities in design and branding for the end of the year show, "Luminous Deer." Right now the discussion is whether or not we should go with a more direct design (have a luminescent deer) or something more conceptual. To be honest, I'm rather impartial to either, but I do think that Luminous Deer is already a pretty vague theme so I think pairing it with a subtle design may make it too hard for our audience to grasp or appreciate. My designs are more direct, but there were many other designs shown that were excellent as well.

10/26 Urban Survival Guide: Headphones

2009-11-09T01:42:00.000-08:00

Another section of the Urban Survival Guide will be the tools guide. It will contain the various tools and equipment you need to survive in the City. These are some headphones.

10/26 Urban Survival Guide: The Singing Bum

2009-11-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

I am gonna build on my denominational project for the end of the year project with something I call the Urban Survival Guide. The Urban Survival Guide is going to be a compilation of small books written like a wildlife guidebook. Instead of being in the wilderness though, it will be a guide to Portland. There will be a booklet on the wildlife, which this page is an example excerpt. I'm gonna play with the format and layout later on, but this will give you an idea of what I'm going for. The wildlife subject is the Singing Bum.

10/19 Political Parties 2

2009-11-09T01:23:00.000-08:00

Here are the Green and Libertarian parties.

10/19 Political Parties 1

2009-11-09T00:19:00.000-08:00

This was an idea for a book in the same vein of humorous explanation in an effort to describe American political parties. I think it's a promising field, by my classmates advised me in the critique to creat my own political parties (such as the "Maverick party," "Joe the Plumber party," etc.). This blog post has the Republican and Democratic parties.

10/13 Lord of the Rings

2009-11-09T00:08:00.000-08:00

Ever since working in the Output room, I have been doing a lot of large poster work. I really enjoy drawing vector images, and then blowing them up huge in print. I am working on a late Birthday present for my sister (her birthday was actually 10/12, so I'm a little behind). She really loves the Lord of the Rings story, so I'm making her a poster based on that. Basically I am taking pictures from online and retracing them in illustrator. Like in the artist piece, I am trying to keep from using lines to define characteristics, and am relying on only colors. I hope the fill this entire poster with LOTR characters soon.

10/12 Vector Self Portrait

2009-11-08T22:48:00.001-08:00

This is a vector rendering of how I kind of envision myself as an artist. Certainly it's inaccurate in my height or my usual attire, but it's meant to be a little idealized and fantastic. The briefcase that I'm carrying contains all the tools of my trade, both for traditional and digital art. I ended up printing it onto large paper and it currently lives over my desk.

Denomination List

2009-10-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to a little interactive brochure I made satirically
explaining the different denominations of Christianity.

http://pandacrossing.com/html/art/denominationallist.html

Illumination

2009-10-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

This is a charcoal self-portrait where I highlighted my
surroundings as if my sketchpad was the source of light.