Polishing Turds

A game I love yet rarely get to play with my aritst buddies is called, for lack of a better name, Polish The Turd. Simply put, one player scribbles, the next player must form an image out the scribble. Some folks at Drawger have brought it to a new level, but I've always kept it real on restaurant napkins and tablecloths, usually after several adult beverages. This was the result of a self imposed game. And now you know that.

Thanks for stopping by,
I love you.

New website, new work

So, among other things, I've been workin on recreating my website in a manner that will let me show more work in a more accessible way. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think. www.ScottBrundage.com

Below are some new samples of a series of likenesses I've been workin on. Dick and Bush were for an upcoming book interior for Oxford University Press, the others were me playing with Dexter, Wolverine and that handsome devil Clooney.


And here are some sketch book pages to keep you warm till the next post. I promise it will be less than 2 months from now.


Thanks for stopping by,
I love you.

-S

Reverie wrap-up

Instead of trying to recall exactly what I absorbed, I'll list some highlights of the last three days of Reverie...
-learning an impromptu lesson in how to use a Wacom tablet and CS3 to draw from life. Thank you, Dustin Darnault, for some tips.-Hangin out with a Greg, Irene, and Dakota, the red-tailed hawk, in a hotel room
-Watching Greg paint a full painting over 7 hours or so-Dinner with Ringling grads Dustin Darnault, Adam Volker, Erin Maguire, and... two more that I forgot names of (sorry). Ringling has a tradition of staggeringly beautiful sketchbooks. Take a gander at their blogs for proof.
-Character design demo/photoshop how-to by Bobby Chiu

There I am lookin pensive.

-Multitudes of lectures ranging from Winsor McCay's narrative style to how to create a contract to keep a movie studio from robbing you.
-7 or 8 artist "Thunderdome." For those who don't know, that means a competition where the artists create a piece on a theme and one wins. This theme was on hope in the midst of genocide generated by demand for materials in Africa that are used to create our ipods, cell phones and electronics. The artists were given an hour... ridiculous what they can pump out in an hour.
....And here are some sketchbook pages from the event, one of which is a Manchess cameo.

Reverie kickoff

I've only recently acquainted myself with conceptart.org and really didn't know what I was getting into by attending Reverie. My buddy, Greg Manchess, made it sound like some sort of art orgy. Which makes me wonder how many orgies he's been to.

Irene Gallo, Manchess, Bryan Beus
(not pictured: orgy)

My travelmate, Bryan, and I met up with Irene and Greg before heading to the Reverie venue. Irene informed me about how Kindle and Kindle-like products will eventually be your ipod and book library. We had an earlier discussion about the possibility of reading children's books to kids off a Kindle, which I thought was preposterous. Irene told me it was very posterous. To the point that your child's book will record you reading it to him or her, so he or she can look at its digital pages and hear you narrating. Holy year 2000!

Then we hit the kick off party. Wowo. 7 open bars, 12 screens projecting digital paintings in progress, 3 djs, Android Jones projecting artwork onto a dancer, and models coming up to pose left and right.

No biggie.

Behind this group of artists was a dancefloor. And more nude models. Not sure if Bryan approved. Should be an interesting couple days.

Overdue update: New work, new sketches

While finishing up some long term work with a private client, I've been neglecting this here blog. I apologize to my 3 or 4 loyal readers. It won't happen again.

Some images from one of the aforementioned projects that just wrapped up. A couple were sketches I posted previously, now painted.
And here are a couple ditties done for a very snarky running news website, www.twoangryrunners.com. Former D1 athletes are apparently overweight, bitter, and very funny. Lastly, here are some new and revisited sketchbook images...
I like fish and apes. What of it?

This weekend I'll be headed to Dallas for Conceptart.org's Reverie workshop. Expect sketches and pics in the near future.

My first bit o' hatemail

I've been buried in some longterm projects so I've been neglecting this blog, but here are some quick jobs I did for Sue Foster at The Wall Street Journal.

The first was as spot for an article on mattress toppers. I got this while in Colorado meeting a client. I'm learning the busier I am socially, or the less I'm in the studio, the more work I get. Pays to have a life I suppose.
And more recently I completed a job over the New Year's weekend. Again, make plans to be out of town and boom, new assignment. This one was about the top 10 best and top 10 worst jobs. Mathematician ranked top best while Lumberjack was voted worst. Pretty straight forward.
I wasn't told, initially, whether it was vertical or horizontal, so some early thumbnails were landscapes. The idea came fairly quickly, and I decided the best way to tell the story was to keep it simple and direct. Some of the more oblique viewpoints didn't convey the idea as clearly.Less than a week after this was published I received a strongly worded email. Now, I may live in NYC, but I wouldn't assume that instantly makes me an elitist. But who knows? I use an iPod regularly and voted Democrat. And obviously, I raise a pinky while drinking a beverage. Regardless, here is the email:

"Your image with the mathematician/lumberjack, with the smug mathematician’s look and the defeated lumberjack was a classist attack on the working man. Images like this make it harder for the hard working men we all depend on to find a mate, to have a family and a rewarding life. They are looked down on, literally, in your image and as a result are disrespected and unwanted. The frowning tree practically demonizes the lumberjack. At least give these men an image they can be proud of. They deserve better, their lives are hard enough already.


I’m just curious, do you own anything made of wood?"

...How great is that? Another milestone reached.

Riding dragons, doodling the flu.

For the last three years now, I've been joining a supremely talented group of artists and designers who work in the fantasy genre. By som strange bout of luck, I became the token editorial dude among a crowd of folk who spend weeks making chain mail and dragonscales look incredible.

Among some of the crew are Tor Books art director Irene Gallo, my buddy and ridiculously talented painter Greg Manchess, fantasy art legends Julie Bell & Boris Vallejo (Boris is still the only artist I've met that I kinda mumbled "holy crap I collected your trading cards" when I met him), and fan favorite Dan Dos Santos.

Other regulars and visitors include Arkady Roytman, Scott Fischer, Jon Foster, Dave Seeley, Lars Grant-West, Eric Fortune, Anthony Palumbo, David Palumbo, Ben Foster and Rebecca Guay.

While there, I got a very quick turn around commission for the AARP Bulletin website. So, I spent Monday night drawing the letters F, L, and U lurking in a scary environment (as Eric Seidman at AARP described it "...if you let mold run wild in a closet for 20 years").

Being a tight deadline (10am, the following morning), he requested the letters be a bit more scary and dark, then let me go to finish.
Eric thought it was a bit too "inside of my uncle's stomach" for the readership of AARP and I needed to do it again. I was game, what's my new deadline? "2 hours." Cue me running to my desk.
I'd say it was a pretty good hustle.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera for the week, but here are some links to Irene and Julie & Boris's blogs and flickr pages. Enjoy.

Irene's entry, Irene's Flickr.
Julie and Boris 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.