July 31, 2009

Artist Spotlight of the Week - Op De Beeck!

Above is my attempt at drawing the Belgian master caricaturist, Jan Op De Beeck. In his caricatures, he's able to get a great likeness while really pushing his exaggeration. His wife is Japanese, so he spends some of his time in Japan. You can see his work on his blog here at http://janopdebeeck.blogspot.com/. I usually don't use such strong exaggeration, but I thought I should give it a shot. Hope you like it!

July 28, 2009

New Reference Page

In June, I got a great picture drawn of me by Mike Giblin. The above picture is just a quick colorized version of that with a Porky Pig style background thrown in brighten it up. Last week I put together a little webpage with a bunch of different pictures of me. Since I'm on summer vacation, as a daily warm-up or as a break from bigger projects, I thought it might be fun to trade some sketches! Below you can see some small references of me with a variety of larger photos at http://www.djeink.com/references.html. If you wanna swap sketches you can leave me a comment or send me a message.

July 25, 2009

Happy Birthday Zengo !

Today is Zengo's birthday! I thought I it would be fun to make her a cute birthday card using her simple and clean style and emphasizing her smile by drawing her as the Cheshire cat. You may know Zengo as Yuko Tabata, since she is in charge of putting together the caricataure magazine NIDO. You can check out her blog at http://blog.livedoor.jp/z_e_n/ and homepage at http://www.kaokichi.com/.

July 24, 2009

Miki

Recently, I have been trying to make my work simpler and learn from other artists to improve my digital work. I have been studying Miki's work because her economy of line, composition, abstraction, and style are all great. I thought it would be fun to try drawing her in her own style. It's not as good as her work, but I would like to try and pick up some of her techniques. If you haven't seen her work you should definately check out her blog http://boolog.boo-bana.com/
and her website http://boo-bana.com/ to see her great work.

July 22, 2009

Donuts and Boxing!

Yesterday I met Tabata and Zengo for Krispy Kreme Donuts in Shinjuku. I finally picked up both Nido and Anima. Nido is a cool new caricature magazine looking at the art of caricatures in Japan. While its in Japanese, the art and pictures themselves make it a must buy if you get the chance to grab it at the convention in November. Anima is a unique animal themed art book. It has art by Tabata, Miki,Tom, Kunikazu, and Sasaki. Most of it is in English and also very cool.
The afternoon was spent hanging out while waiting for Takanabe's brother's boxing match.
Here I am with Hideyuki Watanabe. He is fighting in the Japanese newcomer tournament, and has won his first three fights by knock out. He's fighting at 52kg in the super fly weight class.
Here you can see Takanabe and Toru Tanaka enjoying the action. It was alot of fun.

July 19, 2009

Tim Burton

I've been a big fan of Tim Burton since I was a kid, and he still continues to make great movies. I've seen some cool caricatures of him on deviantart and some great ones by Jason Seiler and Vincent Altamore. I'm trying to learn from some of these better artists, so I thought I should try drawing him and some of my favorite of his creations too. Looking forward to his take on Alice in Wonderland next year!

July 17, 2009

Summer Vacation!

As of today, I'm now officially on summer vacation. Definately one of the best parts of being a teacher. I try to draw whenever I can, and at school I end up drawing a lot of students. I threw some of my favorite sketches together for this blog post, hope you enjoy! 今日から夏休みです。学校でいろいろなスケッチをしました。どうぞ見てください!

July 12, 2009

Harry Potter

The wife and are are looking forward to checking out the new Harry Potter movie on Wednesday. I've been thinking about doing a Harry Potter group caricature, but there are so many characters, I've been doing a lot of little warm up pieces. Anyways, here is one of my favorites so far.

July 10, 2009

me as Mario in illustrator

I drew myself as Mario a couple years ago using some pens and then coloring in photoshop. Last week I wonderedwhat it would look like if I tried again in illustrator. This is what I came up with. I tried to improve my color since it is my weakest point. I might try to make this an interactive animation in flash, but this is all for now. Anyways, enjoy!

July 07, 2009

Tom Graffiti

Here is a picture I drew of an awesome artist called Tom. I first learned of him at the Tokyo Mini-con. He came in 3rd place. He sometimes works wth Tomo Tabata or Takayuki Watanabe. He often uses graffiti and animals in his artwork. wanted to give it a try too! Check out his work
私が素晴らしいと思うカリカチュアリストの一人である「Tomさん」を描きました。彼との最初の出会いは東京ミニコンで、その時彼は3位入賞。時々、田畑さんやTAKANABEさんと仕事をしているようです。彼の作品では、グラフィティや動物をよく目にします。そこで、私もトライしてみました。

July 05, 2009

More digital work

I'm working on some bigger projects that I will post soon, but I wanted to post something, so here is some older stuff. Here is a simple picture I did of my mom that I liked.
Here is a drawing of Morpheus from the Matrix that I did at the end of last year right before I started this blog, so I thought I might as well post it.

I was looking through some of my older files, and found this picture an old friend drew of me. This was drawn by Josh Langstaff while we were at the University of Michigan in 2003.