Comic Book Project

So here's the comic book project I did for my art history class, the one entitled "Copy Cats." The professor is a little eccentric, (another person who was in my class did a pretty accurate animation of one of his lectures) but basically the course talked a lot about Aristotle and his ideas of tragedy and comedy, and some "theories on mimesis," or basically as artists why we copy and what we copy.

For my final project I chose the comic book option, and decided to turn Oedipus Rex, a story we had gone over as the perfect example of tragedy, into a comedy. Oh, and the professor loves cartoons and anime and anything campy, so I was trying to appeal to his tastes.

Also, since the theme was "copy cats" I incorporated some things from other comics into mine.

The dinosaur on the first page is based off of T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics

"Fat Pony" on page five (and some influence on my style for the comic) is from Kate Beaton's comics

Almost all of page seven is copied and slightly modified from "300" by Frank Miller (the comic book not the movie)

And of course the story was from Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, which having some prior knowledge of will make this comic much easier to understand.

Also, I did all of this in like two nights, so the art started to get really crappy towards the end. It's really noticeable about the time Jocasta comes into the picture... her and the captain of the guard are about the worst things I've ever drawn.

HERE IT IS



By the way, my professor really liked it and gave me extra credit, so I ended up with a 100.5 for the class. :)

Updating just to update.

I'm tired of looking at my last post.

This week I'll get my prints from the whole semester of printmaking up, and then maybe I'll scan in an awful comic book I did for my crazy art history class.

In the meantime, here's something I did while watching tv just to remind myself that I do know how to use photoshop - it's been a long time. It's not finished, but I like it so far.

Decorating my wall

Since my walls are so big and empty, I've been creating a wall decal by cutting out shapes in contact paper. This is what I've got so far, and I'll probably add more later.

Didn't decide to take a picture of this one until after they had left (hence why it's in the bag, waiting for package pick-up.) I just haven't posted any black and whites, and this one was the first in-park drawing I really got to use the gray copic on.



The picture I snapped of this couple really doesn't do justice to his crazy blue fish-eyes. Hers is pretty meh, but I really liked how I drew the expression he had (which of course changed when I got a picture of him.)

That's all for now.

FINISHED

So I'm sure everyone else is as sick of this picture as I am, but it's FINALLY DONE. I am NOT working on it anymore. I am done. Even though I'm not happy with the hair and there's some weird kind of shadow next to the head on the right, I am done. Mostly because I've gotten to that point where I absolutely hate it and feel like I have to fix everything, and I know from experience if I touch it now I'll end up ruining it.

Gouache has been weird to work with - at first I loved it, and then I started to realize some of its limitations and hated certain elements of it. I simultaneously feel like I overworked it, and didn't work it enough.

I also kinda regret the background choice, and had a really hard time finding a color to paint the frame that would go with it - the yellow I chose is slightly less mustardy than the picture makes it look (I played with the contrast and color levels in photoshop a lot, but the colors are still a little off) and it kinda looks good, but at the same time I think it's probably too bright. But the only other colors I could seem to find that didn't outright clash was a dark maroon red (which made the background look like the fires of hell) and dark blue (but I couldn't find spray paint in the right shade.)

But, the important thing is I finished my first studio-caricature, and I have it done in time for the show. Now I should go to bed before I give in to the temptation to redo the entire thing.

Yet again instead of finishing House, I started something else. This is just a quick sketch of Stephen Fry that I did with my latest favorite toy, some gray Copic markers.

More vases! And House gets... House-ier.

I made more vases! Yay! The middle one is currently my favorite, and the one on the right I don't really like at all. The left one continues in a rainbow-ish color pattern, and the middle one has different tree-bird-cloud scenes on each side. The one on the right I was trying to be a bit random with the colors, which didn't really work out the way I wanted it to. I was uninspired by it, so I just threw on some flowers drawn on the text of some diabetes medication adverts and other boring stuff.



Also, this is what House looks like at the moment. It seems like the closer I get to finishing it, the less I want to work on it. Pretty much the only thing that's changed is he has both shoulders, a cane, and I managed to make the background even brighter than before somehow.

Quick vote - should I put the Vicodin bottle in or no? I kinda don't want to draw it in there, because the positioning is awkward, but I think a caricature of House really needs it. Opinions?