Personal Best: My Favorite Drawings of 2012

So I started drawing at the local vampire game and was very happy with the results. Above is of Heath, portraying the Prince in the city. I have one in the works of his wife Shannon and myself.

I for some reason really liked the idea of doing large scale drawings with a G2 pen.  Thinking back on it seems really confusing to me. I think I wanted to work with pen and had not yet bought my new fountain pens, I also did smaller drawings with the G2 pens and like how they came out.

I was planning on the drawings to be reminiscent of Piero Della Francesca's  Duke and Duchess of Urbino. So when I finish Shannon's picture they can face each other.

There are a lot of neat things going on in this drawing. I really like the details of the hat especially how it looks at it's going into the shadowed section.

Above is a drawing of one the students I work with. It came out so good. It's hard to not talk about him.

There is a lot to like about this drawing. I think the line quality and the variation of the lines are very dynamic. The composition on the page is interesting and seems very complete.

I really hope his father, a University of Hawaii at Manoa printmaking graduate, uses the drawing for a screen print. Then there will be T-shirts of this image. 

Above is a drawing of Marianne Cope I did as part of a ongoing Saint Icon series.

I really like this drawing and accomplished  a lot of things I thought. I wanted an image of her older then the images I saw being used. She did most of her note worthy work when she was older and it seemed to me disingenuous to depict her as a young fresh faced nun. So I used a lot of images to piece this image together. 

Above is another drawing from the vampire game. This is of Lauren.

There is a great mood to this drawing. She reminds me of Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. I like the blue shadow under her chin. I also like the violet in her face and forehead. There is a melancholy to the portrait that is really a treat to look at.

So it seems drawing at the Masquerade Games was really productive. I may have to roll another character that draws simply to get good sketches of people in costume.     

I really like this sketch. It may just be random lady I drew at a work meeting but I really like how this drawing came out.

I like how I rendered her blouse. The crosshatching is really illustrating the curves well. I also like the different quality lines  throughout the sketch. The line variation is doing a lot to define her form.

"Every mark matters." 

~ Jo Petty

Saint Icon - Marianne Cope

So this has been in the pipes for a while though I'm not quite done with it. I figured I'd share it considering the importance of today.

Today on October 21, 2012 Marianne Cope was canonized a saint. She is the patron saint of lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS, and those in Hawaii.
For the drawing itself I used a few file pictures and merged them together. I wanted to make her older as almost all of the images I've seen of her use the younger images of her.

I am unsure what to do in the background. For the icon of Father Damien I did a very traditional niche background to mimic what you would see in a Catholic Church. I like how it came out, although I think I can do better. I am unsure at the moment if I want to add a background to this.

"One must always draw, draw with the eyes, 

when one cannot draw with a pencil." 

~Balthus

Italy Sketchbook 5: St Catherine - Roma

So this was one of my favorite drawings in this sketchbook. When I went to Rome I fell in love with this sculpture. This sculpture is of St Catherine.

It is located Piazza Pia a public park in Rome just outside the Vatican and Castle San'Angelo.

I love the hand and the profile of this drawing. I really think I started to play with the gray background in this sketch. I also managed to keep the dark and light parts well separated.

Saint Icon - Damien of Molokai

So being raised a Catholic, I have an appreciation for the saints. I have great aloha in my heart for the traditions, ceremony, and formality involved in how my Church honors our saints.

I want to do a series of saint icons for saints that have special significance to people I know and love.  I started this project a while ago, but finally put the finishing touches on this first one.  And it's a great one to begin with.

Damien of Molokai (Links to Wikipedia and Daily Celebrations) is important to many people in Hawaii. He is the name sake of my uncle's Alma Mater.

Damien is one of 15 American Saints and most notably he did most of his missionary work in Hawaii with the Kalaupapa lepers on the island of Molokai. He continues to be an inspiration to those in the service of the sick and those who are outcasts.

To create this piece, I started with a red oxide ink wash. I then did the drawing in red ink then in black ink. I am pretty happy with the effect. The hand pose is a nod to the Spanish Renaissance artist El Greco who really liked that hand layout.

I like the alcove in the background, though I am unsure if the drawing is really complete yet.   

I have a whole bunch of pages prepped for this project. Let's see how many of these I can do.

"Art is everywhere you look for it,

hail the twinkling stars for they are God's careless splatters."

~El Greco