Coco String Dance

iViva Conando!

Pale Apes in the River

I warn you now, this is going to be a long one...
Last semester I took a Illustrative Drawing class where we went to the zoo and drew animals from life and then wrote a story and developed characters that would go along with the animals we had studied. I started to look at different fairy tales and children's stories and decided to base mine off of some native american styles of storytelling.

My story takes place along the amazon river during the mid 1960's where a group of explorers venture into the relatively unknown jungles surrounding the river. The group of five men have been sent from a university in hopes of beginning the arduous task of sketching and categorizing the various species that can be found in the area.

The men are friendly toward the animals and often use food to coax them out of hiding. The animals (including the a dimwitted flamingo named Moche ((named after a tribe who is known for creating artwork based around flamingos)) and a cranky alligator snapping turtle named Coenraad((named after the discoverer of his species)) grow increasingly accustom to this and begin to visit the explorers on a daily basis. They grow lazy and depend on the explorers’ food.
One day, Edwin (one of the explorers) follows a bird through the forest in hopes of sketching him. This chase leads him to a portion of the jungle the group has yet to explore. Through mangrove trees he finds a small creek with a deep pool in it. Bathing in the pool are three beautiful, nude women. Edwin steps into the water to speak to the ladies.Hours later, his fellow explorers become concerned that their friend has not returned so they go in search of him. A few more of the explorers (Daniel and Richard) stumble upon these women and each one walks into the water to meet them, only to discover at the last minute that they are mermaids that lure them underwater, drown, and eat them.

A few animals witness this and the next day word spreads to Coenraad. Not wishing to lose his newfound food source, Coenraad enlists the help of Moche (who is a social outcast) try to formulate a plan to save the remaining explorers, eventually deciding to go to the witch doctor.

They venture to the tree where the witch doctor resides. It is large, gnarled and coated in intensely colorful poison dart frogs and Panamanian golden frogs. They beg the doctor to get rid of the mermaids. He agrees they are a problem as they killed many of this fellow tribesmen but he claims killing a species is against his beliefs, regardless of how vicious they may seem.
So instead, the animals plead that the witch doctor make the mermaids unappealing to the humans. He agrees and says he will make the mermaids fat, wrinkled and gray which is something no man should find attractive. The mermaids begin to transform and become what we now know as manatees.

The manatees spend the rest of their lives under the water, ashamed of their new physique. The animals take note of Coenraad and Moche self determination and they realize they don’t need to rely on humans to survive. The duo is finally accepted by the animals around them. The remaining humans are picked up by their boat and leave for home. As they float away, Charles sketches a manatee from the boat, and remarks on what odd beasts nature creates.

Comic Page (Banana-rama-bonanza)

When given the assignment to do some pencils for a comic book page, a person's natural reaction is to turn to superheroes. When you are then told that you can't do anything involving superpowers, capes or tights, the mind naturally goes to genetically-altered gorillas.

So I began a re-imagining of the classic tale of the genetically altered gorilla with Wilhelm Steinitz's brain being experimented on in some lab several miles below a Danish McDonalds. Here is some early concept art and the final pencils for the first page.There is a cover that goes with this as well as a second page that features the scientists taking down the gorilla, but I don't really like how either one of them turned out so you'll probably never see them...ever.

Everything is Navi's fault...EVERYTHING!

Occasionally, I actually look back at some of the work on this blog and a lot of the time, it reminds me how many projects I've planned and never finished. For instance, some time back, I posted a sketch of mega-man blasting a whole in cutsman's stomach. I had a fun time drawing it and thought, 'Hey, I'm nerdy enough to turn this into a whole series of old video game fan art things'. Well I didn't do anything with that idea until now. Here is a Legend of Zelda picture that would be the second part in the series (the mega man will be the first if I ever clean it up). Ideally I'd like to put 8 of these together (kind of an 8-bit thing)...but that will probably never reach completion.

I remember playing Legend of Zelda: OOT when I was younger and having mini panic attacks whenever I walked into a room and a shadow would appear over me and that creepy noise would start. Wallmasters have haunted my dreams ever since. Anyway, this is Link listening to some of Navi's always helpful advice (Hey, maybe the water temple is in the lake!) and completely missing the floormaster creepin' up behind him.

Legend of Zelda and all its characters are property of Nintendo.

Dear Lord, Internet. I've been found.

Well, my brother apparently twitters...er...tweets...anyway, he made a comment about the "Big Ten" piece I posted a while back and a Penn State Blog called Black Shoe Diaries actually posted the image on their blog. You can see the image here.

Now, internet, I'm very happy about this as any sign of anyone taking any level of interest in my doodles is art-student-crack. Let's just keep the images out of the hands of the Buckeyes fans...their filthy, filthy hands.

Not-So-Daily Sketch: Big Brother

Big Brother is watching...and he finds you mind-numbingly boring.

Big Ten

Happy New Year, Blogginsville! I've been pretty busy doing absolutely nothing productive (shoveling sugar cookies into my face and getting caught up in some pretty intense Left 4 Dead 2 binges) which is often the cause of lulls in productivity around here. But here is something shiny and (somewhat) new for you to peep all over.

This was one of the first projects of the year, actually but I've been monkeying around with it here and there for a while now. The assignment was to take six of the Big Ten mascots and put them into my style. It's surprisingly easy to whittle the group down to six considering half of them look fairly similar (badgers and wolverines, nittany lions and wild cats, etc) and things like Hawks look stupid in jerseys. So I settled on the Nittany Lions, Buckeyes, Spartans, Badgers, Boiler Makers and Golden Gophers.

Originally the piece was going to center on Brutus (much like it does now) but he was about to get smashed by all the other mascots and was screaming like a ninny. It would be a bit of a revenge piece for last years season. My professor eventually pointed out that while there are markets for an invidual team being shown as the winner, there really aren't markets for an individual team being pointed out as a loser. So, as much as it pained me (and trust me, it did) I changed the buckeye's expression and pose so it looks as though he is outrunning the competition and about to score a touchdown...eww.

Hopefully I'll get some more stuff from last semester up here before the next semester starts.

It's been a while...

Why hello there. I saw you from across the room and couldn't help but come over and introduce myse...wait! BLOG?!?!?! IS THAT YOU? My God! I didn't even recognize you! Have you done something different with your hair or perhaps contacts?

Alright enough of that. Yes the blog has looked a little different for about a month now. The font colors have changed and the banner no longer has those thousand weird little eyeballs staring back at you...judging you...and there is good reasoning for this: BRANDING! Over the past few months I've been developing a unified look for myself and that big, grinning face at the top of the page is the core of that look.

So what's the reasoning behind these seemingly unnecessary changes? The birth of A BRAND NEW WEBSITE! (is this coming off sarcastic yet?) Yes, DAVEARMSTRONGART.COM is now up and running and waiting to delight you with whimsical, daveish delights. I strongly advise everyone in the blogoland to go there and tell your friends what a fun time you had. "Life Changing" is not too strong of a term. I also advise you to send me expensive gifts, but we can discuss that at a later time.

So take a look at DAVEARMSTRONGART.COM and snoop around the blog and let me know what you think. Maybe it's a childhood of punk music influencing my thoughts but all this branding sickens me slightly, but only slightly. Chalk it up to a fear of becoming an adult/professional (shudders).

I'm currently touching up some finals from last semester and trying to get my sleep schedule back into existence in hopes of fixing my brain, so expect some new work to find it's way on here. And if it doesn't, just assume I'm actually enjoying the holiday season and hope you do the same. Don't over nog yourself!

My name is Sue. How do you do?

For one of my classes, we had to pick a song from the 60's and illustrate it. After sketching out ideas for some Zeppelin songs, "Space Oddity," a few Beatles songs and some Hendrix I decided on "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash. This takes place just before people start kickin' and a gougin' in the mud and the blood and the beer.
This piece is a little different for me as I don't do a lot of finished work with Photoshop anymore and I definitely don't typically do work with flat elements like wood grain and flannel pattern. Overall, I like how clean this is and how well the line drawing shows through. Maybe I'll do some more stuff like this...

"We're All Quite Mad"

Illustration of the mad tea party from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
I'm putting an honest effort into more complex environments and having multiple characters in pieces. I've started getting my portfolio together and realized WAY too much of my stuff is one figure sitting with a fairly boring environment around him. So this should be a step in the right direction. The color is still a bit crazy though...maybe that fits?

Hemingway

This is a book cover for a fictional biography of Ernest Hemingway. The man hunted lions, fought with alcoholism, married four women, and managed to write a few novels so I tried to convey his mythic life in the illustration.

Not-So-Daily Sketch: Witch Doctor

These are some concept sketches for a witch doctor character I'll be using in an upcoming project. There's a lot more stuff I could show for it but I'd rather just save it up and unleash it in one massive project post (I clearly don't get the point of blogs, do I?). I just thought this guy's face was delightful enough to earn him his own post. ENJOY!