George Harrison Sketch

Hi All,

Well - it's been a while since I've updated the blog.  I've been pretty busy with school, but I also need to continue producing artwork...that's one of the things I do.  As a matter of fact I stumbled into a design project today - for a friend on Facebook.  That was a nice surprise.

So I saw this great old photo of George Harrison.  I've always loved the Beatles including George, the quiet one.  So I sat down with a selection of pencils and sketch book and thought I'd have a little fun.

The sketch after being photographed and
touched up in Photoshop.

Being relatively happy with it, I thought I'd post the sketch, but after downloading my terrible attempt at photographing the sketch I figured I'd clean it up in Photoshop a little.  So I added a little color around the edges and did a little dodge and burn to work on the tonal values.

Here's the scanned in touched up version
(first version).

Well, I couldn't really stop there.  So I started working a little darker color in around the edges with the airbrush tool.  I had to work on a couple touch ups and finish with a little bit of a sepia tone over all to give it a little bit of an "arty" touch.  Arty being a technical term - ha, ha.

Here's the sketch photo - took the photo of it taped
to my studio door with natural light.
(don't hire me to take photos)

I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but it was fun, and I probably spent more time on it than I planned, but thats just kind of the way I am.  Enjoy All and have a great week...I'll keep blogging (hopefully a little more regularly).

Aloha,

Tom

Fun With Anatomy

Hi All,

OK - I know what some of you are thinking - that's probably not what I had in mind when I titled this post, "Fun With Anatomy."  What I did mean is this.  Recently I've been playing around with colored pencils and anatomy pictures - having some fun with Anatomy.  Why?

I started taking classes at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA), about 6 weeks ago.  I'm working on an holistic health degree and one of my first classes is Anatomy.  Anatomy consists of learning about the inside of the body; bones, muscles, nerves, tendons, and all that other stuff too.

The text book and teacher both recommend coloring some of the anatomy pictures.  It's a technique to help learn.  Anatomy can be a little bit of a dry subject; learning and memorizing latin and greek names for all of the hundreds of body parts can get a little overwhelming.  So looking at the subject matter in a completely different way, can really help get the info into the brain.

Coloring the pictures in the workbook and handouts has been fun and helps break up some of the monotony of memorizing all of this stuff.  Of course, me being an artist, I started having some fun; mixing up colors and shading - maybe getting a little carried away.

I used to work with colored pencil a lot and like to work with medium to soft colored pencils best.  I've got a variety, but my favorite are Prismacolor.  They make a great colored pencil.  They blend well, have good coverage, and are easy to work with.

So far I'm doing well in my classes.  I don't know if it has anything to do with coloring anatomy pictures, but I'm having a good time with it.

As I'm working toward my degree, I'll still be working on artwork and design projects.  I'll still be working on the blog as well, and hope you enjoy it.

Have a great week everyone and remember, whatever you're doing, try to have some fun with it.  Find your purpose in life and incorporate that into your daily life; your work, relationships, etc.  Even when studying Anatomy, you can still have fun with it.

Aloha,

Tom