2011 Update numero uno

So, it's been entirely too long since I've updated my blog here...I've been keepin' busy busy! I've been working on my creative resume, sprucing up my portfolio, and the like. I'm also working on my personal portfolio website, www.kjellis.com and I'll keep this thing updated with the progress! Here are some of the things I worked on last year:

Did some work on a loosely steampunk-themed storyboarding for a film project for Ian Kline, a theater student at Columbia University in NY. Here are some of my favorites from the series --

Beards...

I wanted to show this to Andrew before I posted it up here...this was the sketch. I drew this for our one-year anniversary, and because we just moved into a place together! Wahoo!

{EDIT}
Here's the Final Piece! Done in goache. I would have scanned it, but the dang thing is too big for my scanner-bed.

Show Me the Munny!

So, it's been entirely too long since I've posted anything in here (I wonder how many blog entries I've started with that heading?)...regardless, I've got new work to show, and this is the place I usually do it at.

When I was down in Los Angeles in May, I got to go to the KidRobot store (AMAAAZING!), and picked up one of their small Munny dolls that I've been seeing so many of all over the internets.

"I can do this...easy" I told myself...so I found a blank guide online, and set out in photoshop to lay down what I wanted to paint. This was the first result:



It's Jakamin, from my (forever) forthcoming deserty comic (idea)...I had, more or less gotten everything sorted in Photoshop when I sat down with my paints and my munny, took a deep breath, and had to stop. "This thing's just too damn small..." I said to myself. I had gotten the 4" doll in the shop, because my pocketbook was deflated from hitting up the Marc by Marc (Jacobs) store down the block, and didn't want to try to lug a bigger box home on the plane.

"I need to re-evaluate" I told myself...after months of waiting, my Munny would simply have to wait longer. I racked my brain for ideas "What do I want to put on this thing?" I browsed the interwebs for ideas, and it was while I was sitting on the throne reading my copy of "The Zombie Survival Handbook" that I realized "I haven't done any zombie art lately!" And thus, the "Zombie Businessman" concept was hatched. AND UNVEILED!





Doing this has been a BLAST...and, honestly, this was probably the acryllic-kickstart I needed to kick my rusty rear in gear, and get back to painting. If you're even remotely curious about Munny, go spend the $10 and pick one up. Hell, pick up two, and paint one with your boyfriend/grandma/kid! It's a fun, FUN activity you can get hours of enjoyment out of, depending on how detailed you want to get. Next time (when I tackle the 7-incher), and employ the use of some Super Sculpey, it's gonna be a whole new ballgame...and just sayin...if anybody were to buy me the 18 INCH MUNNY (oh man!), I wouldn't turn it away as a gift. I'm so in love with this DIY stuff right now!

Mercury

I wanted to put this in a separate post...

This was my first adventure into watercolors. It's a medium I'm really unfamiliar with, but hope to use it to teach me a thing or two, and eventually progress to playing with goache. Stole the idea from an old issue of the Portland Mercury (sister paper to Seattle's own The Stranger from a year or two ago...this one's kind of depressing actually, as I finished it on a really sad evening, when somebody I cared a lot about and I parted ways.

Brown Paper

So I was just flipping through a number of friends' blogs and found that a few had linked back to me (thanks, chums!)...upon doing so, though, I realized that I had a number of new sketches that haven't been posted since...I could've sworn that I had, but apparently not!

Not much of an explanation for many of these. Mostly just practice, and morning coffee-shop sketches. I'm buying a MacBook Pro this weekend (FINALLY), and hopefully with the advent of new technology, new (mobile) inspiration will follow.









Also, I finally got my first Tattoo up at Slave to the Needle, here in Seattle. Nancy, a visiting artist from Australia was the one to ink me. Thanks, Nancy! I'd love to have ya ink me again!

I should hopefully start back into school for fall quarter, but in the meantime, I'm rewarding myself with this damn laptop, and in search of someone to redo this God-awful website design.

Emerson Paintings

Here are the FINAL PIECES. They're in the process of being framed before being hung in the salon...I finished 'em a while ago and handed 'em off to Alex Garcia for his salon, The Emerson Institute of Style...commissioned pieces...It's been an absolute pleasure working with him! I'm so stoked that he help me get my art out there in the public, here in Seattle!





I just hashed out the generals for a new painting I'll start work on here probably tomorrow...I'll snap photos and dump here next!

Get the word out there for the Emerson Salon! I popped down there and got a haircut and I'm absolutely LOVING it! Who else loves the fact that "classic" haircuts are coming back? George Clooney was well ahead of the curve.

Photoshoot with Eric B.

It's been a while since I've updated this...I need to be a little bit more dilligent.

So I opened up an account on Model Mayhem when I moved up here to Seattle, and my page eventually got noticed by a photographer here in Seattle, Eric Braziunas.

We got to do a fun shoot to work on his fashion portfolio, and so I could have SOMETHING in mine. It was a fun learning-first-shoot experience. Here are some picks:









As you can see, this guy is a genius with lighting...he did some amazing stuff!

Looking forward to getting to shoot with my friend Cathy Michalski here soon...
..........I've got a couple things I'm trying to get working on, so there should be some more stuff to upload here soon.