Art blog - Kellis

2011 Update numero uno

2011-01-30T13:32:00.002-08:00

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...

2010-03-02T14:53:00.001-08:00

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!

2009-10-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-12-09T12:22:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-12-09T00:21:00.000-08:00

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.

The Dead, and Paint

2008-10-01T09:31:00.000-07:00

Just a bite-sized update here...

I've been reading Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy again (I only made it through Sabriel before, not the other two), and it's been inspiring me to draw book-related art like nobody's flippin' business. Here are some sketches:

Also, I've been grinding away at working on two relatively large paintings for the Emerson Salon. These are them:

This is the smaller of the two, more or less finished

And this is the larger of the two (still in progress, obviously)

Big

2008-09-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned before, I'm working on two paintings for the Emerson salon. One of which is about 48x48, and so big we couldn't fit it in Alex's car...so, being the brave little artist I am, I trekked across town with a huge-ass canvas on THE BUS.

I enlisted some resourcefulness, and hooked my computer up to the projector in our front room (soon to leave, when my roommate moves out at the end of the week), and projected my design on canvas for pencilling...voila. Just a few more pencil tweaks and this mammajamma will be ready to paint.

First, however, I need to work on the smaller of the two paintings, get it ready to go, and get it up in the Salon as priority #1.

With my roommate moving out, that means my rent's gonna hike up 50%...blarg....regardless, it'll mean I'll be less stressed, have more space, and I'll end up doing more artwork as a result.

With my hike in rent, though, I'm gonna need to find a second job or SOMETHING until I start school and can leech a little bit of money out of student loans to pay for rent....the prospect of going into a buncha debt is NOT one I'm happy about, but I'll be doing what I want to in school....regardless (insert shameless self-plug here), if you're interested in helping me out by commissioning me to do some artwork for you, I'd be delighted...:D

Email me for commissions.

Murals and Mockups

2008-08-23T20:08:00.001-07:00

Emerson_Small Color MOCKUP copy
Originally uploaded by KJealous

FINALLY got some work done on the mural designs I'm gonna be doing for the salon. Here is a sketch I worked out last night. Still contemplating things I want to tweak...colors, design elements, etc.

Here's the first, once I sketch the second out, I'll paint the both of them with acryllic, and then onto the walls, once I'm satisfied with my ideas!

Flickr

2008-08-23T19:57:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Flourishes!

2008-08-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

Got another project to work on from Alex...just some simple signage, but I wanted to do something that was gonna have some real fun flair to it...and since he's going for an 1800s-ish (the 'ish' gives me a LOT of liberty here) visual scheme, I wanted to play with some flourishes, but incorporate the steampunk vibe we're also trying to go with...ergo, the gears and cogs. I'm finally starting to get a feel for Illustrator, and that makes me happy!

Here are some mockups:

In other news, I finally got my Blackjack II working (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!) and can not WAIT to take it for a spin. Also (finally) picked up Lost Odyssey, so I'm preparing myself for the first 4-disc XBOX 360 game yet.

Photos

2008-08-07T12:21:00.000-07:00

So, I've been really lazy lately...and been getting a little depressed because of it. The weather's starting to cool down, summer is starting to phase out (so soon!), and I need to get on the freakin' stick.

I HAVE, however, been making some money in my laziness! The "Emerson Institute of Style, a new salon opening up on Pike and Broadway is owned by my buddy Alex Garcia. I recently did the logo and animated thingey for his business page/the business itself, with much help and coaching from my buddy Jory (love you, dorling!).

Haven't been drawing much, and I think i'm realizing that that's part of my feeling depressed...I haven't been creating anything for any of my projects, and that just needs to get underway.

OH, also (okay, I guess I haven't been THAT lazy, I just haven't been drawing much), I did a photo shoot with my good friend Hillary. We're working on my model portfolio, and her portfolio as a whole, and these are some of the favorites from our shoot. Hopefully there should be more to come soon, before she takes off back to school!

It was a bit of a frustrating shoot for me, because she wouldn't let me be all smiley...just...give her some attitude...next round will include smiley shots...it must! Lemme know what you think!

Zacharias' Blood Magic

2008-07-08T00:51:00.000-07:00

So, I've somewhat recently jumped onboard the comic bandwagon of my friend Benjamin Williams. He and I met at Emerald City Comic Con at the LBGT comic booth, and started talking comics. It was later realized that he was a writer looking for an artist, and I was an artist looking for a project...We swapped email, had coffee, and took off from there.

The story, more or less, is about sexy vampires in a major metropolitan city...lots of sexy, lots of vampires, and fun fun magic that I get to play around with the visual style on. :D Drawing beheadings is gonna be a challenge, but a blast all the same.

This is, essentially, an art sample I showed to Ben when we got coffee, and this is, in part, honing in on the visual style we're going to try to play off of. It took me, I'm not kidding, about a month to finally put in the broken glass in the windows and get the damn thing done...but now it's into the color phase, and that's always a bunch of fun.

You'll notice that I'm pulling the same magic motif from the Nilam picture I'm working on...I'm really feeling the magic sigils and signs thing for magic casting. Totally dig. I'm contemplating playing with it a little bit in a 3d program to see where I can take the angling and etc. Should proove to be fun.

All my laundry's folded, I've almost got my WA state driver's license, and I'll have health insurance shortly thereafter, and things with David are great. It's a hectic, but good place in life right now.

Asher

2008-06-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

I posted a rough sketch before of what Asher's costume design looked like. Here's the progress I've made so far...been busy the last couple days and haven't gotten to do much on it...here's what I got though:

They're Naked

2008-06-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

Until I put clothes on them...

I chanced upon a reference pic of essentially the same process I'm working on right now. Creating character designs using silhouettes, and building from there. Right now I'm working on Asher (prince of the desert thing I keep blabbing on and on about...honestly, I'd say an eighth of my day is spent daydreaming about possible scenarios for his little fantasy desert world). Here's the little nudie base. As I've got more progress done on his character, I'll post it up here. I'm really enjoying this idea, and I think it's going to segue into more silhouette-based art...it's been very good for getting my brain going and working loose!

Also did a bigger sketch on my large pad of a D&D character from the Darkraven campaign...more details/sketches from DARKRAVEN later, I'm sure. I'll post Gabriel Vermond, shadow hunter, up here when I scan him. Meantime, enjoy the nakedness!

More Desert Stuff

2008-06-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

Bah, I totally meant to post this stuff up way before...I'm slackin!

This stuff is older, but in a similar style...more or less supposed to be from the same 'universe,' as Nilam. Desert stuff, desert stuff, desert stuff.

Goin' to the Crystal Castles show up here in Seattle tonight. Otherwise I'd be drawin' more stuff to post up here.

EDIT: Here are some of those older Desert-related sketches as promised.

Here's the most up-to date rendering of Asher (his belt/armor are constantly changing....I'm never satisfied with just one idea....:P), as well as some idea sketches for Nilam (also, constantly in a state of wardrobe flux).

Nilam, Desert Magician

2008-05-31T23:02:00.000-07:00

So, I really need to be making use of this thing...gonna attempt to do that now!

Today was a day off (our restaurant is having REALLY slow business right now), so I sat at home, and drew all day. Like, really. Lol. This was intended to make it to a piece of bristol board, but I ended up just liking the sketch so much, that I ran with it. This is a character that I've been playing with the idea for for a little while now. A wizard (D&D style, with a spellbook and everything) in the desert. His father and hometown were slaughtered by a D'Jinn when he was a young child...seeking their revenge, he's taken his father's spellbook, as well as a few of his own to kick some ass!

Firsties

2008-04-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

So, I started this blog up forever ago, and never ended up making use of it (or the email that I started with it...:P). I'm in the process of trying to beef up my portfolio, and I figured what better way to get some constructive criticism and some drive to draw more than use that ol' blog?'

It's time this thing stopped collecting dust and cob webs, and get some good lovin'!

AND, since this is my space, I can do a bit of blogging as well, so I'll start with the basics:

I'm Kevin. Around the interwebs, I usually go by Kellis. I live in Seattle, WA (for about 3 months now), and I absolutely love it. I studied Illustration at Brigham Young University - Idaho for just about 2 years, and then transferred to BYU in Utah (which was a big mistake) to study Animation. I decided to leave Utah because I didn't agree with paying a college to babysit me and I wanted to grow a beard (which they wouldn't let me do either...silly Mormon schools).

If you need any more information than that, then you're probably being nosy...or you should email me. :)