Realization…
When you realize mid-sketch that your character is wearing a watch, and so that means you should probably go back and add it to all the previous pages and panels… (click for larger view.)
From Instagram
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Category Archives: art
Close Encounter?
…of the physics kind.
Ok, I’ll share a bit during my lunch break from spending too much time doing detail in a tiny panel few will linger on. (Perils of a detail-freak….) It’s a rough underdrawing I did this morning for a panel I’m now turning into final art (the black stuff is the start of final lines). That’s the character you saw a turnaround for earlier, busy at work in a cafe when… (To be continued…)
Every Now and Then…
Here’s a character turnaround I finished today. It is a sign that I’m about to delve into finished art on one of the stories in the book. Finally. Been a long time since I’ve done that, but I’ve been building up to it. Only 3 months later than I’d planned.
What’s a turnaround? Sort of self-explanatory name I hope. Its purpose? It is […] Click to continue reading this post
All Thumbs…
I’m not going to lie. If you’re not in the mood, thumbnailing can be the most utterly tedious thing: (click for larger view)
Yet, as the key precursor to getting more detailed page layout right, and […] Click to continue reading this post
The Taming of the Screw…
The other night in my office…
(Click image for larger view.)
Egon, Pablo, Vincent
Preparing a little montage of Schiele, Picasso, and Van Gogh, made of postcards gathered from museums in Vienna (the Leopold), Madrid (the Reina Sofia), and Amsterdam (the Van Gogh). Sadly, I’m leaving out the one on the far left (a example of Schiele’s excellently angular depiction of the human figure) since this is for my office on campus, and, well… I do my biennial mandatory harassment training, and will err on the side of caution to avoid offense, lawsuits, possibly both.
Best Jury Duty Ever!
Well, I’m back from the Sundance Film Festival, where (as you’ll recall from previous posts) I was serving on a jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation prize for science in feature film. It involved a lot of sitting and watching movies in theaters all over Park City, discussion and deliberation with fellow jurors (and what a wonderful group to hang out with!), and then a public panel discussion about the importance of science in film (and how to do it “right”) and then announcements, questions, photos, more photos, even more photos, press, etc.
As you may know (it is all over the corner of the press that cares about this sort of thing) we awarded the prize to the film “Embrace of the Serpent” (director/writer: Ciro Guerra*), which happens to also be Colombia’s Oscar-nominated entry in the Foreign Language film category. Here was our citation, read out during a reception on Tuesday:
“for its original and provocative portrait of a scientist and a scientific journey into the unknown, and for its unconventional depiction of how different cultures seek to understand nature.”
I recommend seeing the film because there’s excellent […] Click to continue reading this post
USC Science Film Competition!
Get thinking about your film ideas, the new competition is here!
You can read a bit of background on the competition in this news piece by Robert Perkins.
Getting Graphic…
Here’s a piece by Michelle Boston of Dornsife News that might unpack my graphic book project for you, a least a little bit.
The link is here. She interviewed me about it a while ago, and this is the result…
Enjoy!
Another Digital Drill
I found some time to do another practice digital sketch to get my skills back into shape. (Click for larger view.) I’ll admit I had fun with the three-color scheme for skin tones. For the three of you who recognize her, evidently there was another showbiz magazine article laying around for me to squint at. Yeah, her nose is too long. I’m not going to sweat it.
I figured the best way to stop me from further obsessing […] Click to continue reading this post
The New Space…
I forgot to mention that (after a lot of delays and internal administrative nonsense that I will spare you the details of) I was finally able to move into my new office, toward the end of November, only several months after the move was first put into motion. In the first week of the holiday period I was able to do some unpacking of some of the books (etc) and setting up various things (like my kettle and coffee pot) essential for the kind of working space I want it to be. It’ll be an interesting space, from some points of view… perhaps unusually combining production of objects and ideas from both the science and the art worlds, and lots in between. As you know, I have several projects that involve both, and they’ll come together in this space.
I updated the drawing (click for larger view) to include some adjustments I made to the layout* (see […] Click to continue reading this post
Digital Drills
Due to a busy semester, I’m rusty as hell in the drawing department, and so have been trying to find time to practice some faces in a graphic style. (Click for larger view.) 
I’m forcing myself to do it all digitally from scratch, just to encourage myself to get used to being in full-on drawing mode (not just inking mode or painting mode) on screen. In view of a certain film release coming up, this gentleman’s face has started turning up on magazine covers, and so I used one as reference for a quick sketch (see rough on right), and then did some over-inking (digital) and colour finishing experiments here and there, with the result at the top. Title*: “Not Uncle Quentin”.
-cvj
(*Kind of a shout out to Enid Blyton, oddly…) Click to continue reading this post
Conversation Starting Somewhere…
Somewhere near you, some perfectly ordinary people are about to do something wonderful – start a conversation about science… turn their minds to how the world around them works. Isn’t that great? Here’s an iPad rough of an opening splash page of a story with one such conversation*. Listen! – It is about to begin. (Click for larger view.) Pick your city/street/people…
-cvj
One Hundred Years of Certitude
Since the early Summer I’ve been working (with the help of several people at USC*) toward a big event next Friday: A celebration of 100 years since Einstein formulated the field equations of General Relativity, a theory which is one of the top one or few (depending upon who you argue with over beers about this) scientific achievements in the history of human thought. The event is a collaboration between the USC Harman Academy of Polymathic Study and the LAIH, which I co-direct. I chose the title of this post since (putting aside the obvious desire to resonate with a certain great work of literature) this remarkable scientific framework has proven to be a remarkably robust and accurate model of how our universe’s gravity actually works in every area it has been tested with experiment and observation**. Despite being all about bizarre things like warped spacetime, slowing down time, and so forth, which most people think is to do only with science fiction. (And yes, you probably test it every day through your […] Click to continue reading this post
Anthropological Friends
As promised, on the right is the companion figure to the one I shared earlier (on the left). Click for a larger view. These were two jolly fellows I found in glass cases at Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropologia, and sort of had to sketch them.
