New Work-Technical Illustration

Check out my other blog for more views of work completed for the company I have been working for: Tungsten Advertising and their client Seatel: http://swhowardillustration.blogspot.com/

All work shown on this post and the post of the other site are property of Tungsten Advertising and Seatel 2011.

Raijin Progress Update

Here is an updated sketch of a planned cutaway of the Raijin suit (design by the amazing Emerson Tung!).

Christ Church Mural (finished!)

Needless to say, it has been quite some time since my last post. I have been very busy with many things... excuses, excuses, blah, blah, blah...

Nevertheless, here is a post I have been anxiously anticipating to make. I have not only finished my mural commissioned by my church, Christ Church at Park Presidio, but I have also just recently mounted the entire project!

The entire mural was produced in Adobe Illustrator

with vectors and high resolution photos of stained glass pieces which were then clipped digitally to fit into the drawings I had made. The project took over 280 hours. Each panel is 37.5 inches wide and 101 inches tall. There are 9 total panels- each removable. All of this started from a crude 30 second sketch one morning

at church.

From here I started working out various details to later work on.

Next I worked on the individual "medallions" that would help add extra story elements to each panel. Each panel had 2 "medallions" corresponding to the Biblical event depicted.

From there I finished the panels and they were sent off to a printer in Arizona that could print 4ft by endless.

The prints are giant stickers that we had to cut and peel. The process involved soaking the board surface and the sticker, then using a squeegee to take out the excess water and air to adhere the sticker to the surface.

Then we had to set the panels out to dry...

Then we put up all of the panels.

Come see the mural up close if you can at 856 Cabrillo St. San Francisco, CA 94121 10:30am on Sundays.

Special thanks to the printers in Arizona, Christ Church at Park Presidio and Sovereign Grace Ministries, and Toby Kurth, Jeff Locke, Gene Mercado, Scott Rim, Adam Lumb, and Ryan Edson for all the support and help to complete this project!

AX-1 Speed Form

Christ Church Mural Sneak Peek #2

Still working on this thing! I have four more panels to go (two on the left and two on the right). Once that is finished the images will be sent out to a printing company and then printed and pasted on the movable panels at Christ Church at Park Presidio. It's been a fun experience thus far learning new tricks and size reducing methods in Adobe Illustrator. Here is a sneak peak at the middle five panels (top and bottom hidden). The full mural will be revealed on this blog once it is finished and printed and pasted on to the wall at the church. Sorry I haven't updated in awhile. It's been one of the most challenging and busy months I've had yet!

"Stained Glass" Mural Preview

Currently I've been working on a mural for my church in Adobe Illustrator. This project thankfully has given me time to not only work on it, but also have the time to search for a full time employment position. Unfortunately another illustration project offered by another person would have limited this (I find it to be the hardest thing as an artist to ever turn down a project- especially when I am in need of work). Anyway, this project should be complete by the end of March, but until then here is a preview of one of the panels. I have to take a photo off of my Cintiq as the file size in Illustrator is too large to convert easily to Photoshop or a jpeg. This panel (of 9) alone is near 700mb. To give you an idea, my P-51 cutaway was only 60mb! Reason being is I am using high quality images of stained glass in several clipping masks to emulate an actual stained glass panel or feel. Here is Moses splitting the Red Sea. Look for the completion sometime in April or stop by Christ Church, SF after these panels get printed out.

Raijin Cutaway In-progress 2

The exo suit/mech has been slowly progressing. I get about an hour or two ever one or two days to work on this thing. Thought I'd post up the progress though. That pilot sure is cramped in that cockpit! I'll admit some elipses on this thing are atrocious, but for something I'll return to and refine I'm letting them be til later. Anyway, more to come in the future!

Raijin Cutaway In-progress 1

Figure I'd show a bit of the work that I've started on a cutaway of my friend's exoskeleton suit design. Awhile back I had approached Emerson Tung (http://emersonart.blogspot.com/) about using his Raijin concept design for a future cutaway. I haven't really had the opportunity until now to start working on it. When I'm not searching for work I take the time to work on this. It involves lots of hours of research for reference and trial and error on what will work in the final drawing.

This is all drawn out in Adobe Photoshop on my Cintiq. I started with a very rough sketch and am now slowly working my way through depicting the outer architecture and the cool nifty bits of the inside. Practically the entire thing should be rendered this way which means it will take quite some time. After sketching out all of this in Photoshop I will move to Illustrator and redo all of the linework in vectors... and then add color. To add to this, the main Raijin suit is not the only thing that will be on the final page, but also cutaways of the armament, statistics, a close up cutaway of the optical unit, and an pilot's view of the controls. Once finished this should be a nice technical illustration and strong portfolio piece. So over the next few months keep an eye out for the occasional update for this project and check out Emerson's blog. He is quite the amazing and talented artist and definitely an inspiration for my illustrations.