Raster Portrait 1

Not to be cruel - this is a celebrity we're talking about - but this kid (Skrillex, the dj) has a big bulbous nose. Am sure he got ribbed about it in school and had to grow up to be famous so it became a trademark rather than a liability. In any case, a previous attempt at drawing him was fairly realistic and the nose got reduced out of empathy but it lost the essence of the guy's goofy charm. This raster portrait is more of a caricature and is rendered more vaguely so the honker is back up to full scale. (Ex-portraitist aside/self-shop talk.)

The one above isn't even recognizable but I liked how the Photoshop Navigator Buren-ized the image.

So we were having a discussion of the Chicago school of artists, dating back to the '60s, who incorporate underground comix-style drawing into their art. I tried to make a "Chicago" style drawing from memory, not looking at any one particular work by, say, HC Westermann or The Hairy Who. Above is the second revision, which yells '80s, not '60s. The more I try to make it like Karl Wirsum or Jim Nutt, the more it looks like Gary Panter.

credit again to yaherd for squirmy part of lower-left image

modification of yaherd phone art

Have been looking at the Phone Arts blog and decided to start a battle of the band(width)s with some "MSPaint Phone Art." This is the new Windows 7 MSPaint which allows you to (i) draw a phone outline, (ii) draw with a crayon, (iii) draw with a magic marker, (iv) paint with semi-transparent wash, etc. (The above was made on a PC.)

Phone Arts' mission statement has changed since I first wrote about them. Now it says they are "experimenting using only the mobile phone as the medium to create unique compositions" and that they "explore the boundaries of the phone to create graphic illustrations and designs." Previously it said their aim was to "create something on a mobile device with the intended purpose of designing graphic arts that are spontaneous and reactionary."

I quibbled about the word reactionary (it could mean conservative as well as "reacting to each other") but the rest of the statement was fine before. "Graphic arts" is better than "graphic illustrations and designs." Both illustration and design are usually done for a purpose and for a client, whereas these one-off compositions are made for no other purpose than to exist on your phone (or be downloaded for enjoyment, delectation, etc). Also, I see no "exploring the boundaries of the phone" going on there. Instead a handful of "factory setting" techniques are used over and over--various flat brush shapes, sprays, "3D" brushes, some CAD-like rendering, and remixing existing photos and designs. No one is throwing the phone off a building, painting underwater, or opening up the back of the phone and wiring it to respond to household appliances.

Interior with Thing

Sugar Cubes with Thing

Room with Thing (Slime Edition), by lolumad (slightly cropped)

When I started working on this drawing yesterday for Computers Club Drawing Society, electro/house/dubstep producer Skrillex was still alive - according to CNN he died today.* I felt a little weird posting it on CCDS now, where the tone or motivation wouldn't be very clear, so I'm putting it here with my own collected drawings. It was meant to be sympathetic but not a memorial - now it's that.

*Update, ha ha, well, if this drawing's going to serve as a memorial it'll have to wait till the man is actually deceased. You gotta love that Wikipedia still has trolls. Some wag inserted the date of Sonny John Moore's death as "January 2, 2012" and said CNN had reported that he died from a cocaine overdose but no official statement had been made. That was enough to spare CCDS from this drawing.

Update 2: Re-uploaded this drawing with spots of transparency in the .png converted to white.

Top to bottom, left to right:

Statuary
Bird of Prey (D-7 Class)
After Jim Steranko
Map of the Island
Flagellant
After Ray Parker

The moire patterns in the Bird of Prey and Flagellant thumbs are resizing artifacts but I kind of like them.

From my CCDS page. The source is a nascent/wannabe/lesser-known meme called "the bird" or "bird.jpg" Sterling Crispin did the first painted version.

This bird image has some internet juice, mostly as an avatar. Dump.fm and Moot's former site have helped.
The bird is a Common Grackle; related to the Great-Tailed Grackle, which has a hideous call [YouTube] that sounds like the word "grackle" but with extra consonants, whistles, and sounds beyond the range of human hearing.

Hat tips GucciSoFlosy, carjackcker, frederick, melipone, maryrachel, maxlabor, arjununcle and others.