In this piece I tried to externalize what the evil weasel is thinking with the abstraction. There’s some interesting colour associations between the key, the gems, the extending tentacles, and the glow around the gem he’s wearing. The message: he’s got a taste of power, and he wants more.
Finished at last! This piece took a little over 20 hours across 3 weeks. I’m rather happy with the final result, though I intend for my next piece to be much simpler.
My goal with this piece was to utilize abstraction in the background in a more-intentional way; I believe I have accomplished that here; though I don’t feel I achieved quite what I’m aiming for, but I’m moving in the right direction.
I really enjoyed studying the weapons and how they connect to the baldric (shoulder belt).
Here’s a close-up to show more detail.
First illustration I’ve completed in over a week. I am starting to add more complexity and work over multiple sittings.
I pulled back a bit from the purely abstract pursuit to something that is more-reliable for me, construction-based character illustrations. But once I had the rough composition done, I thought, well, maybe I could do some abstract stuff in the background. I’m pretty happy with the result.
I’d like to create the abstraction with maybe a bit more unifying intention about the theme of what the abstraction should be or perhaps story elements that I can weave into it. This was very much just whatever I drew, but in the future I want to find a way to hone that ability to direct the abstraction and integrate it into the story of the illustration more.
This was an interesting piece for me. It’s one of the first that I’ve completed where I was drawing abstract thumbnails with the intention of it being a weasel. I’m trying to figure out how to harness the compositional, intuitional interest of automatic drawing and doing so with intention.
I don’t absolutely love it, but I feel there’s something here I want to lean into. I am not really sure what was going on with all of the interesting shapes; I was attempting to make something interesting out of them and not have everything be totally random/ugly. I don’t really like that part, but I’m not sure how to improve upon it. I suspect I will get better ideas the more I do it. Overall, I think this piece was a win.
Another design based on a warm-up thumbnail. I didn’t really intend for it to become a creature, but I just started to refine the thumbnail and this is what emerged.
I liked the shapes in a thumbnail I did warming up; so I decided to refine it a bit and add some colour.
I’ll probably be sharing a lot more abstract work moving forwarding as I explore how to incorporate this part of me into my art style.
AlphaCon (Alphabet of Concepts) is an abstract illustrated alphabet. Each letter visualizes an abstract concept.
These illustrations are my first steps in developing a new line and colour style of art with Tim McBurnie’s Line and Color Academy. I started with abstract letters because I really enjoy this sort of design, but it also meant I didn’t have to worry about realism yet or things like anatomy and perspective.
Click on the following image to go to the art collection.
