Sean Thurlow

60

2012-01-16T15:12:00.000-08:00

so first I tip my hat to Mandryk for posting this idea http://mandrykart.wordpress.com/ . It's simple-1 hour and a environment for each minute so 60 environments. This is my first go at it. Expect to see this many times the next couple of days and in different ways. Hopefully my shapes will be better on the next pass. Oh and to anyone else that do environments or want to...DO THIS!!! It is super fun and intense!

Stuffy

2012-01-08T22:55:00.000-08:00

Just throwing up more stuff again. Lately trying to time myself on these. I owe a lot to timers, makes me get more stuff done. It's too easy to dwell on something for hours and hours and I did this not too long ago. Still need to get faster but working on it. Anyway dealing with more perspective.

Holiday Study

2012-01-04T12:54:00.000-08:00

So I've been geeking out on the Prometheus trailer since it debuted. Pretty excited to see Ridley Scott going back to his roots again. I decided to study some screencaps from it. Check out the trailer if you haven't already. link

And back to studies and experiments

2011-11-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

Some more studies again. I think I'm gaining a lot from these so just gotta keep doing them every week. Lately been looking at comics more and more especially in heavy Metal. Those guys knew how to kill it with shapes. Just trying lately to do more graphic read pieces so been messing with doing pieces in just three values or two with solid blacks in it. I think I'm still maybe too abstract so just gotta do more but I'm finding this to be a interesting new way of making pieces. Could do this with a black marker in a sketchbook also. Either way, fun stuff.

2011-11-20T12:06:00.000-08:00

couple other pieces from class with AJ again and made some adjustments.

Bustin

2011-11-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

Hoping to ramp things up these last weeks of the semester. Some more stuffage!

Dumpage

2011-11-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

It's alive! Been a while since I posted in here. Most of my semester has been drawing in the sketchbooks but I got a couple things that I wanted to post from class and a couple pieces I've done in spare time. So first off class work. Mainly studies and some character work.

Couple out of 22 head studies, b&w studies, Material studies, Thumbs, and character sketches.

Some personal studies from films and games and some doodles.

Yay!

2011-08-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

So...now a full resident of California. Unpacked and everything. Ready...set...go!!!
Anywho some more stuff from me.

2011-07-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

Studying some Edgar Payne

Cloud studies by a park near my house. I took the photo's with my camera.

Couple head studies.

Head studies kind of similar to a assignment in class I did. Just trying to keep up with it .Working on more females next.

Last piece I actually did was for the "Little Engine that could" contest for Red Engine- http://www.redenginestudios.com/ .

If you guys are near the area I recommend going to their 1st anniversary gallery show. Probably going to be some great work on display there. Unfortunately I'm still here in AZ:( But it was fun to do a piece for in anycase.

Summer and work

2011-06-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm back in Arizona once again working on personal stuff and freelance. I'm pretty sure it's gonna go by fast again though and I will find myself in California again shortly...weird bouncing back and forth. So here are direct to color studies I did this week. Kind of sticking to the same theme. I'd like to do another theme for next week also and aim for more complicated perspectives as these are relatively simple pieces with just a little depth in them.

A couple more thumbnails also, trying to push these more lately.

Likely more then anything this summer I've taken to doing more traditional painting. I've been getting a huge inspiration surge from Nathan Fowkes lately. The guy has been doing a painting a day for 15 years! Quite a fantastic idea actually. Anyway I'm doing these thumbnail 3x4 or less on a watercolor sketchbook I put together this summer. Here are a couple I did, I still need to take photos of the other dozen. Still really rough but just gotta keep at it. The other thing I'm trying to do is also do these in 20 stroke are less which is something he mentioned.

From Jason's Class

2011-05-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

Okay here is pretty much most of my work from Jason's class. You might of noticed some of this stuff before..haha sorry about that. Threw another piece in that I randomly did during the semester. Just want to give a shout out to Jason also. Your a awesome teacher man! Anyone going to lcad should without a question take his class. I'm looking forward to hanging in his classes more in the coming semesters here at lcad.

random piece :D

Yeah I'm alive

2011-05-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

So the semester is about wrapping up here and one of my finals is out of the way. I was basically in lock down not really updating anything until things were done here. So since things are almost done and in a couple weeks I'll be actually moving I can start breathing a little easier now. Next semester I'll actually be really living in California in a apartment instead of a dorm.

So anyway here is some stuff from me. I got a lot more to show in the coming week.

First up is from Visual Storytelling for game. I learned a lot from this class, Brian Kindregan
was a great instructor and easily one of my favorites so far. Really made us think about the stories behind games. Anyway this was from my final presentation in that class where we had to come up with a whole video game and the games villain and hero, and lastly the environment.

Some stuff from digital painting.

Couple story story beats and more thumbnails.

And hey look! More thumbnails:D . Just sketching super small. Been trying to do one a day. more to come soon.

Lot's of stuff

2011-03-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

Gah been lazy with the posts here! Some more sketches from me, models and works in progress from class. Experimenting with new brushes also and getting more textures.

From the sketchbook

Story beats from visual storytelling for games. Still getting used to storyboarding and making the frames go together.

Doodle and works in progress for environment 1. I did some asset creation and some quick modeling also with sketchup and zbrush.

Art Dump and work from classes

2011-02-19T23:38:00.000-08:00

Just a art dump from me. Finally got my hand on a good brush pen so I'm doing some experiments in the sketchbook. Some pieces and thumbnails from my classes also, mainly from environment 1 class. Love that class.

Rocks and still-life+plus dead bug

2011-01-25T10:45:00.000-08:00

Some sketches from me. I painted this crazy bug I found in a studio and then this bulb. I think one side was off on it. I gotta do more reflective material.

Phenomenon piece-Birth

2011-01-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

This is for a competition my school is having at LCAD. More information can be found on it here.

http://www.lagunacollege.edu/phenomenon/

Deadline is coming up in a couple more days, it's the 30th. Some of that info will change on the site.

Some Studies

2011-01-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

Still-life of a lemon and fortune cookie, About 1hr. I'm studying some scenes from "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" Great movie also, I got a couple more scenes I'm also still working. I thought there was some great colors used in this also. Did master copy...learned a lot from this one. Honestly it's still not great, there still some parts that weren't exact to the copy but it was time to move on.
Last piece was for conceptart.org environment of the week competition. It's been a long time since I've been back there so I wanted to do another one.

a couple more fast ones

2010-12-21T23:04:00.000-08:00

I'm going to likely take ten of these and flesh them out more. This is the rest from that last batch.

thumbnails

2010-12-12T13:22:00.000-08:00

Yep more experimenting. I started making some brushes using alchemy and been testing them out. Pretty fun actually. Did these with a friend, just went to refine them. Haha I got it least 30 other ones I got to refine but started that night :D

Can't wait for next semester...I get to finally take concept classes. Finally I can do this kind of work 24/7 with no worries of anything else getting in my way.

Elevated

2010-12-06T01:22:00.000-08:00

Breakdown on one of my last pieces. Starting to really seriously like google sketch-up. May get the pro version because this will really come in handy methinks.

Environments and more from classes

2010-12-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

Yay I can finally update some more here! Just some sketches from me and some more stuff from the classes. You will likely notice the one piece is from the last post. Just had to wrap these up for Gino's Class. Easily my favorite class this semester by far. Looking forward to the fact I finally have more painting and concepting classes next semester.

More work

2010-11-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

Just a post on a piece from one of my classes. I'm working on two other images also but I still don't think they are fully done yet. The idea was to have three piece that flow sort of in a narrative.

Thumbnail Tirade

2010-10-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Honestly I forgot how fun it is just to fill up books with quick ideas or concepts or base a whole crap load of thumbnails off a single idea. I really want to do this constantly now again. It's sooooo fun! So anywho did these for a assignment.

About Freaking Time

2010-10-31T04:08:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys,

wow it's been awhile and I gotta get back into updating more here maybe on a weekly basis. Been working a lot on concepts for guns lately for a project I'm working on at the school. I also did a quick painting for a competition that I'm pretty excited about for next year at LCAD. It's going to be environment based. Hopefully when I get more info the it I'll post the info up here. So anyway pieces! I'll have more to post also tomorrow.

So crates and guns first. Honestly this was my first real foray into guns. I'm happy I was able to borrow a nurf gun to hold in my hand to understand the handles more. You'll likely see some of the handles in the silhouettes were slightly off.

This one Environment I messed with earlier this semester. Just didn't really get around to posting it and Phenomenon will be the the competition coming up next year. I'm really happy they liked the design.

Laguna

2010-08-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

Hey guys,

As some of you may know I've been actually getting ready to move and I am now in California and taking classes at The Laguna College of Art and design. Last week has been surreal getting used to actually being sort of on my own. I've never done this before so still adjusting and getting used to the new faces and making new friends. It's been a experience. Last couple of days been getting my groove back and coupe of these ship designs are old but I wanted to post them also. Hope you guys like.

Thumbs and Bones

2010-08-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

So I did a large batch of thumbnails. I think this is a great way to bang out ideas and I'm going to make it point to do these almost daily. Next batch I want to focus on interior shots. But yeah I find by doing these I'm learning more tricks, instead of thinking really hard about what I'm doing I'm just smacking down shapes and going with the flow. I also did a piece over a cghub. They have a environment weekly contest know and I do recommend keeping close eyes on it. In anycase I posted some process shots on this.

Fast Stuff

2010-06-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

So I've been all about thumbnails lately and banging out some fast concepts this week. I usually spend a long time just doing fully completed illustrations so I thought it was time to maybe loosen up some...you know...can't be tight all the time. So did some messing around with that. I did a couple doodles on my way to Laguna Beach also. Yeah, I'm moving there two months from now. It's really very exciting. The 100+ degree weather has been killing me here in AZ these last couple of days.

Hello

2010-06-18T14:47:00.000-07:00

Boy it has been awhile!

A lot going on in life lately. It's been one crazy year so far and no doubt it's gonna get even crazier...which is just how I like it.

So about two months from now I'll be making the move to California. So a lot going on again. I'm excited!

I have been working on a couple projects on the side and been getting involved in some contests so here is some new work from me. I went ahead and made two animations on the last pieces so you can sorta see my process to those two. I really do actually want to livestream and have had a account set up for awhile so maybe when I'm done with the move I'll get that going. Hope you enjoy the new works.

Value studies

Recent Client work for Andre Bedward at Rocket Galaxy Comics

I believe the site is still being designed but keep your eyes on it. http://www.rocketgalaxycomics.com/

Two pieces done for contests on the web recently.

2010-05-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

Over-do post here, this is a couple of pieces I did on the side for myself.

last couple of weeks I've been messing in the oils again. Just wanted to do something out of the norm and non-digital so I went through 24 canvases that I had. You'll see the progression...I was blowing it at first.

Make it Stop!

2010-04-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Finally got a chance to update a little here. I have to go on record here and say this is indeed the worst year I've had so far dealing with electronics malfunctioning on me. Often reminds that it good to work traditional also when all this digital stuff crashes and burns literally speaking. I assure you it will happen to you also eventually. Last week my computer died on me...the third time. They say everything comes in three's and I'm believing it know. In any case the hard-drive blew up on me January. February the computer ate a cd and they had to replace the optical drive. This month the hard-drive blew up and motherboard. I really would much enjoy dropping a nuke on this cursed thing but I can't right now. I certainly won't be buying another Imac anytime soon.

Good news! I finally got my first ever drafting table. I never really worked on one before but it already has helped me tons. I got it off craiglist for $50. It's a cool old school table made out of oak. These pictures are better then mine of what it looks like link . I certainly recommend that if you get one to look on craiglist first also. Most tables are over-priced in stores. Your better off building your own or getting one used. If you got the money go for the new ones but that's just my two cents.

Past couple of days I've been studying Bob Kato who is a tremendous artist. He has a great Gmomon series out on constructing the head. I enjoyed his series on doing faces on toned paper so I gave it a shot. The first portrait your going to notice right of the bat was done by Bob Kato. This one right here -link

I just wanted to figure out how he shaded things in. From there I did my separate studies, It was pretty fun working on this paper.

I did also this quick painting in ps.

A hedache well earned

2010-01-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

Well this is another study for me before I head to sleep. This was a head trip. You know I noticed this error before where I get these lopsided parts to my pieces. The biggest problem usually is in ellipses and curves. Almost always occurs on the right side of pieces also. So tackling this problem again in this still-life. This piece literally wanted to challenge and taunt me I think. It crashed three times...yeah...
Luckily I saved a lot but had to redo parts. I had to just call it done eventually although I'm not wholly satisfied with it. This is a object I need to consider painting more. Aside from those ellipses it had way more bounce and reflective light then I thought when I look at it. Real tough actually...that and it looks white but actually isn't! There are a ton of different colors in here. Happy with the paper ...hmmm...to be continued!

2010-01-16T19:09:00.000-08:00

hour and a half still-life for today. I'm happy with the textures on the book. Man that tennis ball gets me all the time.

1hr

2010-01-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

1hr warm-up this morning. This is a case that holds a whole lot of pen nibs.

New painting of 2010

2010-01-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

Alright folks here is my first finished painting of 2010. Hundreds more of finished pieces to come this year. This was a interesting one. I wanted to change up some of my cloud work for this piece. I really been admiring the cloud-work in Maxfield Parrish pieces and was looking at some pieces Don Seegmiller did and a cloud tutorial. Learned some new things in this one.

Sargent studies

2009-12-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

So lately I've been meaning to do more master copies and I decided to take advantage of the recent Sargent book I got. Today I wanted to do one of these studies so here is one. More to come...

Here is the finished piece

And here is the reference painting...

Not quite exact like the original painting but close. I need to show some retrain with popping the light source out too much. The original painting has more darker values in it. Actually just for the heck of it I looked at this old Degas study I did roughly two years back and was shaking my head in shame. So some improvement here. Gotta do more of these, you learn so much from them and I found a new friend in painter called the chalk brush :D Worked very nicely when it came to painting in the face. Still grappled with the nose some. Nose's always give me problems in my portraits...I will overcome you darn noses if it costs me some of my fingers!

*Ahem*...yeah...back to practicing...

quick post

2009-12-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hey guys just wanted to post a couple more pages here. I got some new paintings and concepts I am working on also and will be posting them. Just wanted to give you guys all a heads up. Currently I took my links down to my website. Reason behind that is I am making some really really big changes to it. Layout design and then adding way more images, steps, stuff you guys have never seen before, etc... I still don't know how to fully html css layouts so I'm just going with a regular black theme for now on wordpress. Links will be back up for tomorrow. You can visit it now if you want but it's currently unfinished...more to come today and tonight. Got lots of work to come.

More sketches and finished piece

2009-12-07T20:31:00.000-08:00

Quite a few days I've been messing with this piece. Got some real good critiques on it also on it's way. You might of noticed it on the previews below. This is pretty much the done version and it's a little bit larger also so you can see it closer

So couple more pages from the sketchbook. Was drawing this skull I have actually. I can tell by looking at it now though I drew it slanted...just gotta draw it more. Someone posted a link up to this awesome site by the way that I think will be a great resource for looking at bones and their structures, check it out http://www.boneclones.com/

Lots of pieces

2009-12-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone hope you guys all had a good thanksgiving. Since I wasn't able to get to updating this blog last week I thought it would be appropriate that I would have a very large post here today so whole bunch of sketches, finished pieces and also snap shots of some of the steps for this week.

First up some pages from my sketchbook. Had some fun working with the dip pens and going old school. I'm really liking my drafting pencil lately also.

Last night I did something that I haven't done in awhile and just painted some fast thumbnail roughly 10-15 min. I just wanted to experiment and let loose. I sorta mixed these paintings up in both corel painter and photoshop. I should do more these actually were really fun.

So most you guys might have known or maybe not that Bobby Chiu was doing a ustream with the awesome caricature artist Jason Seiler http://chiustream.blogspot.com/ . Anyway there was a contest, basically you did a caricature of Jason Seiler and if you won he would do a original caricature of you. Never ever did a caricature before so I tossed my ring into the hat. I think there was over 200+ entries so it was nuts. Anyways it was pretty fun, if I had more time I think I would of had a more defined light source and maybe pushed the shadows more but for what it was I guess it didn't come up too bad.

I put link in there. If you guys don't know what the Chiu Stream is or don't know who Bobby Chiu is then please check it out. It doesn't really matter if you are a artist or not. It really inspiring what he's doing and it's great with all the people he is interviewing.

So yeah back to that piece. I started mine all in pencil and then painted it in corel painter with the artists oil brushes. A lot of people ask me how I get the oily effects in some of my work. That's pretty much using those brushes.

Alright and I did this garlic study last week I think...sorta forget. Anyway the thing was torn to shreds and I find I have a hard time depicting folds or you know crumbled paper or wraps so I wanted to challenge myself here. I usually don't paint too much in bw but this one was all about values. I had this piece of garlic on a white piece of paper so basically it was a white on white study. Anyway...HARD! But worth it in the end. Honestly I might crumble a piece of paper and try that next on a white backdrop. I really need to do this skull also. Got the sketch but still haven't gotten to painting yet. White on white and black on black studies I think might be a good way to push my values more so gotta keep up with them. Study from life guys...it will help you alot...even if it does give you a migraine! No pain no gain...

And last but not least I've been working on this sci-fi piece for awhile for this contest. Really trying to push myself again with this kind of work. After getting some good crits I'm going to push it some more. These are some snapshots of it though. Jeeezz...this piece honestly started as a mess. My process is utterly chaotic sometimes. I used a decent amount of textures honestly when I started on this. Smashed all these city lights together...I painted over them almost completely at one point and started plopping them in manually again.

Well and that's it for now...

Pencil practice and a bloody oozing tree

2009-11-18T18:20:00.000-08:00

Working in the pencils again lately trying to get a better feel for them...think I may be finally getting it. It's weird I've been drawing in pen so much that I never really took into account how much I barely worked ever in pencil until now. So some pages again and a bloody evil tree for today! The tree was complete utter randomness. I somehow drifted toward the dark side while working on it.

Some small stuff

2009-11-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

Just a page from the book again. I love tree's and drew this one a couple of times. When it finally decides to actually really cool down here in Tucson(highly unlikely) I want to take the easel down to the park where these tree's are and do some paintings there and the surroundings. We'll see, it's fall here in the desert but it still feels like summer...despises it...I loathe the heat...I'm gonna crawl back into the freezer now:)

This second piece is still a idea in development for the imagine fx cover. I got a couple other sketches too but this one is popping out at me. I'll be posting it in the critique forums. This competition I'm refering to is the cover comp that Imagine FX is running till Jan 20th 2010 I believe. Info here- link

Thumbnails

2009-11-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

I'm on a thumbnail rampage lately, it's insanely fun. I've been wanting to really fill up more pages in the sketchbook lately so more pages from me.

Step by step

2009-11-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

This is another one I'm working on. Getting close to calling this one done. Here is some progress shots.

Steps and thoughts

2009-10-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

This is sorta a unbiased look at my last piece and some progress shots so you get a idea of how I went about doing it. I also mentioned a little bit about some pitfalls I came close to falling into with this one also. Anway hope it helps.

Finished!

2009-10-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

Finished up that one piece for good ol' Halloween.

The horror

2009-10-16T11:56:00.000-07:00

This is a new piece also I'm working for a Halloween based competition. I'm bringing out my disturbing side on this one. Might have this done today maybe...we'll see. I'm actually using one of my textures on this one. I hope one day to get a better camera. Speaking of textures...I'm overdue for another picture shooting spree. Love them textures.

2009-08-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

Completed cast drawing. I'm gonna try a new stock of paper on the next one, likely bristol. Getting the smooth transitions of the shades were tricky on this stock.

Cast drawing

2009-08-05T15:40:00.001-07:00

So I'm delving into my first cast drawing the past couple of days. This is a pretty good study to do.

2009-07-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

ack! How could I forget to post this here. "Advanced Photoshop" magazine has publish some of my work in a 2 page spread! Really cool! It is issue 58 on pages 62-63. You can pick it up likely at your local library.