Figure in interior

Painted my buddy Kamil while he was animating some tests for that new Dreamworks feature you'll bee seing in 2020!

Cavemen Redux

Figure in environment, pretty open ended.

San Francisco Cityscapes

We had a landscape/cityscape assignment in my composition class. I tried focusing on the designed and geometric aspect of the city, playing up the repetitive and primitive shapes found in our neighborhood and cities elsewhere. Had a lot of fun with these, and it is a revelation to truly understand the importance of composition.


Tried out a square canvas for the first time. My intent for this one was for the eye to move around as much as possible, not creating too strong of an area of emphasis anywhere.


In this one I was playing more with the use of color contrast as a means to lead the eye into a strong area of emphasis, which you hopefully find to be around the person with the umbrella. Again without the eye getting to stuck.

Portraits

Did a portrait of a couple of classmates. Should have spent a bit more time on the composition, there are a few tight spots here and there. Pretty happy with these though, it was fun to get to spend some time focusing on a face with my brushes. At least they recognized themselves!



Then another in-class painting, been trying hard lately to gain enough experience so as to go ahead and loosen up my brushwork. Thicker paint, and more confident color handling. Have a few happy moments now and again, and felt like I succeeded fairly well in this one

Digital Environment

Night scene for my digital class. Ended up learning a lot about night lighting, could probably have pushed more blue into the piece. Pretty sloppy linework on this one, really got to work on my sketchbook skills.

Concept Art - Craft

Just a decade after I lay down my blueprints of flying cars that would drive me to school I got the opportunity to invent again. For my Digital Imaging Class we got to decide between a character or a craft, other then that the assignment was wide open. I chose to do a craft that I imagine would compete as a home-made outsider in some futuristic Rally-Dakar race going around the world. On the ground and through the air. A mix of a T-Ford and a jet plane, with a dash of Il tempo Gigante, Back to the future and Soap Box racing and this little guy was born.




Did a quick little comp, to set him in an environment:

Figure painting

So I've been taking Figure Painting at the school now for five weeks. Last homework assignment was a master copy, our choice of reference as long as it was full figure. I chose to work from Caravaggio's "Boy with a Ram" Obviously rendering after Caravaggio on an 18x24 is quite the challenge, but it was a lot of fun getting to spend more then 8 hours on a figurative piece. On the other hand, when you really look at the reference for 20 hours you start realizing what a genius Caravaggio was. The subtleties and hue variations this man had, in a time where paints did not come on tubes in every color imagenable, is truly amazing. I think Ill try copying another one of his paintings in... lets say 20 years and see how much closer I'll be!

This second image is a painting from model in class, about 8 hours on this one. 12x16 canvas board. Face turned out nice, need to work some more color in there.



Another painting done in class, tried working a bit losser with some elements. 5 hours on this one.



Third in class painting, thats it for midterms :)

Still life hw. - Composition and painting

First homework assignment for my composition and painting class. "One non-traditional still life of one or more somewhat mundane and overlooked objects. Make an interesting composition, the use of shadow shapes and positive/negative spaces can aid you in the overall interest of compositional abstract shapes." Basically create something interesting through creative composition, not exciting objects.

Decided to string up my objects with floss and then paint them as if they were hovering mid-air. The final composition turned out pretty bad, the empty area to the left completely kills the painting. On the pluss side my brushwork and color mixing are slowly improving, and I got to try out an interesting wider format. Next homework will be a cityspace/landscape and looks to be very interesting.

In-class composition:

Photoshop Composition

Digital Imaging Class homework, we had to create a composition in photoshop from 10 different pictures or more. Threw together this little naval battle scene. The reference material i found decided more then I did, but it all sort of came together in the end.

Still Life Homework

1st painting homework of the semester. Had one week to finish a still life for my figure painting class, not the kind of homework I was expecting in this class. Lucky enough to get Henry Yan as my teacher, watching his amazing demos is reason enough to take his class.

Values and color mixing are still major challenges, but pretty happy with this one. Structure problems on the bowl set aside. Trying out Terpanoid as my thinner insted of just the liquin, and really happe with the results. Easier and more fluid brushwork. Next step is to buy some linseed oil and mix my own medium!

Tattoo, school assignment

Just started my first digital painting class with teacher Lawrence Valenti. For the first week he wanted us to create a tattoo, graphic or rendered. Knowing very little of tattoos I decided to make something in my own style, a cartoonish homage to my mother country. ;)

Fun fact (!?): In Norway neo-Nazis has taken over the symbolic use of Norse mythology, so vikings and the like quickly have bad connotations. Cartoon vikings still get to play though!

30 Sketches in 30 days

Spent the winter break back home in Norway, wanted to keep myself busy so I decided to create one sketch every day that could fit in the "daily sketch" section. About one hour a sketch, - some a bit more, some a bit less. Tried to do a lot of different stuff, a few landscapes, sketches from imagination, photo referance, color tests, croquis, pencil. Was really running out of ideas at the end, but at least I got some good practice before my first digital illustration class this fall :)

Swiss Performance Enhancing Substance

Swiss guy beat the Norwegians in Tour De Ski today... obviously he was full of drugs :)



Still focusing mainly on colors these days. I am working on pushing compliments into the shadows, as well as juxtaposing colors in the image.

Sleeping Girl

I got this great little biography on the life and works of Alfons Mucha for Christmas. His poster work especially is incredible, some of it you can find here. All I could get with me on the plane home for Christmas was a set of gouache colors, so I got out my paints and decided to do something in his spirit.



Seeing as I keep hearing gouache is just opaque watercolor I decided to work on some watercolor paper I had laying around. This probably wasn't such a good idea cause the rough tooth of the paper made it difficult to achieve the smooth delicate application Mucha does so well. I think Illustration board will work much better next time. For the outlines I worked with Microns, which is ok, but I tend to create rather harsh linework. Next time Ill work a bit bigger so I can get in there with my brushtip pen (This one was done on an A5 piece of paper). Definitly enjoyed working with my gouache set, a lot more fun then the one pass solid application we were doing back in color and design class!

Summer series - Bislett

Spent the summer back home in beautiful Oslo at the wonderful apartment in Bislett. My god how I dream about that place when I sleep at lower bunk in my shared studio in SF. I guess you got to sacrifice to be an artist. Starving artist and all of that. For a some weeks that summer I worked exclusively on toned paper with coloured charcoal, and this series is part of what came out.

Madlib, El-P
Made this illustration surrounding a few of my favourite music producers and threw in a few elements related to their hip-hop universe



Rock out
Started the series with left over toned paper, a sienna charcoal pencil and my dads old cd cover depicting Jim Morriosn. From there on that deloped into some rock theme, which then led to the illustration above.


Obama Christ
Got tired of musicians and decided to draw a real rock star. Depicting Obama as the saviour seemed to fit the times (even more these days!). Still working on rendering faces, charicatures quickly lose their edge without an instant recognition. I still hope you can pick him out in the end?