Too Mini Eyes!

Here are my eyes for the week.

First I created a stroke out of mini eyes. Nothing too groundbreaking. 

This one I'm a little happier with. I wanted the pupil to look like one of those giant lollipops from Disneyland. You know, the ones the size of your head?

The whole gradient mesh thing is a bit tricky, but with Deke's help, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. Don'tcha know.

 

Top of the Pops

And now introducing....

The Polygonal Lasso Cowboy!

Yes, this really is what I imagine every single time open up photoshop and see this oddly shaped tool.

And yes, it's loosely based on John Wayne.

Next up is......

The Photoshop Magician! 

Conjuring up a literal feather with the help of a Mac shortcut incantation....because we all wish Photoshop shortcuts worked in real life, right?

Eyeball Overload?

Eyeball Key:

(in order, top to bottom) 1.original eye, 2.eye with design added (private eye/I Spy/Eye Spy), 3.design added version two, 4.eye with element subtracted (money-hungry/envious), 5.eye with element subtracted (pain of some sort?), and 6.original simple eye drawn using a dashed stroke (see previous 'eyes' post for a look at the original eye).

I also made an eye design using an Eiffel Tower pun...but I won't subject you to that.

Voila!

Art History

As far as older artwork goes, this is one of my favorites. It's a book titled "The Capricious Mole" that I made about two years ago for a Paper Making class at UCSB. 

The subject is pseudosciences such as Phrenology that theorize that the personality traits of a person can be discovered by the shape of your skull or the placement of moles on your face. In simpler terms, it was the science of judging others based on looks. Seems archaic, but we still do it in some ways, right?

The paper is all hand made; the book pages are pressed from somewhere around 55% hemp 45% cotton pulp made in a machine beater. The colored paper was made in my blender out of scrap paper and the book was bound using the simpler version of the Japanese Stab Binding technique.  

Eyes

Here are my eye drawings for this week. The first is my geometric shapes eye, using only triangles and the second is my simplistic eye. I'm still tweaking both in illustrator, so an updated one may be posted soon.

Squirrel Surprise?

Yes, Squirrel Surprise. Squirrel Surprise came about as the winning entry in a recently conducted "Name Shannon's Blog" contest. All titles were voted on by anyone following my Twitter account. The winning entry was from Kevin Vergara (also of CSUF).

As of this moment Kevin has no explanation for this stroke of genius, but perhaps one will arise at a later date.Until then I'll be enjoying my new blog title and filling my Illustration sketchbook with squirrels.