Beauty Meets Brains, pencil on paper and digital

another piece inspired by a visit to the computer history museum (the first was call girl).  there was this one particular ad of a woman stationed near a table-like computer.  the copy was hilariously demeaning towards the woman, something along the lines of, “if only she could cook as well as we can store the recipes!”  (don’t quote me on that, please).

in any case, this drawing is the impression it left.  i wanted to marry 50-60s glamour with (clunky) retro technology and a cheeky title.  i ended up tying in some 80s fashion and a ‘saturday evening post’ illustrative aesthetic (which was actually a surprising mistake).  

bodies,ink on paper and digital

it’s funny how renaissance paintings frequently have an incredible number of figures in the composition. i can’t imagine how artists approached designing these images– there are so many variables per figure.  just thinking about how many choices one has to make per square inch gives me anxiety.  i would never be able to leave the thumbnail stage– i’d just make minuscule edits until i drop dead.  

this drawing is a product of no planning.  i don’t think there’s any other way i can put more than two figures in an illustration.  it seemed better to do something (even if it’s a bad design) than to do nothing at all.  

i also think it’s a little disturbing how illustration follows fashion trends so closely.  maybe it’s even larger– the public’s “taste” (as in color preferences) copies fashion seamlessly.  it’s like we’re all pilot fish living off the gills of the runway.  i’ve come to this realization b/c several times in the past 10 or so years, i’ve found that i have very strong opinions on palettes.  i’d wonder how i arrived at that conclusion…then i look at everyone’s clothes.

why did artists love brown with cyan accents from 2006-2007?  b/c it was on every rack in north america.  why are so many people in love with a narrow value range, warm shadows, and exaggerated colors (ala instagram)?  b/c vintage is in style.  why does this drawing have bright neon stripes on it?  well the answer is in the Gap’s spring 2012 catalogue.  

sometimes i wish i had my own, self-contained, opinion about color.  but like perception of color, taste in color is relative to everything around it.  

who is controlling my preferences?  who is controlling theirs?  i wonder if anna wintour is partially to blame…

call girl, pencil on paper, digital

i’ve become really tired of the way i illustrate in my personal work.  this is an attempt at something different.  this is also a mixture of apparel and technology spanning from the 1920s-1960s.  

i started drawing this after a visit to the computer history museum.  what i found most interesting was the marketing around technology in its infancy.  it seemed that, in order to make the computer more approachable, advertisers either made it look like furniture or put a “dumb” woman next to it.  "so great, even she can understand!  GEE!“  it was both hilarious and embarrassing.  i’m not sure how the idea of drawing "dumb technology pin-up girls” fits in with this, but i think the sentiment is somewhere in there.

“big pimping” and “sergeant stubby.”  i have a mild obsession with the story of King Henry VIII and a new fondness for sergeant stubby– a decorated war dog during WWI who was actually a sergeant.  brush pen on paper.

shopping spree for brush pens in japan town!  

there’s something really interesting about Medieval art…probably b/c a big trend in illustration right now has a similar “naive” understanding of anatomy.  everyone feels kind of stiff or like they’re stuck between two panes of glass.  

anyway, you can guess the things i’ve watched in the last few days– Neil DeGrasse Tyson talking about Isaac Newton, documentaries about Rome, and the unapologetically abysmal Case 39. 

St. Patrick’s Day doodle,  digital, for Google

Inspired by the Book of Kells, you can see some of my process in this article.  

Ninety One Good Chinese Girls, ink on paper

riff off an interesting (and strangely unsettling) photo i saw of a swarm of singing, uniform, asian girls.

brush pen on paper

sketches from today.  

duttonart:

More “paint random swatch, let dry, then ink” action – this time by the whole team, Willie Real, Ryan Germick, me, and fellow tumblrers, Sophia Foster-Dimino and Jennifer Hom (what’s the right term for that, all ye olde tumblr vets?).

team post-it illustrations from a while ago

sophiafosterdimino:

More post-its with my coworkers – Ryan Germick, Mike Dutton, and Jennifer Hom. ♥

nice friday afternoon at the office :)  we threw down some random watercolor shapes on post-it notes, swapped, and made fast illustrations from the forms with pen.

which is fine.  it does bother me that i don’t draw as often though.

brush pen, paper, digital

Get drawing kids!

mistletoe toys, digital

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!  warm wishes from my home to yours :)

pangolin (for lack of a better title…), digital

another exercise in balancing productivity and boredom.  i basically get stuck with nothing to do and set out to scribble, then end up with an illustration that has a weak composition.  in any case– i was able to complete this on my brand new travel tablet (courtesy of the best gift-giver ever)!

beach, digital 

super quick drawing of girls on an apparently abandoned beach.  the painfully central composition is a consequence of my spontaneous desire to make a sketch look finished.  (while the verbosity of this entire post is due to my lack of sleep!)

i’ve always wondered about “sexy cartoons.”  the notion is kind of absurd for reasons i can’t seem to articulate– but that a caricature of an adult-baby can be “attractive” has always escaped me.  my stylization of humans has therefore steered closer to “realism” for fear of brushing up against strange freudian overtones that i (neurotically) think come with the pairing of infantilization of women and sexuality.  (also, why can’t i think of parallel depictions of cartoony men?  i wouldn’t even know where to start if i wanted to draw a “sexy man-baby.”  probably b/c the whole notion of that is a pretty big turn off.)

THAT SAID i am clearly contributing one more drawing to the world’s supply of said “sexy cartoons!”  sorry, sometimes curvy round things are fun to draw…and i got sick of being crazy about implicite psychological weirdness.