quick sketch

...of Yuriko K-r-a-s-h-tori. I know. Terrible. I said that earlier too. Shame! At least I knew it sounded stupid when I said it. She makes that worn out studio couch look really comfortable.

So I killed my last piece....

So I killed my last piece.... thanks to a few friendly crits and advice (Team Tiger ftw!). There were a bunch of things not working out, I may do something with it later... but for now it's retired to the dark place on my hard drive where work remains untouched for long periods of time. The piece taking its place is the one below, though I'm not sure which version I like more.


And here's a some unfinished chucks with a dancin' frog.

NSFW! (maybe?) TURN BACK NOW!

A drawing I may have to redo, I ended up cropping it from its original size to make it fit a certain scale, but for it to work on a double page spread the woman's head would be cut in half. Bah. More details later when I figure this out... it definitely looks like a redraw though.

And yes, this is exactly what it looks like.

too big:


awkward doublepage crop:

there is work in progress, but for now....

Some sketches to fill the gaping hole that is my regular posting schedule. I have a new piece that I'm working on and about 2 in the planning stages, but crawling along at the moment. Life is rough, but at least I have drawing to keep me sane. Here's some work from a new sketchbook.... most of the drawings take anywhere from 5-30mins. They're generally mindless drawings or during crits and conversations so everything is completely off and out of proportion. Behold!

Peaceoffering

I'm glad this week is over. Here's a new piece for my untitled somewhat non-specific book.


edit: Some changes incoming...maybe, this is either complete or at 85-90%. I'll have to look at it again once I've printed it out to see what needs to change.

Minor changes, I toned down the cloudiness of the water and enhanced the darks around the floating head, I also muted the organ shapes behind it to make the eyes pop even more. I also cleaned up a few lines.... I have to remind myself not to work when I'm exhausted. I'm a lot more satisfied with this version. Thanks to Shawn on DA for the suggestion!

New:

Featured illustrator on illustrationmundo.com!!!!

I was picked as a featured Illustrator on illustrationmundo.com! INCREDULICIOUS. There's no other word for it. Now back to pondering existence and art creation!

Oh and here's the BW version of that last piece I finished, I actually prefer it to the colored one...but that may be because I spent more time with it between sketching-erasing-cursing-sketching-drawing-inking.

The Meat Market

New work... more flatish colors, and more red.
edit: not really sure why the quality is so terrible?

I never said I was perfect..

A few quick sketches that I'm not happy with. Sometimes you have to draw just to get the crappy drawings out of your system before you get to the good stuff.




Also a bit of self reflecting.


It was the most amazing drawing of the Ninja Turtles I had ever seen, and it was in my hands! I didn't draw it though, but no one needed to know that unimportant detail! I didn't want to disappoint all my fans. The truth would shatter their kindergarten hearts. "Whoa Raymond! That's so cool! " - "Draw me one!" I responded with a calm collected okay as my order list grew by the second.

"Sure it was easy!" A lie never tasted sweeter.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) my teacher, Ms. Carpenter, noticed my flock of follower's and praise and immediately saw through my facade. I of course assumed she approached to join in my small artistic worship circle. "Oh wow Ray! Did you draw that?" - "Yep!" ...No hesitation at all, I'm pretty sure I believed it myself at this point. "So I guess you wouldn't mind drawing another one?" she asked. I quickly realized my plan had many holes in it when she set a brand new box of crayons and a sheet of dull large lined notebook paper in front of me. My followers gathered around in awe. I froze.

"So... you didn't draw that did you?" Goodbye fame, hello infamy.

"Um.... no."
"You shouldn't lie. Now apologize to the class."
"Sorry..."

My pride wounded, a few minutes after "timeout" I began to draw. I still can't draw Ninja Turtles(without reference now I suppose),... but I'm pretty sure this is one of the many reasons why I haven't stopped trying to draw anything and everything to this day.


Here are a few drawings I did when I was.... what, maybe 10-12? MJ looks pretty axe-murderish if you ask me.


New work coming soon I promise, I'm still digesting the work of Lucian Freud and other greats from my recent trip to MoMA

pet the sharks

This may or may not be entirely working but...eh I'll find out soon enough. I don't know what it means yet, it was fun to create though. (Beasts with pointy teeth and ladies is an under appreciated genre.). I think I'm getting faster...



And a sketch just because it was fun to draw....I think she inspired the above piece.

thought... processing

Over the last couple of days I've become very interested in minimalistic compositions with dense areas of detail or bright color. It's too tempting to use what little money I have at the moment on expensive books so google image search will have to do....

An artist that has peaked my interest that I've always looked at and known about but never really examined is Toulouse Latrec. There's no way I can compare to this guy, ever, but I feel there's a lot I can learn from the economy of line and shape employed in his pieces. Must buy book of prints. I love his compositions and how much he can say with a simple shape or a few select colors! His paintings are really where it's at for me though. It seems like the same ideology behind his prints is in his paintings yet he manages to keep the movement contained or barely contained within his figures. A still moment of his may as well be exploding with life. Yes, I'm really just that entranced.





Another artist is Hokusai, but I do own a book by him so finding images to study and dissect won't be so difficult. I enjoy the decorative and balanced compositions in Hokusai's work and I can literally spend hours just picking apart the lines he chose and the shapes of black he left in his work. I wish I could get my hands on a good Hiroshige and Yoshitoshi book so I could compare. I'd love to figure out what really worked for them, I'd like my work to be as memorable some day.... (wishful thinking ha)

Below are a few bad drawings and a terrible portrait of John Hendrix.

fewer colors = goodtimes

Trying to retrain my eye for color, so I'll be using minimal palettes for a bit. Here's a sketch from a crit, and a new piece about Stress or self destructive behavior...

Something different?

An experiment...

A small sketch post. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my projects and generally feeling very low overall, which has killed my production a bit. I'm starting a new project though, I've figured out what I'd *like* to do for my book project but I won't say anything about it here yet... in case I change my mind. On a side note, jonesray.com is going to be reworked in a few days.

I started my second semester of the SVA MFA program pretty well, at least initially. The goal of this semester was to plan and begin the creation of a book. The project could essentially be anything you wanted it to be as long as it was based on the basic theme "Things Important". This normally shouldn't be that complicated but I spent weeks just trying to figure out what I needed to do. I ended with this.

"A book based on relationships and the ways guys communicate involving them. Including but not limited to conversations during drinking, hanging out and playing videogames. Also illustrations of my and my friends experiences and misconceptions of relationships as they went through their teens to becoming adults."

I loved the idea at first, but when it came to actually getting it started I hit a wall. I was inspired by Paul Pope's "Pulp Hope" drawings to create landscapes of skin and sexuality or drawings I otherwise wouldn't do or was afraid of drawing. I created these images.




Sooo... I drew a lot of sexually charged images or just sexual almost softcore/fetish-seque images. They were fun to create but that was it. I wanted to express how many guys saw relationships as just an easy way of experiencing sex and the way porn alters that perception. Just another excuse to ink me some boobs, yah? WELL that may be true to some degree, but my interest in this project waned after this set of images.

I just wanted to draw the pornographic imagery...but ha thats not the type of book I want to create in all honesty. Unfortunately whenever I came back to my initial idea my mind was blank. I put together several failed pencil drawings for potential illustrations but ended up not feeling anything from them in the end. I have plenty of embarrassing situations to illustrate.... so i couldn't see why I lost interest.

Several crits later, with help from Marshall Arisman and Carl Titolo I learned that I was avoiding illustrating or being direct with my illustrations. I was attempting to illustrate relationships while avoiding analyzing my own which has been in a difficult place for some time. So I killed my project and told my class I'd have a new idea soon. So I'm on week 2 since the idea kill and now I'm not sure what to do yet. I picked up my sketchbooks and retreated for awhile. The idea will come to me soon, I'll just draw to stir up the ideas.

Here are some sketchbook pages.