Pat Marconett's Art Journal

2012-02-01T15:57:00.000-08:00

Some lunch time figure sketches. I would say they are 50% ref 50% imagination. They are an attempt to get better at character design, which I have always been weak at.

2012-01-30T15:39:00.000-08:00

Assignment from week1 of my environment design class

2012-01-04T02:48:00.001-08:00

This started as just a landscape rendering, but I decided it would be fun to add some characters and story elements. Still a work in progress, but i'm having a lot of fun with it. And a lot of painting challenges I don't normally encounter.

2011-12-26T02:46:00.001-08:00

...Now for something a little different. Ive been doing a lot of memory studies, so for Christmas break I thought it would be fun to do a landscape illustration inspired by some of my photos from Tahoe. Most the pieces I do are architectural scenes, so I thought it would be a fun challenge to tackle water, rocks & trees, and render them as much as I can...........(still have a ways to go before I give up on this one, but I've already learned a ton).

& happy holidays everyone

2011-11-29T01:52:00.000-08:00

I've been unable to do much on my personal projects the last few weeks, so its nice to get back to sketching. These are some quick character ideas off the top of my head, for my treasure-island inspired project. 'Character design' isn't really my focus, but I wanted to try getting a little more into the characters in this project, hoping it will help inspire more story driven environments.

2011-11-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

Another attempt at a environmental memory sketch this weekend. This time with characters & some value.

2011-11-11T20:50:00.000-08:00

Couple tree studies. Think I like the first technique the best.

2011-11-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! I painted this tonight while passing out candy & watching TV with Crystal. Its essentially just the view from our front porch.

....I defiantly want to get back into painting.

2011-10-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

This was a fun drawing exercise. Its essentially an environment sketch from memory of a Japanese restaurant Crystal, myself, & another couple went to for dinner last night. I tried to go fairly detailed, but do it one sitting.

2011-10-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

I started a new personal project while listening to 'Treasure Island'....... only time will tell how closely I decide to follow the story, but Its defiantly a fun architectural style & time period. Hoping to push the style of this project more then I usually do.

2011-10-10T02:59:00.000-07:00

This was for a 2d-scroller game I started as a hobby project. I hope someday to finish it. (The bottom image is a closeup of 1 section at 1/2 resolution)

2011-09-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

Some sketches for the same project. I tend to avoid cars, so I figured I would use this project as an excuse to work on them.

2011-09-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

Okay I think I'm going to call this done for now.

2011-09-12T03:03:00.000-07:00

Juggle Monsters 2 (for iphone), has been out for over a month...starting to go through and post some of the artwork.

Check it out, its free!

Juggle Monsters 2 for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

2011-04-17T02:23:00.000-07:00

semi-speed paintings. Try to do these in one sitting. 1-3 hours.

2011-04-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

these are sketches designs & warm up sketches for a early 20th century circus project.

2011-04-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

some figure studies

2011-01-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

This is a Flash background I've been working, on & off when I get bored with other projects.

2011-01-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

I did a Christmas card for my work a little while back. Fun side project.

2010-09-12T02:24:00.000-07:00

new freelance illustration. Fun to do a realistic piece for a change, instead of cartoony....although I do love cartoony. (just added my layout sketch on top)

2010-08-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

few more freelance pieces.

2010-07-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

A couple freelance pieces I did a while back

2010-03-18T03:33:00.000-07:00

One of the games I'm working on has finally had its first release! Its called SuperJam its a Facebook game: http://apps.facebook.com/superjam/

I'm doing all the backgrounds & some other miscellaneous art. There should be around 9 backgrounds more to come. The clean-up was all done in Illustrator & the color in photoshop.

2010-02-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

We spent most the weekend in the car driving from Pasadena to Santa Cruz and then back again for a family birthday.

2009-11-18T11:40:00.000-08:00

Artwork from my mini-show co-Pitch To Nickelodeon

This is visual development work for a show I helped pitch to Nickelodeon along with 2 other interns. I had 4 days to put this all together, but it was a lot of fun & reminded me of BFA. The story concept was by Nick Collins & Pietra Imastato helped him with developing the story, and I was responsible for the environment design & general art direction.

2009-08-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

some style explorations inspired by children's books....also trying to get a better handle on Adobe Illustrator.

2009-07-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

Spaceship ideations

2009-07-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

these ones are painted so much better then the 1st spaceman, that I'm not going to even include it......that happens a lot! thats why I try not to paint my favorite design first. :)

2009-07-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

tree studies

2009-07-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

A few things from this week while I was in tahoe. The painting was from off the balcony of our room.

2009-06-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

This was a test for an online RPG freelance job.

2009-06-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

work in progress. I'm plotting out the major story moments, these will eventually be color keys, and possibly a few will be blown up into viz-dev environments.

2009-05-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

character ideations for a new project!

2009-05-14T12:44:00.000-07:00

Most of these are studies I did from memory immediately after looking at reference images. I found they captured the personality of the dogs WAY better then drawing directly from reference.

2009-04-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

I did another pass at this, and it looks much better. It could use more work, but for now I need to move on to something new!

2009-04-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

2009-03-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

2009-03-26T02:29:00.000-07:00

2009-03-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

We just started a new project based off of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. I'm trying to push the level of reference & detail in my drawings.

2009-03-02T01:11:00.000-08:00

This is a environment design for our animal farm project. I should paint these, but I don't have time right now.

2009-02-15T06:33:00.000-08:00

I redrew the environment again after fixing a bunch of perspective issues this weekend. I think I'm finally going to start painting it now! It is nice to work on my own projects were I can allow myself to redo stuff over and over until I get it right. You learn so much more that way.

2009-02-01T19:16:00.000-08:00

I took another pass at my design for Handsel & Gretel's house this weekend. I tried to make it really bright and saturated to contrast with the witches house.....but next comes the establishing shot...

2009-01-23T23:51:00.000-08:00

I've been working on this environment the last week or so. This project is a little more stylized, so i've been designing a lot of the props before jumping to the painting. School just started back up yesterday, so it may be hard to find time to work on this project :( but I'll try.

2009-01-15T19:08:00.000-08:00

I went to Tahoe a few days with my wife, here are some pastels I did around the lake. Each one took less then an hour, any longer and I would have been frozen solid.
(I just started using pastels this week. They are a nice alternative to painting when time is limited)

2009-01-09T02:37:00.000-08:00

This is a story I've been working on for a few weeks. These are just some quick paintings from thumbnails of different ideas... there will be many more to come.

2008-12-31T21:23:00.000-08:00

This painting came out a little better! I also did some lighting studies of the same shot at different times of the day which was pretty informative.

2008-12-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

The 1st of many 'winter-break landscape paintings' to come. Its been about 6 months since I painted with real paint, so this one took a bit as I was getting use to the medium again. (....and use to the cold too!)

2008-12-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

Visual development project based off of "The Magic Chalk" short story, which takes place in 1950's San Francisco. On this project I focused on the drawings instead of painting.

2008-11-21T17:52:00.000-08:00

These are some some visual development enviroments I did (or I should say re-did) this week. The bottom one needs to be repainted with the improved drawing above, but you get the idea.

2008-11-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

Quick digital color studies painted from life

Safeway Parking lot at night.

class presentation.

Lecture hall @ SJSU

Between 10th & 11th street.

Statue in the art quad

In the cafe.

I don't have time for 3 hour paintings, but I'm getting in the habit of doing some quick digital paintings a few times a week after class. These were done on my Nintendo DS. I'm trying to take advantage of the technology and study how light works in locations that would be impossible to paint traditionally. Its especially cool for low lit environments, that cameras can't pick up.

2008-10-15T00:59:00.000-07:00

Train interior. The assignment has passed, but I wanted to take another wack at it before were given the next assignment.

2008-08-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

latest version of this environment.

2008-08-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

After some good critiques I basically repainted the whole thing again. It was fun to really push the details, at school it seems like I always run out of time before getting to the final stages.

2008-08-08T22:10:00.001-07:00

2008-08-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

miscellaneous drawings from this summer. (please disregard the page layout, I scanned and assembled these spreads for backup.)

2008-07-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

character head ideations for my giant story.

2008-07-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

I haven't uploaded any new work for a while. Here are a few new ones.

2008-06-30T00:47:00.000-07:00

2008-06-15T17:07:00.000-07:00

latest pass at my enviroment

_Another week of paintings! Now that I'm working full-time, I'm trying to get into the routine of painting after work every night. The ones on the right are from the edge of PDI's parking lot. (It's cool to see how every environment has a very unique color palette)

2008-06-12T00:52:00.000-07:00

This is an establishing shot from a story I'm working on. It's a work in progress I've been playing with this week. Trying to apply all the things Î'm noticing from all the landscape painting I've been doing.

2008-05-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

A few more paintings this week.

In the last 3 weeks I painted 25 paintings, but monday I'm back at work, and I'll be doing weekend paintings.

2008-05-25T00:40:00.000-07:00

I got a second (support) internship at PDI/DreamWorks in the Outreach department! In between internships I get 3 weeks off, so I've been doing landscape painting all day, and drawing all night. I'm also working on a new story. I have a box of drawings that I need to sort and scanned, but I did scan the best paintings from the first 2 weeks. Enjoy, and there will be more to come.

2008-04-25T21:06:00.000-07:00

This is a story where a scientist goes crazy his his protege is killed in a lab accident, and tries to bring him back to life.

2008-04-15T19:02:00.001-07:00

Hello Everybody, I finally went through my desk drawer at PDI and scanned my favorite figure drawings. Lately I've been focusing on trying to bring out the personality in my figure drawing. (These are all 2 - 5 min drawings)

2008-03-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been posting very regularly. I've been really busy with an internship.

This week I've been trying to go draw at borders every night for an hour after work.

2008-01-31T03:10:00.001-08:00

In my visual development class, we are working on a wolf project, so I did a few sketches tonight.

2008-01-19T10:29:00.001-08:00

This is a layout I was working on around Christmas.
(I've been doing a lot of studies that aren't worth posting)

2007-11-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

Figure drawing highlights from the last month.

2007-10-20T02:09:00.000-07:00

Here is my cat animation Test for 115.

2007-09-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

Some figure drawings.
Wow this semester is crazy busy already.....but there is always time for drawing naked people (not to mention we need 25 a week for animation class)

2007-08-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

I'm done for now. This was a fun project. It forced me to address rendering issues that a viz-dev, or life painting would ignore.

Changed the enviroment again.

2007-08-07T03:04:00.000-07:00

I finaly got my tidepool slide scanned.

2007-08-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

Another revision on the underground city enviroment.

I wanted to do a enviroment, so this is a work in progress I've been doodling with the last few days.

2007-07-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

A digital painting on Sunday, while we were hanging out at Crystals Grampa's house. After 6:00pm painting outdoors becomes really difficult, because the light changes too rapidly.....& cars are always a challenge, unless your one of those people really into cars (which I am not!)...................I think I'm hooked on digital painting.

Another Digital life painting . This one I used a hard opaque brush for the whole thing. These paintings are a lot of fun. No set-up, no clean-up, no worrying about paint drying......of course with my laptop no painting withough being next to an outlet either :(

latest version of underground ancient city enviroment.

My first digital painting from life! (The kitchen is always a fun place to try out a new technique.) It felt like a pretty smooth transition from acrylic, just a little harder to control the brush. I used one layer for a drawing, and one for painting. Stay pretty opaque, and avoided the undo button...basicaly tried to apply all the process I've used from painting traditionaly to photoshop.

Niles District life Painting

2007-07-21T05:13:00.000-07:00

Back from a week in Tahoe. I had a couple chances to get out and paint, although they are kind of rushed, because the time I had free for painting was short. This week I've really been fighting the urge to glaze, trying to just keep remixing the paint until I get the value and color right.... I realized this week, than I can lay-in the painting pretty good, now I just need to spend a lot more time checking and re-checking colors, values, and shapes. This is my favorite of the bunch, although I had to rush the finish.I rushed to finish, and killed the mountain range when I put in the clouds.Too glazed.Realized I need to work on detail a lot more.....

2007-07-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

I've been tweeking the composition in photoshop, before I redraw it.

beginning viz-dev drawing for : "When the kids first enter the ancient underground city."
Eventually I'll paint it, but I wanted to start working on another scenes, so I can see this one with fresh eyes. Any comment or suggestions would be helpful. The 1st thing I need to fix is to make the rat bigger.
daily painting from life. I know the perspective is way off, but I like the values.

2007-07-07T00:15:00.000-07:00

A few more paintings from life. I've been trying to paint more opaquely. I haven't been very focused on the drawing (which shows), In my limited time, I focus on value and color, and shapes. My studies are slowly departing from the pasty watered down look as I become more comfortable with painting from life.UC Berkeley

Quick memory painting

Crystal watching the baseball game.The kitchens are back!
Character ideations for a story I'm playing around with.

2007-07-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

This is a memory painting. Keeping charicter design in mind, I tried exaggerating the porportions, but followed the same proceedure.

April left after my lay-in, so I had to paint the rest from a photo. I don't think she really looks like a kid in this painting..I need to work on that.
(All the other paintings are from life.)

Sorry I haven't updated for a few weeks, I didn't have anything worth uploading.
I've been painting these little thumbnails from life, and studying from John Sandan's books trying to learn how to paint.

2007-06-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

In an effort to get better at drawing from imagination, I've started doing memory exercises. Basically at the end of the day, I try to draw/paint something from memory that I drew/painted earlier in the day. I thought they would be really hard and frustrating, but I've found them to be a lot of fun, help me to internalize my observations a lot faster, and end up looking better than the originals some of the time. So this top image is a memory/imagination painting of the figure painting I did from Palo Alto earlier in the day.

Figure painting from Palo Alto This week. Open studio painting is sooo much better than taking a 3rd floor figure painting class. (I've learned more on my own in the last week than I did during the entire class).

Berkeley lab bench. I've painted my share of objects, now it's time to start blocking in whole scenes.

2007-05-29T01:33:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, schools finaly out! Now I can get back to some studying. This summer I really want to work on painting, getting so I can quickly knock out images. I think I'm going to put off painting digitaly yet another summer and learn more about color before going photoshop!
So far these are all from photos. I've started going to figure painting, but nothing worth showing yet.

2007-05-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry there have not been a lot of posts. Most of my time has been studying. Here are some figure drawings from the last couple weeks. I've been trying to loosed up.

2007-04-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

Some figure drawing from last week

2007-04-02T03:53:00.000-07:00

Sketch from spring break. In a parking lot.

2007-02-20T04:08:00.000-08:00

few sketches from life.

2007-02-04T04:31:00.001-08:00

Couple on location sketches from the first week back.

2007-01-22T00:44:00.000-08:00

Week 7: (Now its really over)

From Borders tonight. My people on location sketches are getting a lot more loose.

2007-01-15T00:41:00.000-08:00

Week 6: (No breaks not quite over yet!)

I'm really not absessed with kitchens. There just a really convieniet place to draw when I'm doing stuff at other Family members houses. I can be working on my drawing and perspective, and still be part of the conversations.

Some sketches from Borders tonight

Crystal crocheting a baby blanket for her friend, at her grandfathers house. It has some perspective problems, but hopfully you won't notice them.

Various Starbucks sketches

2007-01-08T03:35:00.000-08:00

Week 5: (A continuing effort to suck-less)

This is Crystal working at lab tonight. I'm trying to combined my perspective drawings with people on location sketches.

This is another painting from life, where I did a drawing first, than came back later with paint. It started off as just a painting without a drawing to work off of (the small image above), but as you can see, it was an ugly sight.

This was a drawing today from IKEA furniture store.

Yet another kitchen study! This time the painting was from life too. The entire process took about 5 hours.

2007-01-04T03:02:00.000-08:00

Week 4 of winter break.

The drawing was from life, then I used the photo to paint over it with Acylic. I figure this will be the kind of stuff we will need to do in viz-dev, so I should be able to get things to read with paint first from life before jumping into Photoshop.

Yet another kitchen study. This time in guache.

A look into the our kitchen. I want to start getting into color, so after I drew this in pen, I put acrylic on top of it. Much better contrast.

This is Crystal writing a research grant. I was experimenting with putting in a dark foreground. I used markers tonight, but they kept dying on me.

April , watching TV. I always find it hard to draw people with the same line quality as the perspective stuff in the background, but this one feels pretty consistent. I was originally going to do a pencil lay-in, and then draw it in pen, but I liked the lay-in so much I just kept everything in graphite.

View of Crystal's parents kitchen (Ben Lomond). I've been trying to use value to separate the various planes, and make the foreground really pop out. Just like with tidepool, everything in the foreground needs to have more detail and contrast. This drawing was done New years Eve....(yes its true I have no life)

2006-12-30T22:52:00.000-08:00

Week 3 of Winter Break. (Slow week due to X-mas, and car problems)Instead of working today, I decided to "document" the nearby lab bench. (UC Berkeley).

1-2 hour still life sketchbook painting. Llaima challenged me to a skull paint-off. I did a semi detailed drawing with paint, and then built up the image focusing on value.

2006-12-23T22:09:00.000-08:00

Another week of sketches. Just trying to fire it up before X-Mas.

2006-12-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

Here is the final version. Well, final for this class. I need to go in and render it a lot more before I would concider it completley done. My tidepool was voted 1st place for the afternoon 113B class. Concidering I don't know anything about painting, and never painted before spring 2006, I think I did a pretty good job.

2006-12-16T22:04:00.000-08:00

Sketchbook pages from 1st week of winter break.

2006-12-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

Alphonse Mucha

2006-12-07T02:34:00.000-08:00

Semi-final tidepool. I have a few more weeks to finish.

2006-11-27T23:18:00.000-08:00

Figure drawing from tonight.

2006-11-25T01:29:00.000-08:00

Figure Drawing from November

2006-11-19T22:47:00.000-08:00

Grave Yard Enviroment

2006-11-13T02:36:00.000-08:00

This is a pencil rendering for a 25.5 x 11 inch acrylic painting, I am doing for an illustration class.
It is supposed to be an enviroment scene from the Sierra Mountians. I really pushed myself to try to get a strong drawing before I started painting.

2006-10-04T01:24:00.000-07:00

More figure drawing.