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Happy Illustration Friday, fellow artists!

We’re ready to announce this week’s topic, but first please enjoy the wonderful illustration above by Eduardo Guimarães, our Pick of the Week for last week’s topic of HEART. Thanks to everyone who participated with drawings, paintings, sculptures, and more. We love seeing it all!

You can see a gallery of ALL the entries here.

And of course, you can now participate in this week’s topic:

PEOPLE

Here’s how:

Step 1: Illustrate your interpretation of the current week’s topic (always viewable on the homepage).

Step 2: Post your image onto your blog / flickr / facebook, etc.

Step 3: Come back to Illustration Friday and submit your illustration (see big “Submit your illustration” button on the homepage).

Step 4: Your illustration will then be added to the public Gallery where it will be viewable along with everyone else’s from the IF community!

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HAPPY ILLUSTRATING!

Henri!, Character design concept.

As a follow-up to my last post about Queen Anne’s Revenge, here is the man himself—the terrible Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach. I show him in close-up so you can see the slow-match fuses he used to weave into his whiskers and set alight before attacking a ship. You can find him in P is for Pirate, now available in bookstores—or drop me a line in the comments for an autographed copy.

Pirate captains were elected by their crews and could be voted out. To keep his crew in line, Blackbeard constantly showed himself to be more fierce, more outrageous than anyone else on board. Seated with his rogues during dinner, Blackbeard fired a pistol underneath the table and wounded one of the crew, just to remind them who he was.

Blackbeard had to be mindful of his crew’s appetite for liquor—for rum, an ardent spirit distilled from molasses. Without rum, a crew would mutiny, as this excerpt from Blackbeard’s log attests:

‘Such a Day, Rum all out: – Our Company somewhat sober: – A Damned Confusion amongst us! – Rogues a plotting; – great Talk of Separation. – So I looked sharp for a Prize; – such a Day took one, with a great deal of Liquor on Board, so kept the Company hot, damned hot, then all Things went well again.’

1. The first sculptors had false beards.
2. The eye's wonderful curtain.
3. Do hedgerows exist outside the British Isles? I don't remember seeing any elsewhere.
4. Trains...and what they do.
5. Germany as it is.
6. Page 3089.
7. English poetry is best recited over the sea.
8. Cutting off one's head.
9. The one letter typewriter for greater simplicity in prose.
10. The inevitable approach of the end.

BY JEN VAUGHN - The date was December 9th, 2011 when cartoonist and Center for Cartoon Studies professor Alec Longstreth shaved off his beard and shaggy do. A promise to himself in 2008, he decided to chart his progress through pictures of his hair and beard growth, called The Basewood Beard, that would undoubtedly remind him daily of his commitment. Living in a small town with a beard as his shadow, Longstreth went from industrious Fellow of the school to an instructor of both summer workshops and graduate classes to the Acting Director (while James Sturm takes a much-needed sabbatical) . Even after all the excitement, he is still growing and evolving, deciding to learn watercolor on the side.

August 1st, 2008 and Alec doesn’t at all look like a prison inmate. He answered a lot of questions throughout the three years of hair growing: do you get food caught in there, is it hot, what does your family think? And he bore it all with quiet grace. But now that Basewood is done, he is moving on and was nice enough to answer some questions for The Beat! Venture on to read more about the amazing cartoonist Alec Longstreth. Now that you have lived through the coldest part of winter, do you miss your beard? I’ll admit, the beard did do an amazing job of keeping my face warm. I’ve tried a bunch of different scarves, and nothing even comes close to protecting my face like a bunch of long facial hair.  That being said, I do not miss the beard.  I’ll take that cold morning slap in the face, and gladly.  The beard was a constant reminder to me about how long Basewood was taking, and that I needed to finish it.  Now each morning when I head to the studio, the cold air against my face is a reminder to take everything I learned from Basewood and to apply it to my new projects.

It’s done! 100% of Basewood finished

You’ve mentioned your next project in your classes before but can you tell the public a bit what it is about? Well, I intend to keep self-publishing Phase 7 for the rest of my life.  I’ve got all kinds of stories I will to tell, but the one I’m working on right now is a three-part story all about my favorite band Weezer (to be released in Phase 7).  The other big project I’m working on is going to be a webcomic.  It’s a fantasy story for kids with wizards and dragons and lots of bad puns.  I’m currently workshopping the first storyline (about 100 pages) with the CCS seniors.  Once I’ve gone through and tightened up the script, I’m going to build up a hefty lead before I start posting online, which will hopefully b

Reverse beard pixilation is done so often it’s almost an animation meme, but there’s always room for one more, especially when it’s as well done as Peter Simon’s Trim. The comments on the Reddit post about the film are interesting too—”I love how my assumption of who he is changed with each new hair style,” “Nazi, punk kid, white trash, hipster, biker, Jesus, Ultra-Jesus”—as well as the response from the director Simon: “That is something we were talking about while we were working on this. Each style has a very specific stereotype attached.”

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Beard, Pixilation

This is inspired by the book of Dede Orkut which I'm reading at the moment.
Pen and ink with watercolour. Each page 25cm x 17.5cm. Click to enlarge.

I have preserved my winning hand (the two rows of cards at the bottom) in The Entertaining and Instructive Game of Spodunk.
Ink, watercolour and gouache on Daler board, A1 size. Click to enlarge.