Shirtdress

Here's another girl in fun clothes post, I have a couple more of these that are in various stages of completion that I'm hoping to get to soon. I've been pretty busy as doing the whole job hunt thing (if anyone knows of any sort of illustrators/Junior Art Directors/Designers/Creative/Editorial Assistants type positions please let me know) so I'm not posting as often as I'd like but I'm making it my goal to change that. Also I've decided that I need to work on some actual finished illustrations rather than these ladies so thats hopefully the plan for now.

This would be a tough character to pitch.

I debated if I should actually post this one or not because it's kind of tasteless but here it is anyways. The idea is she's kind of a cross between Nico Minoru from Runaways and The Darkness but in a hoodie and vaguely modish dress. Still playing around with digital color and there are definitely pros and cons, I think they need to move a little more towards the hand done so I probably need to practicing my inking.

Digital experiement

So I recently acquired a wacom tablet because I wanted to play with digital coloring a bit, mostly because of the frustration of trying to get colors to reproduce on screen versus painted. You may recognize this girl from the previous post and since she was just laying around I thought I might try coloring her, the version that you're seeing here is purely digital, retraced/colored everything. Still working on somethings and not sure where this technique is going or if it's going anywhere but totally up for feedback.

Another day, another lady

Lately with the ladies I've been drawing I've paying a lot more attention to their clothing, I'm really enjoying making outfits for them because as your may or may not know I'm apparently an 11 year old girl. I'm still not sure where all of this is leading.

Also yes that's a batman pin.

There should be more here.

Sorry for the lack of updates as of late since I've gotten back to the states I've been pretty overwhelmed between getting temporarily settled, substitute teacher and trying to find a real job I haven't had a whole lot of time for art work but I'm hoping that'll change so but in the meantime here's a couple thing out of the old sketchbook.

I also found a bunch of copies of this minicomic that I was selling in an exhibition shop so if anyone would be interested in purchasing one please let me know. I'm offering them up here first for only $4 each or perhaps we can work out some sort of deal.

Happy Wonder Woman Day

So apparently in some places that are significantly cooler than where I currently am (namely Portland Oregon and Flemington New Jersey) it Wonder Woman Day. They're having some great events to benefit some really good charities and you can find out some more information here: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23440. I wish I would have found out about this sooner so I could have gotten involved somehow, maybe next year. Anyways I was inspired to paint my own wonder woman so here that is:

Wolf Hat

This is going somewhere, I'm not sure where yet.

What a beautiful face I have found in this place.

Okay so I've been trying to wrap up the work for my course for the past few weeks and while working on that realized that I needed one more painting for the exhibition because:
1. Some of the earlier ones weren't as strong
and
2. May as well because I had the time.
Anyways here the final piece of work going towards my masters degree. This is one of the loosely based on a song type illustrations, more specifically for Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", except less plane and sea and more spaceship and cosmos. I've been obsessed with the song forever, way to many memories and such come along with it, and I'm kind of surprised I hadn't thought of using it sooner. Also was one of the biggest contributors to my picking up the ukulele (long story).
So I'll be constructing/installing the exhibition for the next week or so and then it runs from the 18th-28th (full details below). So if you happen to be in Brighton or somewhere in the UK and want a holiday, or more impressively somewhere else in the world and want an even bigger holiday you should show up.

And Also

I forgot I recently did some sight redesigns/fixing to theartoftylerparker.com so you should take a look and let me know what you think/tell me what doesn't work or is wrong.

thanks
tyler

Rounded a corner and rounded corners.

Okay so I'm settled back in the UK for a while as I finish up my MA and after a couple of moves I'm finally stationary enough that I've been able to get back to work. So here's a new painting that I've done over the last few days.
I'm still having some trouble getting the colors to reproduce digitally so I may need to play around with it a bit more.

It's no secret to people who know me that I'm a fan of rounded corners, I was sitting at my desk last night and had this moment of I wonder what my stuff would look like with rounded corners thus this happened:

I think that I might actually prefer it with the rounded corners and may try adding it to some other things that I've done.

New Minicomic

Here's a minicomic I did a week or so ago for an mass drawing exchange and I thought that I post it here to share as well. It ends up being 8 pages and was accordion bound so it could be easily folded out. Looking at it now I think I really like the idea but would like it to be longer and not quite as rushed so I'm hoping to have time to redo/improve it sometime.

The Art of Tyler Parker v3.0 launch

So I know that there hasn't been many posts lately what with the combination of my international jetsetting life style and working at The New York State Summer School of the Arts for the last 3 weeks, but here's a pretty big one. I've completely redesigned my website from scratch, put in new work and just generally changed it all. You can see it here. I'll probably be fixing bugs that I missed over the next few days so if you happen across one feel free to let me know.
Hopefully this can tide you over for a bit as I'll soon be in various forms of travel once again.

The Inhumans In Love

So I had a few down days earlier this week while I was waiting for a end of term review and decided to do something for fun. I've had this idea lately of not especially heroic super hero moments. So in this case kind of a timid love things going on with Black Bolt and Medusa. For those who are not especially familiar with the characters the important bit to know is that Black Bolt doesn't speak because his voice makes everything explode and tends to level cities and such. I think I kind of love second tier superheroes like a whole bunch, maybe I can do some Alpha Flight stuff at some point what with my childhood love of that premier Canadian super group.

Anyways I leave for my visit back to the states of Thursday so posting may be sporadic for a bit again.

Graphic Novel First Look

Okay so I've been promising a peek at the graphic novel I'm working on for a while so now that it's more or less in it's final stages (hopefully) I've decided to throw a few spreads up here. Trying to pick out stuff that doesn't ruin the story but is still interesting. Also leaving out all the text blocks and text for now even though it's basically taken care of, basically if there's a large white space imagine that there's text there. Expect a few more of these type's of post in the near-ish future as I continue to feel like sharing. Note these won't necessarily be posted in any particular order until I do a big here a final pdf type post sometime in the future.

Valkyrie

Hey there, well I finished the painting for my book last night and all that's left is to figure out a cover, scan everything and the graphic design and type forever. I'm hoping to get all the pages scanned at some point this week so I may throw a few preview pages up here at some point.

In the meantime here's something that I did last week that I just got around to editing for the web. I needed a break from the book so I took a day off to just work on something else and had this sketched out from a little bit ago. Something funny happened to the background color when it was scanned that I can't seem to fix so just imagine it more magenta-y. So now that my life isn't as consumed with my absurd book-page-finishing schedule hopefully the updates can be a bit more frequent, as I'm sure I'll need a fair amount of breaks from the editing and layout processes.

Oh and also t minus 26 days until my US visit/vacation/temporary reprieve.

Houndstooth is really hard.

Here is as promised one of those sporadic postings that I had promised a bit ago so that you know that I haven't fallen down a well or something. This was done for an exhibition which ultimately fell through, but at least I managed to get a piece I liked out of it.

There hasn't been much time for anything else new as of late as I am in the midst of my book and it's absurd self imposed deadline. Basically right now it amounts to 2 finished fully painted pages a day for the next what feel like forever so that I can have most of the artwork done before my visit back to the US. Maybe I'm post a few teasers here and there as I start to scan some of it. I feel like I should have some sort of sign off phrase for these post.

What I've Been Doing For the Past Week Or So

Switching it up a bit for now until who know how long this thing will take, I've started working on a book as part of my thesis (and quickly becoming the majority of my thesis). For the past week-ish I've been doing these basic thumbnail/layouts as an entry into actually doing the book (posted small here as to not ruin the story). It's turning out to be a significantly bigger undertaking than I had initially anticipated, as the page count right now clocks in right at 60. Maybe not my best first significant foray into sequential art but should be a good experience. Expect sporadic at best posting as I work on this, partially because I'm not sure what kind of schedule this will take and partially because posting in progress might ruin the story.

I don't even like Captain America...

So I managed to finish that paper surprisingly early and have a couple of down days since it doesn't make sense to work on my thesis work until I have the meeting with my adviser on Thursday, anyways long story short here's something new that was just for fun and has no real relation to anything else I'm doing.

I've never really been one to draw superheroes (with the exception of those occasional project rooftop submissions last summer) but I seem to have be reading a bunch of superhero books lately and was introduced to a couple of really great new animated show that are gorgeous (spectacular spider from the equally spectacular Sean Galloway and batman the brave and the bold, go watch them now they're really pretty and fun). I'm not sure why I choose Captain America, especially since he's always been one of my least favorites, usually him and superman pretty much top my list. I have to admit that I didn't really know any Captain America villains so I just used the wonderful all purpose henchmen of HYDRA. Oh and since there were way to many dudes I also put in Madame Hyrda, who I only know about because she's in a episode of X-men Evolution which I really like, shut up it's awesome. As always feedback is awesome.

In which Tyler makes excuses and pretends to be a comic artist.

Howdy everyone, so I'm gearing up for end of term slash mid point of my course over here and as such have spent the past few weeks doing completely unfun things printing out everything bit of research and sketch that I've done in the last six months, cobbling together a reasonable in progress portfolio and now writing an obnoxiously long paper, which I am mid way through now and not sure when it'll be done (well before Wednesday I suppose since that's when I have to turn it in).

Anyways those are my super lame excuses for nothing new recently, however I do have this comic I did a little bit ago. I was asked by a friend of mine at SVA to submit a one pager for a comic collection he's working on. No info on the title or when it'll actually see the light of day right now but I'll keep you updated. This was a bit of an odd experience for me since I don't really have any experience in doing comics (I tend to be more on the reading way too many of them side) but it was fun nonetheless. So here it is, hopefully legit new stuff soon.

Littliest Bird finish

Here's the finish to this one in all it's washed out blogger glory, but that seems to be a problem for everyone so I'm not going to worry about it. If anyone has any thoughts they are as always appreciated. I think I may take a bit of a break from these for right now and focus on creating an overarching narrative of some sort rather than these one shots, so expect sporadic posting for a bit again.

The Littlest Birds (Sing the Prettiest Songs)

Okay so after a few weeks of distraction with class and some other opportunities I'm finally back on track with my actual project. Here's what I'm working on right now based on the Be Good Tanya's song The Littlest Birds (Sing the Prettiest Songs). Hoping to get it banged out in the next few days.

Texas Observer: Evolution vs. Creationism

Here's something I did last week for the Texas Observer. It was for piece on Don Mcleroy who's the chairman of the Texas Board of Education and his connection to the creationism versus evolution "debate". It should be out now so if you happen to be in Texas pick one up. It was a little weird going back to doing the cut paper thing, since I've been pretty much exclusively painting as of late, so we'll see where that goes.

Maple Leaves finish... finally

Okay so here's the finish that I promised over a week ago, apparently I did manage to get distracted. And by distracted I mean started the painting over because I didn't like the colors followed by a quick-ish freelance piece for the Texas Observer (I'll post it sometime after the issue comes out). Maybe I need to jinx myself more often, I could get used to a little more of this sort of distraction, the paying freelance kind not so much the having to restart midway through bit. Anyways what you think people of the internet? Thanks and hopefully more soon.

She said it was all make-belief, but I thought you said maple leaves...

Here's the latest, it's based on the Jen Lekman song "Maple Leaves", hoping to have the final done in the next few days unless I get distracted.

They are zombies!... Finish

Here's the latest. There are bits of this I'm really excited about, I like the really minimal line work and am trying to figure out the balance between this and the really pattern-y stuff like the last painting. I've also recently discovered mixing a bit of concentrated watercolor in with the gouache which really makes the colors pop, though you can't really tell in the scan on this one the pink is a bit brighter than it appears on screen (and even worse once publish to the web, anybody have any suggestion on how keep images from being washed out when put up here?). General thoughts/feedback/etc? Thanks everyone and expect more soon.

EDIT: Thanks to Mark and Justin for their help with the color problems, still needs a little tweaking but a vast improvement.

They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!

Here's the latest sketch this one's for "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!" by Sufjan Stevens, this may have just been an excuse to draw zombies. You know the drill final to come if it doesn't suck.

You and I finish

Here's the final for that sketch I put up a few days ago, still trying to get a hang of this painting business but I think there's some improvement here. Mostly just trying to get this whole using a brush for line work thing. I'm still at the point where I like the sketches more than the finals but I'm going to get the hang of this if it kills me. As always feedback is really appreciated and more to come soon.

Maybe I want to do what bunnies do with you, if you know what I mean

Here's the drawing for my next painting, I've decided to stick with this whole painting thing for a bit see if I can get a handle on it. This one's from Ingrid Michaelson's You and I, which is a cute little song I also happen to be trying to learn on ukulele at the moment. I am a bit worried that I might just look like the bunnies are humping the people's heads though. Same rules as last time apply, will post the final if it doesn't suck.

Static Electricity finish

As promised here the finish for that sketch I posted a few days ago, turned out alright I still have a lot of work to do on this whole painting thing. Mostly I'm having trouble getting the nice sharp lines of a pencil with brush. Feedback would be much appreciated.

what's going to be the death of me? static electricity

So about once a year I get it into my head that I'm going to teach myself to paint and it's about that time of year again. I usually get discouraged after about a week or so, we'll see how long it last this time.

Anyways here's a sketch that I did last night loosely based on a line from the mountain goats song I love you let's light ourselves on fire, which quite frankly is one of the greatest song titles ever. I'm going to try and paint it over the next day or to and if it turns out alright I'll post it.

1/16 Skecthbook Scans

A bit of new sketchbook stuff, been playing with gouache lately more to come.

first sketchdump of the new year part 2

and part 2, mostly I've been just doing lots of exploration hence the vaguely schizophrenic appearance of the work as of late