Hexagon Block Portraits (7)

This sad little guy was made with the leftovers of the final group of pieces. It's interesting for me to look at how what's essentially the same portrait, only created from progressively fewer resources, begins to degrade more and more with each new version. Sorta like "House of Cosbys".

Hexagon Block Portraits (6)

After I'd pretty much exhausted the possibilities of my first group of blocks, I decided to make a new set with a focus on depth and volume and less flashy color and brushwork. I limited the colors to get more cohesion in the portraits, and applied the paint in a "relief" method: colors applied in order of darkness - darkest first, lightest last. This avoids implications of directional light sources, which are always dramatic and evocative, but are hard to keep consistent so can be distracting.
I also wanted to see if I could work without relying on the representational blocks, which were such an important part of the first few portraits but were never really part of the original idea behind the project and again, drew so much attention as to be a bit of a distraction.

Hexagon Block Portraits (5)

The final portrait of the first group of blocks. The eyes work well once again, and hold the piece together pretty well. Otherwise I thought the mouth was nice, with even an implication of skinny little bottom-front teeth.

At this point I was occasionally "cheating" by painting swaths of skin tone or background black onto some blocks. For example I painted a big chunk of yellow onto the block used for the forehead when I couldn't find any other block that fit.

Hexagon Block Portraits (4)

Because I was making a face the same size and perspective each time, it tended to turn out that a block that was good or bad for one portrait was good or bad for all of them, and I would excitedly use up all the good pieces on the first portrait and the quality would diminish with each one that I made.

I was scraping for good blocks by the time I made this one and the one after, although I think the eyes on this one are pretty nice - sort of weary and melancholy yet gentle and wise.

Adventure Time

I'll be moving out to Burbank, CA in a couple weeks to start a new gig at Cartoon Network. I'm doing prop and character designs for a new show called Adventure Time.

These drawings are from the design test that sealed the deal:

Hexagon Block Portraits (3)

The first of a set of three using black backgrounds (hoping for more dramatic depth) and a hexagonal compostion.