Shy Jimmy

Alright, enough of this life nonsense. Back to drawing.

This is Shy Jimmy. He doesn’t do well in public places. As a matter of fact, he would prefer it if you didn’t look at him right now.

Shy Jimmy usually spends his days deep in his basement where he likes to systematically read through the dictionary and plot how he will one day take over the world with his extensive vocabulary.

You see, in the 6th grade, Shy Jimmy had a chance at winning the epic, countywide, annual spelling bee. But instead of impressing his fellow classmates with his dazzling intellect, Jimmy’s extreme introversion and nervousness for public speaking caused him to accidentally throw up all over little Peggy Sue (on whom he had a rather large crush) in the front row. He had a big lunch that day.

The humiliation was too much for Shy Jimmy who ran out of the auditorium, forfeiting the King Bee championship to Ned Tibble who was CLEARLY sub par and did not deserve the honor or the prestige or the babes (Peggy Sue) that came with the rather large trophy.

But let’s not feel sorry for Shy Jimmy. He will have his day in the sun. It will scorch his translucent basement skin but OH HE WILL HAVE. HIS. DAY.

He has penciled it in for next Thursday.

Oh, the shame!

It’s half way through 2011 and I’ve blogged all of twice. My head hangs in shame. As to why, I don’t really know. It’s a combination of a lot of things, I suppose. Mostly distractions in all shapes and forms.

What am I doing now that school is out for the summer? GLAD YOU ASKED. Well, for one, I’m not taking a summer school class for the first time in 4 years. It almost feels like I’ve graduated. It’s glorious.

I’m taking a week or two to recharge my art cells, gain some art inspiration, work on loads freelance stuff and cleanse my life of non-necessities. I have huge plans of gutting my room of old artwork and doodads I’ve been holding onto since…oh, you know…my whole life. Like a box of bubblegum machine quality toys that for some reason have sentimental value that I can’t quite pinpoint. It taunts me from my closet.

Here is a piece from my illustration class last semester. The assignment was to re-imagine the “Where the Wild Things Are” book cover. Yes, I know the boy wasn’t a shark but what can I say, the guidelines were loose and I’m a rebel.

Here are just a few value and color palette studies before I settled on the final piece.

Value

Color 1

Color 2

Final

Inspiration

It’s hard to know when inspiration will strike. As a matter of fact, I can pretty much bet on it not striking more often than it does. So the fact that nearly every time I close my eyes I can see a new idea for an illustration makes me think something is wrong. Am I some experiment like Kyle XY (curse you, ABC, for canceling my mindless guilty pleasure)? Could my brain be genetically programmed to COME ALIVE two months after my 24th birthday? Could it be stress mixed with caffeine mixed with procrastination? Yes, probably.

Here is my attempt to start visually recording what’s going on in my head because this won’t last long. I can already feel the ideas slipping away…..stopppppp……noooooooooo……crap.

Please no one sue me for stealing your images. (the fabulous dress on the lower right is from Mod Cloth, www.modcloth.com)