Bucket Ben

Hi! I draw and stuff.

[bucketben]

A cat loving cyclist racing across rooftops... escaping the cacti-geddon. Or something. 

[bucketben]

Had a blast making this Norman Rockwell takeoff. 

...Watercolors are hard tho.

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I loved my Gamecube. Happy times =-)

[bucketben]

All comics lovers out there, two words:

“Fantasy Sports”

Some fan art I did of Sam Bosma’s characters Wiz & Mug! 

Sam Bosma is an amazing visual storyteller and these will make you happy:

https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Sports-Sam-Bosma/dp/1907704809

https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Sports-Bandit-Barbel-Bay/dp/1910620106/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

[bucketben]

Just your average gameboy, lighter, marble and yoyo-toad monsters

[bucketben]

I just find the old wise mage and his apprentice on a journey trope to be inherently awesome, so here’s my take on it. The way I see it, this mage is quite particular about his hair do, so the apprentice is the hat squire. 

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Some pics of an adaptation to Jack and the Beanstalk I illustrated. Eventually a friend and I bound it in book form, he made this really cool mechanism in the book’s spine that lets you discover hidden pages that revealed 2 alternative plots with different endings! After reading once you get these keys that let you revisit the story and open pages in half.

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[bucketben]

Collage I did a month back for school. Things got kinda hectic but I finally finished my 1st semester! 

[bucketben]

Got to draw more this week which is fun. Experimented with cross hatching using rusty pipes as reference, the other technique is the flip side of the coin, scratching a transparent sheet painted black while referencing an owl. For the pipes I used a lightpad to gain general outlines with a pencil then applied hatching from observation with pens. For the owl I printed and cut the owl using it as a stencil for decent proportions, now I'm scratching it from observation.

[bucketben]

School...

Tends to suck. I study Visual Communication which means I learn a lot of different subjects like Interactive design, photography, typography etc. Sketch class is 3 hours every Thursday and we have 3 hours of Techniques class every Wednesday. Aside from those 6 hours and their respective homework assignments, I really don't get to draw as much as I would have liked. Last week was especially hard assignment wise but none of them required any actual drawing. This makes me feel kinda stifled since I mainly want to get better at illustration (which we don't get to study properly till next year). Anyway, I still get to learn a lot of mostly interesting stuff so It's not all bad, but I still feel kinda down about it :-/. Well, keep calm and carry on I guess.

[bucketben]

No drawings this week :-( . Lots of photos though, here's just a few (the Peter Pan is obviously a picture of a TV screen). In sketch class we did a collage from still life this week, sadly I didn't manage to finish it in class, I might complete it later out of ref pics I took from the still life.

[bucketben]

Been a pretty tough week which resulted in me procrastinating homework during the weekend (which will probably bite me in the ass during this week but oh well). Anyway, top left is a placement mat I did digitally for a ketchup bottle, the assignment was to alter the meaning of the ketchup bottle when placed on the 2d environment. Top right is a new technique we did at school with white gouache and black non soluble ink (I dislike the final result, the technique is pretty nifty though). Bottom left is a pencil drawing of a shoe focusing on lines, color and texture in turn. The naked lady is my second life model drawing and first attempt at using charcoal, overall a positive experience.

[bucketben]

Forgot to post yesterday! Last week was ok-ish. Lots of classes got cancelled for better or worse, including sketch class :(. The photos are inner spaces I arranged and took pictures of, I then had to pick existing logos that fit the pics. The shoe line drawing is the first of 3, the other two need to focus on only color and only texture. The doodle page was hella fun, I hope I get mote assignments like it. The area 51 piece is finally finished, though I still think the end result is Meh at best.

[bucketben]

This week kinda sucked :-/. Spent a lot of time on that Nasa Meets Killer Alien piece but am not satisfied with it. Top left is my first ever life model I did in sketching class. The Eastwood piece is digital, we experimented with the brush tool in Photoshop and had to copy a picture focusing on using layers. Kinda feels like cheating but it was pretty fun to do even so. The last one is a 70*100 cm page we need to doodle the heck of till Wednesday, pretty fun so far. That's 4 weeks down now, time really does fly huh?

[bucketben]

The gods of homework are smiting me fiercely. Top left is my first digital piece! It seems people tend to either get those silouhettes at first glance or not at all. A still life I did in class and finally the early beginnings of a drawing I need to finish by wednesday. The rest of my homework is divided between photgraphy assignments and tipography drills.

[bucketben]

Second week of school went by really fast. My hand is adjusting better to the strain which is very reassuring. Above on the left is a work in progress (have to take a letter, flip it and sketch it as if it were in 3d), the other one is a samurai robot head made by erasing a graphite covered paper.