Self Portrait Winners!

So here they are! After a long week of waiting these are the winners of the first annual self portrait profile picture competition! It was INSANELY hard to choose the winners in this because for real pretty much every single one of the almost 200 entries were AWESOME! So here we go! Starting with the top 3 followed by a whole bunch of honorable mentions.

-GRAND PRIZE-

Henrique Jardim

-GRAND PRIZE-

Emily Hum

-GRAND PRIZE-

Steven Robertson

 These 3 pieces are all so outstanding in terms of craftsmanship and overall quality that I thought they had to win. There will definitely be other art contests very soon so if you didnt win THERE WILL BE MORE AWESOME PRIZES SO SOON!! Now lets look at some other awesome pieces-

HONORABLE MENTIONS

BEST CHARICATURE

Adela Kang

 

 VAJAZZIEST

Bee Mehnert

http://beeasinbomb.wordpress.com/

PIECE I TOTALLY THOUGHT WAS HAND PAINTED UNTIL I LOOKED REALLY CLOSE

Caitlin Geels

 MOST ELF-LIKE

Cassandra Poulson

 BEST USE OF A DS

Char Fenton

MOST AWESOME DEPICTION OF SUSHI

Damaly Keo

 MOST ADORABLE - MALE

Dan Woodling

 GLOWIEST

Elise Mesnard

http://elisemesnard.blogspot.com/

MOST LIKE THAT DRUG TRIP I SAW IN THAT MOVIE 

WHEN I WAS ON THAT DRUG TRIP

Elizabeth Allen

 BIGGEST DICK

  Ian Mcginty

  

MOST FUCKING POWERFUL

 Jake Schlosser

MOST HILARIOUSLY RACIST

 Jenn Braunstein

MOST ADORABLE - FEMALE

Lauren Duda

SIMPLEST

Lena Hunter

HIPSTEREST

 Lillian Beaty

MOST CONFUSINGLY BADASS

Meg Ryan Flanigan

CRAZIEST LOOKING DUDE EVER

 Michael Zhang

 FISHIEST

Mychal Amann

SECOND MOST AWESOME USE OF DS

Phil Jacobson

CAME SO FREAKING CLOSE TO WINNING - MALE

 Robert Knight

CAME SO FREAKING CLOSE TO WINNING - FEMALE

Sami Woolhiser

 COOLEST MATERIAL

Tristan Francis

AND THATS ALL FOLKS! I'm mulling over some ideas for next months contest, but I really hope that all of you will enter next time because its gonna be AWESOME!!! I hope you guys had as much fun as I did making these things and it was super cool to see the huge range of styles and different materials and techniques y'all used. If you won or were in the honorable mentions and want me to stick a link to your blog on here HOLLA AT ME ON FACEBOOK WITH A LINK and ill put it up asap. The next contest will start on July 25th so GET YOUR ART SUPPLIES READY.

MONSTERCADE!

 

So heres a little something I just put together this weekend! My pal has a full on upright arcade machine and a little while ago I asked if I could paint it for him since customizing an arcade machine has been a pretty much lifelong dream of mine. In exchange hes helping me build a bartop arcade of my own! It was actually a really simple project and he gave me a lot of freedom with what i wanted to do design-wise so it was super fun to do. Heres some process-

First I gessoed the whole side of the arcade because the shiny plastic coating wasnt taking paint very well.

Then some basic shapes and underpainting.

 Then detailing and adding some background. This is all acrylic paint and at the end we coated it with some clear polyurethane to keep the paint safe.

Crazy monster power charge!!!!

And then adding a little bit of retro flavor!!

 

And finally a bitchin' title for a bitchin' arcade! 

Detail

Voila! It was a big canvas and I had never tried something like this before, but it turned out great! let me know what you think! If youre interested in buying an upright or bartop arcade machine I will be making more and selling them on my etsy in the very near future and will definitely be taking custom orders so check back soon!

Back at it

Hey y'all just wanted to do a quick update just so i can stay in the game and share what I've been working on with you. this is the first 3ish pages of a bigger project. It started as a project based on my trip to japan but has morphed a little bit into something more exciting. In total I'm hoping the finished product will be about 80 pages long. My pal Danny Weltman is writing now which Im really excited about because ive been trying to draw a script of his for a long time. Stay tuned!!

Cosmocubs!

So my good pal sparky commissioned me to create a piece for his almost-finished animation project Cosmocubs! Its a really fantastic story and i love the characters so it was really awesome being commissioned to create a part of this universe. I created a piece that will be used for the cover of the comic anthology hes putting out that also features the Cosmocubs, as well as a poster for advertising the film. I made a time lapse video of the inking portion to show a little bit of my process.

Unfortunately the painting took too long to make a video of with my cameras short battery life and small memory card but ill be doing more of these videos in the near future so stay tuned! Prints of the piece are avaliable on my etsy! Let me know what you guys think!

Shoobies

Just a quick blog post today- Heres a pair of shoes i just finished. They're hawaiian themed so i used my limited knowledge of hawaii to create this pair. Ive done a hokusai inspired pair before so it was interesting to see how i could use what i learned doing the last pair to do this one. I dont do any preliminary work usually when i do shoes unless the client asks for it so its always a much more zen process working on shoes then on say, comics. It forces me to slow down and edit myself in the very early sages of a design which i always think makes for an interesting process and leads to stuff that i wouldnt normally produce, which i love.

Bonus art- new sketchbook. Gouache, 4 hrs.

real real raw. if you want to commission a pair of shoes or a custom sketchbook
 hit me up- here
and ill be adding new stuff to my website hopefully this weekend! stay tuned.
tait howard dot com

Comicx

Here are the comic strips i produced for the cartooning class i took in japan

These were also a little ways outside my comfort zone but were really fun to do. I have almost zero experience with one panel gags so writing ended up being one of the hardest parts but working on theme felt alot looser and more free than usual when working on comics. Im a little disappointed with the inking, but time was a big issue so i didn't have a chance to redo it. we also did a 'sunday' strip- heres the uncolored version which i liked alot better.
And hey, if you're reading this blog you probably already know this but ive got a website now, which you can find here-
http://www.taithoward.com/
i also have a twitter and tumblr, which are both totally bitchin.