Jason Shasteen Design

Well….I am back to posting to my art blog finally.  It’s not that I haven’t been making art every week, but I just haven’t been posting my weekly entries to my site as well.  So from here on out, I will be posting my entries for the Artosaurs Weekly Theme on my site and linking back to the groups site.  For those of you that haven’t checked it out already, Artosaurs is site that some friends of mine help contribute to each week and has been a great way to motivate me to do something on my own atleast once a week.  The themes have been thick with potential and the entries keep getting better and better as time goes on.  This week’s theme was PLANTS and I really had nothing until today when I was driving the car to pick up dinner.  My son Jaiden wanted to tell me about a great idea he had for a soccer ball with several tiny umbrellas surrounding it to protect it from all the rain.  Brilliant!!!  So I combined a few inspirations I already had swirling in my head with this idea of an umbrella hat on a sunflower.  Ofcourse, with all the rain this week, it only seemed right to have such a theme.  Cheer up Sunny…..it’s only going to rain for another week or so Atleast it isn’t snowing.

This was a digital painting I did for my wife for Valentine’s Day.  I did a search for roses on the internet and this was the coolest one I came across.  It was great for turning into good practice at the art of painting in photoshop.  The finished result looked as good, if not better, than anything I did during my studio days at Texas Tech.  It was also nice that it only took me about 45 minutes to do (while the kids were napping) and didn’t involve any cleanup.  Funny how several of the same techniques I used with that medium carried over to this piece.  I still have those memories of my clothes being covered in charcoal when coming back to the dorms my freshman year after another 3 hours class of drawing….good times!  Anyways, I hope to get better at this and maybe start doing pieces for other people in the future…..atleast making some very nice prints for starters

I was inspired tonight to start trying to come up with a character for my first attempt at a webcomic.  I am stilling thinking that the idea of “JaidenTown” is a great place to start.  So as I sketched away to try and capture the essence of my son Jaiden, it was a rough start.  I did however come up with one attempt that led me to another and before I knew it I came up with this latenight scenario.  I am also considering the idea the puppy he sleeps with almost every night could be one of his friends that comes to life on occasion.  Which seems really fun, since he also has an alligator too.  Now it has occurred to me that the concept of a boy, a puppy, or even stuffed animals that come to life has been done before ( Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story, Calvin and Hobbes).  But when it is inspired by one of my boys, whom I love so deeply….it can never be cliche.  So I am hoping that will come across to others who read the comic, and not just me:).  I think an awesome dream sequence every once and awhile would be fun too! ….All that being said, just typing as I get inspired….. maybe I will completely change my mind tomorrow…who knows…..sure seems like a great idea right now though.

I was trying to decide earlier this week what subject I was going to sketch this weekend and I was leaning toward revisiting the ninja turtles.  I have fun memories of drawing these guys all the time, especially in school around the time the first movie came out in theaters.  I even made a few quarters from copies I made, with my teachers permission ofcourse, by selling them to other students.  Too bad I spent all my profit on some totally awesome sports pencils!  Anyways, I considered it confirmation when one of my favorite artists, Jake Parker, decided to post a version of the original Leonardo from the comic book series on his blog.  So Saturday turned into playing some TMNT on the computer with Jaiden and watching the latest movie which I haven’t been in the mood to watch in atleast a year.  Good times…too bad I chose to color this sketch and stayed up way too late….haven’t done that in a while.  Pray for me that I’m not too grumpy when Jaiden tries to wake me up early tomorrow….thanks!   Oh yeah….COWABUNGA!!!