JAMES O'BRIEN STUDIO

A digital doodle that started out as a silly bicycle, evolved into this lover thief guy.

Started out as an ink doodle of a mouth and a face, and started to take on a resemblance to Keith Richards, so titled it Not Keef.

A series of collages made as demos for Color Theory class.

Characters from "The Man Who Fell To Earth," Marylou, Jerome, Farnsworth, and Bryce.

Drawing of a millennial, used for the cover of ILLOZINE 22.

A series of portrait drawings of Barack Obama at the three debates held during his 2012 re-election campaign.

Kang chews out Kirk. The Enterprise attacked his ship, unprovoked! Suddenly, Chekov accuses the Klingons of killing his brother, Piotre. Kang instructs his men to use the Agonizer on Chekov, forcing Kirk to surrender. But when Spock transports them all onto the Enterprise, he holds the Klingons in the transporter beam until a security team can arrive to capture them.

Kang was played by Michael Ansara who passed away a couple of weeks ago. Below is an animated gif made from the screen shots I used from the episode as reference.

Drawing inspired by Milton Caniff's Dragon Lady from his Steve Canyon strip.

I made this drawing of Macklemore after watching a little bit of the MTV VMAs with my daughter.

Simply a drawing of my left hand, with some lettering and a drop of blood.

When I attend church, I draw, usually someone sitting in front of me. This drawing also includes one of the hanging lamps transformed into a pulpit for the pastor.

A spread from my Art House Co-op sketchbook. This is John Pettit (Robin Philips) from the 1966 Avengers episode, “A Sense of History.” The lettering, “Hot 1″ was added because I happened to be listening to this.

Crave at the Mall of America seems to be my sanctuary from the shopping crowds. I tend to end up at the bar with my sketch pad, a beer, and some sushi while my family shops. I started this drawing of one of the bar patrons and my daughter later joined in contributing a bit here and there.

This is the letter “N” I drew at church, a quick reference drawing for a potential project. I wanted to add some hand lettering and “Luke” came from the lectionary (I know, begins with an “L” but I didn’t hear any interesting “N” words and couldn’t remember the sign for “L”). A couple of things I’ve learned about fingerspelling…

> bridges sign language and spoken language to represent words that have no corresponding sign1

> can be one-handed or two handed1

> a person fluent in sign language reads fingerspelling by looking at the speller’s face rather than their hands, reading what is being fingerspelled through their peripheral vision1

A spread from my Art House Co-op sketchbook, gouache and ink. This was my first tentative step back into gouache, first in twenty or so years. Not really much of a gouache piece, just a painted shape with inked line. But as I said, a tentative step.

I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll submit this sketchbook, may decide to keep it in my own collection. The way this Co-op thing works is you pay a fee to receive a sketchbook, simply a small plain Moleskin Cahier which has thin paper, not the best surface for ink. Then after you fill it up, you send it back in to be displayed at their Brooklyn library gallery.

I bolstered the thin paper with a coating of white gouache so that my brush pen ink wouldn’t bleed through. This caused some wrinkling which affected the line quality in spots, interesting accidents, nervous broken lines. I also tried applying colored tissue with wheat starch glue, ala Eric Carle, but the paper was so thin that the wrinkling got a bit out of hand. So I mainly just stuck to simple gouache and ink throughout.

I reduced the palette in Photoshop (Image>Mode>Index Color) down to three colors—black, pink, and white—which transformed the lighter gray paper wrinkles into pink. So the pink line through the dog’s mouth is actually the shadow created by the gutter of the sketchbook.

My intention was to draw a ferocious, snarling dog, but he turned out kind of happy, maybe influenced by the pink gouache.

My daughter signed up to promote her ballet troupe’s Nutcracker performance this season. She dressed up in her soldier outfit and handed out fliers at the Mall of America on Black Friday. She didn’t want me hanging around so I walked down to Crave (website plays music) with my sketchbook and pens and drew people at the bar.

The cap of my Kaimei brush pen came off (found out this is common) and the brush tip dried up. I tried re-wetting it, washing it, all of the online suggestions I could find but no luck. So I set it aside and looked for some other options. In one discussion board, I found this list which also includes recommendations for nonbrush tip pens: Pentel GFKP Pocket Brush, Zebra brush pen, Rotring Sketch EF, Rotring Rapidoliner, and Sakura Micron 08.

I decided to try out the Pentel brush pen (recommended by one of the Wet Paint staff persons). I’ve also been using a Pelikan P58 Style Fountain Pen and a Zebra F-301 ballpoint pen, and a red Uni-Ball roller ball pen.

These drawings are from Crave and from church, my first using the Pentel brush pen.

The top one includes a draped table from church, used for a baptism.

The middle sketch is of a burly man in sweats watching football at Crave.

The bottom sketch is from church, more back-of-the-head views.

James Whitmore in the film, Them!

I brought a class of students over to Spyhouse to do some observational research, looking, listening, sketching. I had time for a quick brush pen sketch of a young man concentrating on his laptop.

Photos from Dr. Macro’s High Quality Movie Scans