Andrew Jaspersen's Art

I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve been busy with art projects and school. But now that that’s all done. Here are some of my creepier art projects that I did while in school, just in time for the beloved month of Halloween. The first is called Jack Torrance, it’s a portrait that was done in acrylics. The second was originally a base for an oil painting but I decided against it and now it’s an abstract piece called “The Blood Canvas”. The third one I did in the Advanced Illustration class for a video game idea that I haven’t continued on and not sure if I will, it’s called “Demon” and fun fact his face was based off of Alice Cooper. The last one was a project, for a 3D modeling class, about a toy box that I wanted to make spooky so it’s a reference to fallout 3 it’s simply called “Gary.” Stay spooky my friends!

This was a commission I did for the last Crystal Mountain Pony Convention a few years back. One of the sponsors for the convention was a foster care facility, so the heads of the convention asked me to draw a pony family that adopted a foster child, and this is the result. Enjoy.

So here’s one of my most recent projects, this Is different from what I normally do, I made a spear. My best friend from back home is a self taught blacksmith, and he’s been going through some tough times. I won’t go into everything that happened, but recently his father past away, so I asked myself “what should I get a blacksmith, and weapon collector, that would help raise his spirits”? So I decided to make him a spear based of of his favorite weapon from Fallout New Vegas, the Legionary Spear. His problem with the in game spear is that you can’t pick it back up after throwing them and that you can’t craft them. So I made him this one with a leather wrapped grip of yellow and blue died leather. It’s not just a decoration either, it’s been hardened and tempered, I didn’t want to get rid of that awesome gold color you can see in the bottom right image but I still had to make some adjustments and wanted it to have a uniform color. It’s strong, sharp and ready for battle, I have the scars to prove it; as a side note you should sharpen the blade after you haft it to the shaft not before.

Happy 2018 everyone! I hope you all have a great year. I want to thank you all for all the support and sticking with me during this long hiatus. I want to let you all know that new art is coming, I have been drawing a lot and a lot of it has been personal, a good chunk of which I don’t feel like I should share. I’ve had a rough year, like many others, with personal struggles, losses and failures, but it also had its positive points, so I have hope that this year will be even better. I wish you all the best, and know that I’m not dead yet just bruised slightly bloody. So I’m going to got to bed and sleep like my favorite little doggo here. Goodnight and have a happy new year!

I'm back! I'm home from the CMPC and unpacked and relaxing. It was the first time I was a vendor at a con and I gotta say it wasn't what I expected but I still enjoyed every minute of it and I hope to do it again. My booth, this year, was themed around the idea of the Saturday evening post and each of these was super fun to draw. Let me know what you think.

Ok so part of my job with the Crystal Mountain Pony Con is to create character sheets for the 3 mascots of the convention. The first one I was practicing is this one: her name is Saltlick. She was the original mascot from the beginning and they've added 2 more over the years. This pose was from a pamphlet from the first CMPC back in 2013 it just had no outlines so this drawing is my final practice drawing before cracking down on the final drawings. The next pony will be Saltflats the other female mascot and the other is the male that I have the least amount of information on. Let me know what you think.

Alright here's a sketch of Nightmare Moon, I drew this as part of an exercise to get used to drawing ponies in the canon style, and not my own. I'm going to be doing work for the Crystal Mountain Pony Con in Salt Lake City this year, and I may have a booth as well I'll give you all more info as I get it. Thanks for sticking around.

Okay so here's what's happening; I'm working on updating my copyright of Evan and Interim. I'm going into this project full force while I'm jobless, and I'll hopefully have something awesome to show for it. I am creating this story and world for my character Evangelyne Olsen; and it is a lot of work. I'm going to be changing a couple different things to some of the cast including Evan herself. Don't worry, for Evan it's mostly just a slight palette change, just to help differentiate her from other yellow catlike characters out there, don't worry nothing too big. She will still be the Evan you love. Right now I'm working on writing the script for the story and developing a towns worth of characters as they come along. Developing backstories and slightly altering others, it has been really fun so far and I'm looking forward to continuing. I've been reading books to help me hone my writing skills, books like "Stan Lee's: how to write comics" and Wizard's "How to draw: storytelling" for the basics among other books and essays about writing. I am also reading actual novels, some anthologies, bestsellers and classics to see what a great story is like and hopefully apply what I learn from them to writing Evan's story. For character development I'm dissecting each character down to the bone to see how they move and function as well as character model sheets and expression sheets, color charts, scar maps and other detail sheets as well as questionnaires for each new character, to help me learn what makes them the way they are. THIS DOES NOT MEAN I WILL STOP POSTING ART. I am going to use my off time from this project to start painting "serious" traditional art as well as start practicing digital art again. There is an awesome book I'm going to be using as a reference for my traditional work, it is called "Media Experimentation" by Wade Huntsman. The author is an amazing artist and an awesome person as well as a great teacher. I studied under him at BYUI in a couple different classes one of which has the same title as the book. This book is technically a college textbook so it's a bit pricey; $150 USD for the physical copy but only $50 USD for a digital copy; but to me it was worth every penny, especially since I got it as a Christmas present. Wade Huntsman worked on a couple of great but under appreciated animated films, specifically The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and I believe a couple others. He was a scenery/background painter for these movies, I was able to hold and look at some of these large paintings up close and they are mind blowing. I'll be posting the results from my experiments back into painting and drawing as well as some studies of classical painters and golden age illustrators. Anyway sorry for the long post I just wanted to let you know why my posts might become more infrequent. Just know I'm alive and safe and working to hopefully bring you something great. Also if you made it this far let me know if you think I should start a patreon account and/or a 'go fund me' thing so you all can help support me and my work. I'm always happy to hear from you, just let me know what you think. Thanks for reading and for all of your support. -aj-zig-zag-

Hey everyone I've been working on my 'Interim' project which is the work Evan is from. And o have some news about that that I will make in an new post so read that if you want to hear what's up with that. The short of it is that I'm going to hold off on posting images of her for a little bit while I update my copyright. Anyway this image was done with my usual prismacolor pencils. It is about finding and going through old kick and cleaning up. Anyway I encourage you to read the next post it might be long but it's about the future of this project.

So first sketch of the year and I decided to draw Evan after she fell asleep on the recliner whipped out after the celebrations yesterday. I'v been pretty good these past 2 week and I'm feeling good about the coming months. I also got an awesome Christmas present and I got my first ever fan art of Evan from an awesome guy on furaffinity and that made my year. Thank you all that have stuck with me you guys are awesome and I hope we all have a great year. Thank you.

Life and snow update. Life is alright right now been taking it easy(ish), I've been develop ideas for paintings and reworking ideas for my "Interim" and have been trying to solidify and write down its script so the comics can officially start. I finally updated my DA account and my FA account and now I'm debating whether or not to delete my FA account and just stick to Tumblr and DA for now. Not sure. If anyone has any advice I'm listening. For the snow update the first picture is from earlier today when my father and I first shoveled the snow it was 32F/0.0C out side the second picture was after the second time we did and it was 19F/-7.23C snow it's even colder and I'm no longer able to see the sidewalk. It's been raining and snowing off and on all week and now the roads are like a hockey rink, it's a perfect weekend to stay home, never get out of your pjs, wrap yourself up in blankets, and warm up with a hot toddy and watch some cheesy horror movies.

Thank you all so much!! We hit and past 300 followers in a day and that is awesome. You guys are awesome and knowing that you guys like what I do really helps me get motivated to do better, thank you. So as thanks to you all here is drawing of me, in my comic style, with Evan. We are both excited that we reached this milestone and we hope to create much more art by the time we reach the next one. Thank you all again this is awesome.

Alright so this was the piece I was working on on the snow picture it was originally going to be monochromatic and the color was going to be brushed on coffee from the cup I was drinking in the picture. But once I started I couldn't stop and the picture ended up taking drawing sessions over the span of a couple of days and needless to say I started using more that coffee for color. This is watercolor, prismacolor pencils and a little coffee it was fun and finally I felt it was done yesterday and I immediately went into the image for the 300 followers we already past it that milestone but it's almost done. I can't think of more to say but thank you. Thanks to all of you it's been rough for me for a while and I think ya getting better. Thanks for all the feedback and sticking with me.