Austin, TX

photo by phil holland









Pretty busy around here lately, which is a good thing! To keep the pencil moving outside my comics, I've been doing a lot of girl drawings.

The top 2 images are from a continuing series of pastel on paper pieces drawn for the figure drawing section on the VLP. The next ink page was done from life, 1-2 minutes. The next image was a morning warm up, and the final bunch of images were drawn from life at SXSW in Austin Texas where I was working with the Art Department promoting the program. 1-2 minute poses. I was amped to draw alongside Trey, Jane, and Dustin the whole weekend...make sure to check the drawings they did from the same sessions..great work!!! Friday night was a dope event at Austin's Mohawk bar. Was able to knock out some drawings of wild models with the insanely talented Massive Black crew of Whit, Kemp, Andrew, Jason, Carl, and Brad. Mark English even stopped by and wowed with his drawings and paintings. I can cross off a life goal since I was able to score one of his drawings!!!!!

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Lastly I'm excited to announce I will be moving to Austin, Texas to begin my role as studio leader of one of the the physical studio locations (aka pods) of The Art Department. I really believe in the program and am happy to be involved at the ground floor. I will be working directly under Jason Manley and moving my studio into the studio space with all the students to hopefully set the pace and offer any wisdom I can. Trey Bryan will be the studio leader at the Kansas City location working with the Englishes, and Josh George will be the leader at the Richmond location working with Sterling Hundley. The final location in San Francisco will continue to be handled by Carl Dobsky and Coro.

A few folks have asked how this will affect my Russian studies... well, I haven't given up on that. I still really want to make that happen. And I am confident they will. But for the foreseeable future I am very excited about Austin and my comics that I'm working on behind the scenes!!

take care,
-fv

16 comments:

Kendra Melton said...

Aw that's wonderful, Congrats man! Glad to see things are going well. Austin's a cool city. Lots to do. The top figure pastels are particular beautiful. All great work though. :]

Charles Valsechi said...

Awesome, Francis. Best of luck to you. Hopefully, I will get to be involved with that program soon.

Diantres said...

hey Francis, congrats for all your achievements, this kind of posts motivates me to push harder on my own career as illustrator.

Also, nice pastels!

TREY BRYAN said...

francis,

it was great drawing with you, jane and dustin. That will be one of the best nights of my life- pure energy.

-treybryan

Tanya said...

Congratulations! It sounds like a really good experience.

Also, I love your girldrawings!

Aaron Rossell Illustration said...

Nice! Congrats on the job--I hope Austin treats you well

Unknown said...

beautiful work Francis! Great to see all the wonderful things happening for you!!=)

Cookedart said...

Gorgeous!

Oliver said...

Fantastic! Well done. I wish I could be a part of it. They're lucky to have you.

Dominic Bugatto said...

Congrats , lovely drawings as usual.

RAWLS said...

These are really great man! I love the ink ones!! Congrats on everything that's happening for ya, sounds exciting! And hangin with the MB gang would be a treat indeed. Very talented folks!

Jelter said...

Good news. Also those pastel drawings are crazy good!

pcarlson@ringling.edu said...

those pastel drawings are like carved reliefs! thanks for sharing.

Tooninator said...

amazing studies. Such expressive lines you use

francisvallejo said...

thanks everyone!

Mark Harchar said...

Francis, in these quick 1-2 sketches, it appears as if you are using charcoal pencils sharpened very finely so that you can get those crisp lines as well as the wide edges and get them done quickly with one tool. It looks like they pencils may be 2B or 4B charcoal? Is that correct or are you using something different. Really, really inspiring!