Saturday, January 30, 2010

Illustration Friday: Focused

Schubert was so focused on what he saw he forgot to chew his cud.

I was researching sheep at work on Friday, and I really liked how funny their faces looked, thus I drew a sheep. I guess I'm back in the swing of things with Illustration Friday, because This concept came quickly and I drew it straight onto the bristol board with minimal corrections.

I also found my water pen again, instead of the gigantic chinese watercolor brush, so I'm much happier. I can add little details to my heart's content. I thought about breaking out the colored pencils to refine a few areas, but I was happy that I kept this loose (for me) so I left it alone.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Illustration Friday: Clumsy & Marvin the Marvelous duo

Marvin the Marvelous donned his pointy hat, secured his wand, opened the door, stepped out, fell on his nose.


This Marvin piece seemed perfect for this week's IF topic: Clumsy. For those who don't know, this is a project that I'm working on with my husband. He gives me a sentence each week and I have to illustrate it with my wizardly character, Marvin. I'm planning on doing one a week in between working on my first children's book project.

Marvin's character is a work in progress, and I'm using him to explore getting more movement and expression in my work, as well as more detail. I've always loved those wonderfully complex characters with elaborate outfits and gadgets and stuff everywhere.

I'm not quite sure what's up with the perspective on the background...it's wonky, and it is what happens when I freehand a background in ink after developing the character. I also couldn't decide which angle I wanted to draw Marvin at--the anticipation or the fall--so you get both! His arm also got slightly disjointed when I redrew the image on bristol using my light box. The bristol board is thick enough that with a light box I get a general idea where the line is, but it's not extremely precise. I ended up just redrawing the hands rather than tracing them.

Next time: make the color looser, and ink AFTER color.

Marvin the Marvelous colored


Marvin has been colored!

I may end up tweaking the colors throughout the course of this project...I am still putting a bit too much detail in the work. He's supposed to be colored loosely. I colored this one at the same as the Marvin piece for this week. I need to try my third Marvin piece drawn loosely with the pen instead of tracing it off the sketch.