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.

Meet Marvin

Meet Marvin. He's MARVELOUS!

He's also my new bloggy project! I've been wanting something fun that I could post on my blog that will also teach me to dedicate shorter blocks of time to finished work, ie, work quicker and looser. He is also my work-around so I have stuff to post while working on my children's book. Like Illustration Friday, I have to do one a week, from sketch to quick finished color. Each of his adventures will be based upon a sentence or scenario that my husband comes up with. The above post is NOT this weekend's, it is just getting a feel for the character. We'll see how color pans out, and he may change slightly in appearance as my characterization develops.

I'll be adding color later, but I'm off to bed now since I work tomorrow. more to come.