Illustration Friday: Grounded

He was grounded until the rains were over, but all he wanted to do is hop.

Just a quick little sketch. I drew the frog over the weekend and he just sat waiting for a story. I was thinking of creating a crowd of frogs, but the rain and lily pad won out.

Illustration Friday: Remedy

"Choose your remedy wisely."

There actually is a story behind this one: At dinner, while trying to figure out what to draw for illustration friday, we had some almonds on the table for our salad and the package read "all natural!" Well, the hubby wanted someone to make a product that markets how UN-natural it is. So I did. For more amusement, it was suggested that the side of the label read "mild side effects include death..."

It may be darker then my usual doodles, but I guess I had a bit of quirky humor going on today. Now that I think about it, "humor" would have been a good term to add to the bottles, especially when I was running out of label ideas. It was a lot of fun to lay in the shades of gray with the markers, and I got to put my toe into the steampunk craze that is quite fun.

Happy Trees

So not all my sketches turn out exactly how I want them too. This one was supposed to be much more regular, almost pixelated placement of trees. I almost gave up on it a number of times, but I kept at it. It's growing on me.

Illustration Friday: Midsummer Night

It started with a continuous outline of their silhouettes, some heads added Tom Gauld-style, then the wings...and a perfect opportunity for me to draw some patterns, since I've been seeing interesting patterns everywhere recently. A little bit of crosshatching for texture, a lot of blocking in solids and a touch of typography. It was very interesting to see how the natural variations with the line work of the silhouettes created a range of unique characters, including a few matrons, a few innocents, one that may be pregnant, and Titania, who happens to be the tallest of them all.

Bird of a different feather

This doodle was inspired in part by the baby birds nesting in our balcony light fixture. I went to clean out the 2 nests that were there. The first one was empty, but when I pulled out the second, there were 3 little babies inside. I didn't have the heart to throw them out, so I carefully put the nest back and hoped for the best. The parents did come back and as far as I can tell, the babies are doing well. They sure chirp a lot when it's feeding time!

Bad Day

I didn't have a bad day, but this guy sure is! Another quick doodle, based on a giant-mouthed fish I doodled last week or the week before.

Elephant Greetings

In the same vein as the Illustration Friday post, I did a second ink doodle. It's a lot of fun and i just keep telling myself if it wasn't what I originally intended exactly, that's fine. It still looks cool and more relaxed than some of my other stuff. It's fun too!

Plus, I doodled while I watched Microcosmos, a cool French documentary about bugs, and on a wide screen TV they are BIG!!! And since the are not crawling on me, they are coooooool!

Illustration Friday: Launch, sweep....and gulp?

3....2....1....Blastoff!

I've been replaying Somorest 2 and thinking of replaying Machinarium. Somorest gets a little bit odd in their artwork sometimes, but I'm in love with the world of Machinarium. It's all scribbly and imperfect, and that just adds to the charm. I felt like drawing something with aliens, although this drawing is more about their world. I could always add a UFO in space if i wanted too...

And because I didn't post it when it was the correct week, here's the IF sketch I did for Sweep...with a hungry fishy hanging out at the bottom of the page. I'll need to do something with him at some point. He's kinda cool

Character design class sketches 1

I'm working on stuff right now, but wanted to post some of the better sketches I did this past semester in my first Character Design class. It's almost harder than life drawing, because you have to analyze the pose and then interpret it and add personality and a story. Many of the drawings were frustrating, but after weeding out all the bad ones, i still was left with a pretty decent pile of sketches. I'll be posting them intermittently over the next couple of weeks.

Renaissance Pleasure Faire

Fun times and fun sketches. It was easy to find characters with personality there! I particularly enjoyed the belly dancers and flamenco dancers.

Illustration Friday: Reverse

All he wanted to do was head off into the sunset, but for some reason the unicorn went in reverse as much as it went forward.

I had a ton of fun with this drawing! I was toying around with different ideas for baby dragons and I got inspired by the dino spring rider in Chalk. There was one at the park by my house I used to love when I was little. It was the old-fashioned painted metal ones. I think it was a red horse, but I could be confusing that with the color of the slide.

So I said, "What if the dragon was riding a spring-rider horse?" Hubby replied, "what if it was a unicorn?" and instant inspiration. I sketched it in pieces in my sketchbook, merged in photoshop and then resketched it with the wacom. Not fully happy with the sketch, because the wacom wouldn't register the pressure sensitivity today. No nice tapered strokes.

I need to correct a few things, primarily the perspective on the head of the unicorn and figure out the best overlap of the mane and dragon. I will definitely color it, perhaps both digitally and traditionally. I can't wait to practice planing in color, particularly on the unicorn body, which has very distinct top/side/bottom planes.

IF: Surrender

A last minute illustration Friday entry which unintentionally coincides with the Chinese New Year: Year of the Rabbit.

This is my first digital painting with a Wacom tablet! woohoo! I'm learning new things. eventually, I'll be confident enough to work in color. But for now, this is good practice.

Sketchcrawl 29: Los Angeles @ Home

I've been busy working on my bathroom the past two weekends. Between that, work, and classes, I'm pretty worn out. So driving to Venice Beach for Sketchcrawl didn't seem very appealing. Furthermore, I keep driving past a pumpkin patch everyday, and have been wanting to get to one to draw. I went to the Pierce College Harvest Festival and had fun drawing buildings and flags.

Illustration Friday: Acrobat

Just a quick sketch this week! This little guy is my interpretation of my friend Clayton's drawings of the Monkey King he did in class last week. I still think his drawings are cuter. The monkey had a bigger head, more chibi-like, and he rode a cloud. How can you not like that?

I used an 80% gray marker on this! woohoo! One day I won't hesitate with the darker colors.

Chantry Flats Landscape Drawing - part 2

I went to my second landscape drawing workshop at Chantry Flats. It was a ton of fun, and I met some artists who were new to Karl's workshops. The weather was beautiful, not as hot as it could have been this time of year. The only negative is that I got a minor sprain when I was crossing a boulder-strewn stream. Ooops. My coordination, or lack-thereof, strikes again.

I had only two pens, and a whole bunch of markers with me, so I was really focused on composition of a scene and tonal values. My favorite drawing was the last one of the day, of the fallen log in the stream. Strong focal point, strong contrast, variation of line directions. The only change I'd make is not putting the log so dead center, but that's a minor change. I felt these were much stronger than my previous Chantry Flats trip.

Illustration Friday: Proverb

"Mighty oaks from little acorns grow"

Woohoo! Two Illustration Fridays in a row, even if they are not posted on Friday. This topic wasn't inspiring me for some reason until I looked at the Wiki list o'proverbs. Once I did that, I had a ton of ideas. The hubby helped veer me into the direction he wanted--"Treants please!"--and I still got to draw what I wanted: a cool and gnarly oak tree! Now I need to learn carving in less then a month so I can transfer my cool treant onto a pumpkin.

I still want to add some highlights and some extra darks, but this is plenty finished to post.

Sketchcrawl 28: Hollywood and Highland (belated)

Last weekend I went to my third Sketchcrawl! It was a lot of fun meeting up with a number of familiar faces as well as some new ones. Hollywood and highland had a lot of tourists to sketch, with some crazy outfits. There were also many cool buildings, but the pillars with the elephant statues caught my eye immediately.

Planes of Fame

I never knew I liked planes so much...or drawing them! I had a great time at the Planes of Fame museum, although I did not like that it was an hour-twenty drive to get there. Not to mention driving back. I never did get to see the Japanese Zero, which I was really interested in. Some of my favorite planes I saw that day were the aircraft ones, with hinged wings that fold for storage. I'll have to draw them one day.

I am really slow at drawing the planes, but that's ok, because I'm learning object construction in perspective. Each of these drawings was 1-1.5 hours long. I need a better highlighting pen..the strong white highlights were done by the teacher; I did the wimpy ones. He also said that I need tobreak out my 80% gray marker and hit the darks in key locations to really make the drawing pop. He did the darkest grays in the second drawing. I only need to draw 98 more planes until I start to get really good at drawing planes.

I want to go back at some point, but I think next time, carpooling!

Nethercutt Museum

Haven't posted in a while, but I've been drawing. I've been exhausted. It's rush season. Besides for work and regular weekly classes, I haven't been doing much but catching up on Psych. I love that show. Even more now that I've regularly been to Santa Barbara and really like that town...

But enough digressing. Our drawing for composition class went to the Nethercutt car museum on Saturday. These were the two good drawings of the day. The rest were side and front studies to get an understanding of basic proportions, as well as trying to figure out this whole drawing in perspective thing. I was starting to get comfortable with it by the end of the day, but the class was over way too soon for me. In fact, I added tone to the second sketch on the way to dinner that night with friends. I still need to post some older sketches from this class, as well as some other random drawings I've been doing.

In other art-related news, I finally designed my website! It only took 4 years to come up with something I was happy with that was a balance of illustration and design. Now the hubby and I need to work on building the site. I will keep you updated on the progress, but nothing will probably happen for the next two weeks, since it's crunch time at work and I'm brain dead by the time I get home.

More ripples!

#465

#466 (SOLD)

I had so much fun with the ripplesketches that I did two more. I did have a bit of computer trouble, so I got delayed in both scanning and posting them. In fact, I got them on the ripplesketches site before my own blog, so I already have one of them sold, #466, my farewell shrimp. Thanks Ursula!

I am amazed at the turnout in participation over at the ripplesketch blog, both from artists contributing time, creativity, and art, and from the people donating to the foundations. Over 500 pieces of artwork and over $3,000 raised so far! Our online community rocks!