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.

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: Swarm

I couldn't NOT post for Illustration Friday when the topic, swarm, was so perfectly suited to my obsession with drawing bugs. I just don't know why I waited until Thursday to post when the drawing was finished on Sunday.

I think, perhaps, because this week has been a little off-kilter. I'm settling into the semester and realizing that I don't have enough time in the world to do all the things I want to do, particularly when I am easily distracted. I came to the decision/realization that for my own sanity, I was going to have to drop my Saturday drawing-on-location class that I have LOVED taking for the previous 2 (3?) semesters. Knowing that Will's class often has a waiting list of eager students and knowing that I would be missing 3 out of 6 classes because of traveling for work and other factors didn't make me any less reluctant or less....let down. I've enjoyed exploring my adopted hometown through these excursions, and I definitely know the freeways of northern LA much better these days. (Ignoring the fact that I still get lost on surface streets)

It didn't help that I am most definitely off schedule with the Picture Book Dummy project because I like making things complex and 2-3 characters won't do when you can have 20 (or more!). I am not stopping just because i'm behind, I'm just going to take a bit longer. I'm having a great time creating costumes for all the characters and my Gesture Drawing class is definitely helping with that.

It most definitely didn't help that I had a series of eye exams today in preparation for a corrective eye surgery I'm planning on having at the end of next month. Eye ultrasounds are SO NOT fun!

Luckily, I have a weekend with good friends, random doodling and massive amounts of silliness and junk food to look forward to! Target acquired! To the flowers!

Gouache practice

I got gouache paints this past week because I made the determination that I need to learn to work with both color/value and work in areas larger than the tip of a colored pencil. So i'm going to start doing lots of little painting studies whenever I get the opportunity.

I found a photo that had the slightly atmospheric yet detailed background effect that I've been wanting to master and had a go at it, ignoring the person in it. I felt it went pretty well, although I was surprised at how dark my midtone had to go for the yellow trees to start to glow slightly. I went over areas more often than I would have liked overall, but ease and simplicity will most likely come with practice.

I set up my paints in an old watercolor set, so now my gouache paints will be portable for plein air painting.

Sketchcrawl 30: Natural History Museum

I attended the 30th SketchCrawl at the Natural History Museum today, but only a few crawlers actually saw me. My friend and I decided to draw outside, rather than go in. I've been wanting to draw more buildings to practice perspective. Plus, it was a beautiful day outside. Once you get past the austere front entrance of the building, there is some beautiful architecture at the NHM. Some kid even took a photo of my drawing.

The only minor disappointment was that I was told there was a FANTASTIC sketchcrawl turnout for Los Angeles inside the museum. Oh well. Hopefully, I'll get to see them all at the next crawl.

All my scribble drawings of people today reaffirm the need for me to get back to my 10 minute daily sketches. My quick sketch needs help.

Tanks!

We went to the military museum for our last Drawing on Location class of the semester. It was a lot of fun, but I really need to learn to draw faster. My teacher said i'm just putting too much detail in, but it's so pretty! all the little gears and cogs and nuts and bolts... very distracting. And very fun, even if my second tank drawing couldn't actually shoot anything due to the warped barrel.

Illustration Friday: Old Fashioned

He was less enamored then she at the fabulous old-fashioned apron and bonnet in the trunk.

I was out of town visiting family, and had our cousin return with us for a couple of days. I kept doodling this duo while I was away, trying to get them exactly like I saw in my head. It came out fairly well over all.

Still experimenting with mixing marker and colored pencil. What I'm liking so far is when I nail the value I want in marker, then all I need to do is match the value with the color of my choice. Any lighter/darker colors will work to cover up any mistakes I make with the marker as well. You can barely see all the attempts to get her back arm in the right position now. Still need to pop the darks more, and possibly more saturation of colors.

I also forgot to draw the trunk in the background...maybe I'll go back and add it later. and possibly flowers on the apron.

Sketch Backlog

A few post-worthy sketches I've missed posting in the last month. Not as many as I wish I had, but better than none at all.

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.

More bugs

More bug drawing practice! Tomorrow, cactus and succulents.

Bugs!

The first of a couple of pages of bugs from my composition class that just ended. These were based on images found on the web, and we were practicing building the bugs from the inside out. I think the rendered one took me about 30-60 minutes. I really need to work more on sketching faster.

Illustration Friday: Ahead

The snail came out ahead of the pack.

This one came straight from the sketchbook. I'm limiting myself to pen and marker for a while to hone my drawing skills as well as my lighting/rendering skills. I have a number of sketches to post from my Drawing for Composition class and I'm also hoping to get into the summer Drawing for Composition class. We'll be going on location and starting with organic forms, then working up to mechanical forms. I also really need to get better at my quick sketching of entire forms. I start rendering, then I render things to death, losing a bit of the vitality of the original sketch.

Illustration Friday: Egg-spire

I'm not quite sure what he is, but because it rhymes, I'm calling him my Rhino-dino. He may be slightly inspired by How To Train Your Dragon, since we went to a show of Dreamworks production art at Art center.

I hope to get to color him this week, since i'm itching to pick up my colored pencils again, but I'm busy with the class assignment for my composition class. The class is really interesting, and I'm learning a lot, but I have a long way to go before I get really good at it. I'll definitely be retaking this class again. Once I finish up the project, I plan on posting the work, but I have more drawing to get back to. That is one of the reasons why I haven't been posting much this month. I've also decided to restart my 15 minute daily drawings, to get back into the habit of sketching regularly. You can look forward to more posts upcoming.

I really like composition class, since that is now one of my weakest elements in my work. I've gotten good at characters, but I've never been happy with not having full cinematic inspired scenes. My teacher is Will Weston and he is really interesting to listen to and an extremely knowledgeable teacher. I've already driven my husband crazy with "and the teacher said this...and the teacher said that..." But it is forcing me out of my comfort zone with my work. My drawings in the class are much stiffer and more exacting than my sketchbook work, but I think they will be like that for a while until I get more comfortable working regularly with perspective.

Update: I forgot to mention my thought process behind this drawing. the only two things I could originally think of for 'expire' were death and spoiled milk. I tried a couple of person with spoiled milk sketches and realized that even the concept was gross to me, so I stopped working on it. Last night I happened to think of egg-spire, and I knew right away what I wanted his head to look like.

Illustration Friday: Muddy

I was sick for a good portion of last week, and I'm still trying to get back to my normal operating schedule. Still have a stupid cough. It's been wet and rainy and cold here, but the perk of that is the mountains are starting to look so green and beautiful. I really enjoy my drives to and from work right now.

I think that the guy looks a little weird, but he looks different then the faces I normally draw. I keep trying to expand my range of expressions and features. His face was the result of a drawing session with some friends. We did 2-minute drawings and one set of them were blind/continuous line drawings where we couldn't look at the paper. We really enjoyed the results, which were often funny and Picasso-like. This one was my favorite:

There is a certain quality to the scribble that I lost in the top drawing, but it was still fun working with an image I don't usually draw.

Illustration Friday: Flying

Between reading about Koldo Barroso's flying fish, finally getting to read the first volume of Flight (one of the stories has a flying whale), and having a couple other whale and fish inspirations popping up on my blog reader recently, I've been motivated to draw my own variation. Originally, I wanted to take another stab at Steampunk a la Greg Manchess' rework of the Tor.com logo for steampunk month.

Alas, I got as far as a basic hot-air balloon...then the whale-beta fish appeared (if the fish are flying in air, they need pretty, flowing fins and all) then the koi, the angelfish (sort of) and the salmon (I think). Finally, I knew there had to be tiny people in the hot air balloon to give a sense of scale. And if you were in a hot air balloon looking at giant flying fish creatures, wouldn't you want to reach out and try to touch one?

If I ever do a finished piece of this, I think I need to fix the background color so it is the lightest around the people in the balloon so the eye focuses on them. I may color this one more, but I have a couple projects around the house I need to work on...and some homework to do.

IF: Germs

I immediately have to apologize to a particular person for this post. You know who you are, and why I'm apologizing. I didn't pick the topic... i am so sorry and will try to post many posts to get this past my homepage. :)

That being said...GERMS!!!



One thing kept popping into my head, over and over as I thought of today's topic: the computer game I played for many hours in college: WORMS! I loved that game, and the crazy landscapes and the worms perched on the smallest little tips of things not blown up (yet) and wouldn't it be cool to have a germ perched on a nose/landscape getting ready to attack with a big weapon?

Um...he's icky, I know. But he's silly, so that works for me. Plus, it really is perfect timing with the start of flu season.

Enjoy my spoof!

Character Design: homework #1

For our first homework assignment, we had to create any type of character that we REALLY wanted to draw based upon someone we know. I chose the most expressive person I know--one of our best friends, Philip. (I apologize to Phil for him unknowingly becoming my reference model and my awkward handling of any drawings resulting from his reference)

Eric wanted me to draw him as a raccoon, because of an inside joke from childhood. I tried multiple times, but couldn't get it to look right. So I turned him into a robot instead :) A gangly one, of course!

There is a character turnaround that goes with the sketchbook pages, but I'm supposed to make the legs longer and still scan it... It's late... I'm tired... Off to bed.

SketchCrawl 24: Grand Central Market

It was a beautiful day for the sketchcrawl this past weekend, and there was a great turnout! Almost double the number of people from last time. I told a bunch of my friends from the animation classes i'm taking and about 5 of them showed up. Grand Central Market was an interesting place I've never been to and there were so many things to look at. I was tempted to draw some of the neon signage (actually draw the shapes of the tubing, not just write out what the signs say) but instead I gravitated towards the GIANT gumball machine.

I drew more people this time, which I'm very proud of. I'm particularly fond of the janitor sketch, although I'm not quite sure what ended up in his left hand. It was supposed to be a lunch tray, but it just didn't work.

After sketching for a number of hours we headed over to the Bradbury building across the street. It had beautiful and incredibly intricate architecture and lots of stairs and ornate railings...and it scared me. I chickened out on the architecture and went back and added color to the sketch of one of the sketchcrawlers instead.

I stayed until about 6, although I was really done drawing around 4. I did do some crazy animal doodles during that time: monkeys, sheep, and then an awkward cow based on the Dana Lyons song "Cows with Guns". Darn you Steve and Lisa for introducing me to that song. I can't stop playing it....

Illustration Friday: Impatient

One month later and our house is still not back to normal. I still have no scanner/printer hookup, or webcam to call my niece and nephew. But at least our computers are off the dining room table again.

I finally did an illustration for illustration friday. It's been a while! He was inspired by my drawings of eagles from the zoo. I'm not sure if he's an eagle...he's some wacky sort of bird. I colored him with the replacement colored pencils I bought from the art store, about 7 colors in all. I just had them nearby, saw that they made a nice color palette, and proceeded to sharpen all my brand new pencils. :)

Illustration Friday: Worn

After drawing pandas all (last) week for my Traditional Animation Basics 2 class project, I decided to draw....pandas. This little guy sums up how worn out I am at drawing pandas, but I still think he's cool. I had fun coloring him and then adding all the crazy tiny pandas everywhere. For some reason this is making me want to read Zen Shorts. hmmmm......