Illustration Friday: SILENT

I'm not quite sure how I landed on this process of doing TWO drawings for Illustration Friday, but this make two weeks in a row.
Trying to limit myself to line drawings for the time being, just as a challenge.
What is it about wombats that's so darn CUTE!?

Illustration Friday: STRIPES

Well, since I didn't finish my drawing last Friday, I've had a few days to think about this one and I ended up with two cute little line drawings for Illustration Friday.

Illustration Friday: SCARY

If there's one thing getting back into IF is teaching me… it's that I really don't like the way I draw stylized people. Gimme a reference and I can draw it well… but I just can't "imagine" them like I can animals… sensing a new self-challenge may come of this.

Illustration Friday: SCATTERED

Illustration Friday: STAY -- pt2

So, my twitter friend & illustrator, Greg Matusic, based his IF post this week, on a song. Which I thought was funny because my original thought for the "Stay" theme was the oldies song by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs…

But my morning pages doodle from last Friday had turned out so right for the theme, I decided to post that and be done with it. When I read about and then saw Greg's post, I decided I really couldn't ignore it… so I went ahead and did this piece based on this classic song… one of my faves from the doo-wop era.

Illustration Friday: REMEDY (belated)

Laughter is the best medicine…
So, this is late, but here it is. I still think I forced it a bit, but I had the idea and I wanted to follow through. Yay, me.

Illustration Friday: STAY

So, this was a "morning/afternoon/evening pages" doodle I started and chipped away at all day today… it wasn't until I was almost done that I looked at it and thought, "Stay" and burst out laughing to myself.

Yes, you there… monstrous red, two-headed, six-legged wolf-dog… you stay right THERE -- and I'll just walk away, FAR AWAY. Pay me no mind, do not follow me, just STAY.

I'll probably play around with the word some more during the week and try to do something a bit more apropos to my current portfolio goals… but this was a fun little experiment for today.

Random Sketches

Practice, practice, practice.

Actors, Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee from Let Me In, a mediocre remake of the original, Let the Right One In. But, this one is set in 1980s Los Alamos, NM, which was kinda cool. ;)

I've never been much of a portraitist, likenesses are so difficult, maybe that's why I prefer drawing animals? But I've kind of given myself the assignment of drawing more kids lately… so here are a couple from the big screen. It's experimenting too - pencil sketch vs. pen and ink (I like the sketch better - sometimes the line of pen & ink is just too harsh for me - something to work on). Although usually kids tend to look OLDER in drawings, I somehow made Kodi look younger - I think I shortened his nose a bit. LOL. Ah well, now maybe I'll try some more styled versions.

New: Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition)

Four new pages… still going. :)

New Idea: Drawing Morning Pages (Doodle Edition)

Even as a professional illustrator, I sometimes hit a wall of not being able to draw… to just draw.

With no specific purpose, just for fun.

It's been a nearly constantly struggle for YEARS to get myself to do so - probably because it's "safer" not to. But I really want to be drawing more, because I believe just making marks on paper is a great way to general ideas and stimulate creativity in general.

Like many creative people on an artistic journey, I've read the Artist's Way (at least a good part of it), which encourages one to file three notebook pages with stream-of-consciousness writing every morning, as a way to remove the "junk" from floating around in your mind and clear your head for the day before you (at least that's what I got from it).

So I decided to try it for my drawing habits… just fill two pages of my moleskin sketchbook each morning, with line, shading, dots, whatever - just to put something on paper and force some stuff out of my head. I've only been going for five days so far, but almost immediately the lines began turning into things -I've started making purposeless drawings… just for fun, just because I can!

I'm so used to having a specific PURPOSE to draw, that just making lines and seeing where they take me is a wonderful & surprising journey. I'm really enjoying it so far.

*The only drawback (unintended pun, d'oh!) is that I'm getting into and spending too much time on them. But I'm not necessarily against spending the time. At least not right now. At some point I might challenge myself to do faster/time limited drawings, but right now I'm just happy to be drawing and I'm going to go with it.

SPECIAL: Ripple Donation

"We don't have to feel helpless. We can help. Our small actions together will ripple outward."
I've finally finished my sketchcards for the awesomest of awesome art charity fundraisers: RippleSketches, benefitting the animal victims of the Deep Water Horizon Gulf Oil Spill. The four Non Profits benefitted are hands-on groups on site cleaning animals: International Bird Rescue Research Center, The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, The Sea Turtle Conservancy, and Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research. My cards will go live on the site next Wednesday and will be available for sale at $10 each.

This has been a really great project to work on. These aren't my typical style either, I really wanted to so some experimenting and thus didn't have an entirely clear idea of what I was going to do as I started out with each piece. Here's a deatiled list of info for each piece:
Brown Pelican: Pen & Ink, Colored Pencil and Gouache on Rag Board, 2.5" x 3.5"
Dolphin: Pen & Ink and Colored Pencil on Arches Hot press Watercolor paper, torn/deckle edges, 2.5" x 3.5"
Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle: Colored Pencil and Gouache on red cardstock, 2.5" x 3.5"
Great Lakes Piping Plover Chick: Colored Pencil and Gouache on blue, ridged cardstock, 2.5" x 3.5"
Sawfish: Pen & Ink, Colored Pencil and Gouache on blue, ridged cardstock 2.5" x 3.5"
Shrimp: Colored Pencil on Arches Hot press Watercolor paper, torn/deckle edges, 2.5" x 3.5"
Sperm Whales: Colored Pencil and Gouache on red cardstock, 2.5" x 3.5"

I did do some homework to find out which animals were or might possibly in the future, be most effected by the tragic oil spill in the gulf. Most of my sketches are based on these already at-risk animals: Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtle, Great Lakes Piping Plover, Brown Pelican, Smalltooth & Largetooth Sawfish, & the Sperm Whale. I also felt shrimp have been under the radar during this disaster - everyone's talking about the fisherman at risk of & losing their livelihoods, but what about these tiny creatures that they harvest daily for their own financial gain - now being threatened by the very water that sustains their life?

It seems like every day we are finding new and terrible ways to destroy our own planet, and it's always an accident. Big risk, big rewards. For industry, it's another blip - the accidental disaster either destroys them and they're replaced by someone else - or they recover and keeping on doing the same. It's not totally unlike natural selection… only we CAN MAKE CHOICES… and we keep making the wrong ones.

*please note: the red stars on the cards have no particular significance other than to add a somewhat three-dimensional element to the designs and identify then as mine, and part of this group.

RANDOM INSPIRATION: Dueling Palettes

So, the very funny and talented Jarrett J. Krosoczka tweeted a random image this morning - in his tweet, he included the title: Dueling Palettes. I fully expected to see a charming drawing of two palettes dueling… but I did not. The image was actually from his drawing table this morning, two colorful paint palettes.
So I thought, heeeey… I should DO that drawing I saw in my head. It's been a long time since a fully completeed image popped into my head, and even longer since I did a fun little drawing in my sketchbook, so I decided to go with it… I even managed to take some process photos (not the best, apologies - hey, I need a new digital camera! What can I say… it's on the list.)

CONCEPT SKETCH:Rough, silly, fun.

WATERCOLOR UNDERPAINTING: Again, rough. And we all know how the lovely thick moleskin pages take watercolor.

COLORED PENCIL w/some INK: Oops! I jumped into the inking before I took the colored pencil picture - so the girl palette is partially inked. Anyway, colored penil is where I through in the details and shading, mostly covering up the watercolor. But I did like some of the speckling that happened, so I tried to let it show through a little in the background.

FINAL: I don't usually ink on top of my colored pencil work, but since this was a pretty silly little drawing, I decided, what the hell. Hope you like it!


Those of you in the know may have noticed that my dueling palettes are actually RGB and CMYK - and for the rest, now you know!

Sketch Crawl at the Zoo

So, although I live just three blocks from the zoo, this past Saturday was only my third visit and my first time actually drawing there. I find it difficult to sketch from life because I'm either in a rush to see more, and I can't draw fast enough to capture anything -- and I'm a perfectionist, I focus on details, so it's very hard for me to draw fast and loose. When I do, I feel I'm just drawing badly, and reinforcing the experience of drawing badly by continuing the practice. But I know there is something to it, and I was happily rewarded for my efforts on Saturday.

I'm quite happy with a few of the sketches I got. I particularly like my loose expressive gorilla (although I really have no idea if it was a lady gorilla or if she was actually pregnant - it could have just been a very fat bellied gorilla!), it is just SO hard for me to work that fast and actually have it look like something. And I actually made myself pull out the watercolors as well, something I always hesitate to do while out and about - in my head, before I start it feels like so much 'work' up set up, so I usually stop myself before I begin. But this really wasn't all that bad. Very quick set up and clean up, and most time spent painting!

It was a really fun day - and bonus: it was FREE. And not just because I'm a member of the zoo - they were closing at noon for a charity gala, so they were letting everyone in for free in the morning. I was also thankful that I had the time limit (we arrived at 10am) to help focus on sketching.

NEW WORK: Family Crest Design & Illustration

I get some unusally requests from time to time and they usually end up being the most fun to work on. This is a family crest I was asked to design and illustrate. My client came to me with very specific requests that I used to create this detailed, traditional looking crest with some very modern elements. My client is very happy with the results, an so am I!

Illustration Friday: YOUR PARADISE

I really don't like this at all. I just had to post something. :P

Stefan Bucher's OPEN SOURCE MONSTER 10

Another 'monster' for fun! Created from Ink Blot #10 at Daily Monster

Portrait Party 2: Wonil 1

This is my friend Wonil. We met in a children's book illustration class at SVA in 2005. He is an AMAZING, amazing allaround artist. He has such a unique and brilliant illustration style, not to mention a great eye for photography AND web SKILLZ! Check out the Secret Toilet! And the Secret Toilet blog.

Portrait Party 1: Jason... again

I did a lot of drawing this weekend. At least I was semi-productive in that respect. So, as mentioned previously - I've been recently inspired greatly by Rama Hughes' Portrait Party. I've started a bunch - and I've been experimenting lots... I have yet to receive MY portrait in return... but here is the next in a series: Jason 2, a slightly different approach. :)

Illustration Friday: REMEMBER

to experiment. to make time. to forget time.

Late again! But taking a page from Keri Smith, I picked up a piece of weather newspaper scrap from the lot outside my apartment building this afternoon. I pasted into my sketching, and just started drawing on and around it. It was Play. I miss that.

Illustration Friday: HIDE

This one wasn't planned. I just started drawing, no knowing what was going to come out. By the time I finished, I realized... hey, this would totally work for 'hide'. Not one of my favs, but it's something.