Illustration Friday: BUZZ

a la tea stain.
I dropped a tea bad on a page in my sketchbook today (on purpose), thinking I'd turn the strain into a drawing. I blew around the excess water and, completely randomly, it took on this body-like shape with legs! And when I lifted the teabag itself, there was an almost perfect heart shape right in the middle. I added some details with chalk and graphite, then finished the eyes with colored pencil.
So here's my buzzzzzzing queen bee, for a little something completely different from me.

Illustration Friday: PHOENIX

a work in progress...


didn't have time to complete this tonight... didn't even make it to the final sketch. :( these are the first roughs, direct from my sketchbook. but I feel it's a solid start to telling my story of the egyptian phoenix, just outside Heliopolis. it's meant to be somewhat audubon-like in format & structure, but the final look should be quite different.

Illustration Friday: PEACE

I never thought of myself as having a pronounced dark side, but between this and Smitten I'd say it's coming out... in force. I don't know WHY these things are popping into my head. But that's just what happened this morning, when I was just in that place between sleeping and awake, this image popped into my head, and I didn't forget it - during the course of the whole day. I finally sat down to sketch in the late afternoon... and I didn't stop. I kept it going. So now it's done. I believe this is my FIRST OFFICIAL NEW AND COMPLETE PIECE for Illustration Friday! Hey, it only took a year. And since my friend, Jonsie, totally called me out last week, I thought it was about time I followed through. So there Jonsie! What do you think of that?! ;P

And, as a special christmas bonus, here's a sample of the work in progress:

Illustration Friday: MASK

UPDATE:





I've been working on a series of pieces based on the IF themes (actually thinking about and preparing for, but NOT actually drawing.... yet). But, I see them taking a little longer than 1 week... or at least longer than I have to give them in a week. So for now, I still have to resort to an old, sub-par piece I did years ago. This is from a sticker sheet of Marti Gras Masks. Sorry for the bad scan - I will try to replace with the clean vector art later.

Illustration Friday: MIGHT

Wow, guess I missed four weeks in there somewhere. I am so exhausted with work... only a small portion of which I actually enjoy, but c'est la vie. Once again, I ran out of time - so here's something old... many years onld in fact. But I always kinda liked him, he's a "mighty" lookin' cat after all.

Illustration Friday: SMOKE

WHY are the weeks so short?! I can't believe how fast they go by... and I can never, NEVER catch up!

Oh well. This is a sketch I had done during the week, but didn't get a chance to develop. I was hoping to give it, ah... I don't know - a POINT! there is no reason for it. I can't explain it. It's a mystery to me. How frustrating. I tried to play around with coloring in photoshop - but it SUCKS >:| I figured I had post it anyway so the last hour I spent on it wasn't a complete waste.

Having a bit of bad week if you couldn't tell. Queen of Optimism I am NOT. :(

But I do have to new IF topic to look forward to tomorrow!

-m.

Illustration Friday: WIND

Ran out of time AGAIN! I really need to learn to manage my time better. Was upset to miss the the Orange&Black competition too, but I was happy to see SO many participants! Kudos guys, excellent!

Anyway, this is another very old piece, my first official/complete unicorn illustration - the one that started it all (pretty much). I figure it had to be a pretty strong wind to kick up that amount of hair. ;)

new piece next week - FOR SURE!