Fireflies and Robots

Finally finished up this painting. Originally intended to be watercolor-only, eventually the paper couldn't take any more paint and so I went in with colored pencil to finish it up. There's a bit of digital touch-up on the fireflies as well because what was luminous green-yellow on the original turned into an unhappy brown-purple on the scan.

Original is about 14 x 16". Not sure where I want to go after this. I'm thinking something a little more sci-fi to prepare for InConJunction in July.

In that light, I spent a good few hours yesterday sketching robots and hoverboards.

I had a lot of fun with these designs, so I'll have to continue in this vein and see what I come up with.

Mink and Puppy: Shenanigans 4-5

Probably the last two in this series that I'll do. This was a lot of fun though and I should really think about doing similar exercises with my other characters.

So April has been a chaotic month- we found out the house we had signed a lease on wasn't actually available, leaving us to scramble frantically for a new place. I was also trying to find a job and finish up classwork and other pre-graduation concerns. Happily, most of that seems to be settling into place; we found a new place not too far from where we would have moved anyway, I'm in the process of starting a new (permanent) job, and things finally seem to be going smoothly. Although now I need to begin packing.

I have tons of things to put up here-- I've been working for the census the last month, and that's been a lot of dead hours with plenty of time for sketching-- but they'll have to wait until I have time to sit and format them all in Photoshop.

For now, here's a book cover design I did for a YA fantasy series. This is book 3, which isn't out yet.

See! Space Turtle in...

Today we have our first installment of 'Fun with Vectors.' This is me trying to learn Illustrator.

The first piece I did was simply working off of a photo from a few years back, featuring me in a steampunk costume complete with wacky goggles:

For the next assignment, I decided to do something more illustration-based, so I re-drew a sketch from a year or so back, of Space Turtle fighting his nemesis: He'e, the Space Octopus!

I dragged my heels a bit on starting this one, but I really did enjoy working on it in the end. And so we have The Cephalopod Menace:

The original plan for this was to do a movie-poster style, with crazy text and everything, but I think it works much better without. I really fell in love a bit with Illustrator while working on this, it was just so much fun and gave me a chance to work with the bright vibrant colors that I love.

Mink and Puppy: Shenanigans 1-3

March has been a busy month. I went on vacation, then started a new job, and of course it's getting to crunchtime in classes, with graduation looming around the corner.

Still, I've managed to get some art done. Here are the first three of finished the Mink and Puppy images:

I've got at least one more sketched, and I'll probably do two or three after that- whatever I end up having time for. They really are quite fun to do, and I think they'll make good portfolio pieces.

Epic Adventures

New art!
This is the finished version of "The Planning Stages." I posted the original sketch for this months ago, with my revised sketch done last week. Going further into the concept, I had an idea for characterizing the four seasons as children, and I have a tentative idea for a story where they all must go on a scavenger hunt to find essential pieces of their season for one purpose or another.

I'm still debating if I need or want to give them actual names outside their season names. (If I did, I suspect they would be something like Max for Fall, Aaron for Winter, Brittany for Summer, and Rose for Spring.) I might do more pictures for this story, I think, if I can get the compositions right. It really did help having a sketch already done to solidify the concept.

More art to come. Stay tuned.

Update and New Projects

Been in a bit of a funk lately, probably because we're now hitting that mid-semester mark where my teacher's nagging comments begin to drain all will and interest from me for whatever project I happen to be working on at the time.

I finished a rather large (16x20") watercolor piece about a week and a half ago, but I'm not totally satisfied with it, and that's why it's not up online yet. It was an attempt at a more realistic style, but it just didn't quite have the vibrancy I was looking for, and that was discouraging, too. I may yet salvage it with colored pencils, but right now it's sitting on my desk while I figure out what to do with it.

I was also beginning to despair because I wasn't getting much done with my illustration independent project-- I liked the lineart for the piece, but when I started painting it all fell apart, and even colored pencils couldn't do much. I began to realize that watercolor was just not a good media for this project: the paintings were too complex.

So I was quite frustrated, but after thinking about things for a few days, I began to feel better. For one, I sat down last Thursday and did a fantastic drawing for my next watercolor piece, based on an old sketch of my "Four Seasons" kids:

Then over the weekend I was thinking about illustration and said "fuck it." My only goal in re-doing the Mink project was to have several images with consistent characterization to use in a portfolio. But you know what? I can achieve that same goal just by having a series of images of Mink and Puppy playing. It's not like I haven't done a million sketches of that already.

So that's what I did today, and I'm very happy with the results:

 

 

I've got another one half-finished with Mink teaching Puppy to beg.  I'll probably do one or two more as well. I was originally going to do these in watercolor, but I like the detail of the lineart too much to risk losing it with ink, so I think they'll just be digitally colored.

With any luck the first drawing will be finished tomorrow, as it's now mostly done, and then I can move on. I have a few different ideas for what I'll do next, the main one being that I think it's time for more Space Turtle. :D

Character Sketch: Aulani

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted anything here. I have several paintings in-progress, but none finished just yet.

For now, have a quick sketch. I've been working on taking some older sketches of characters and coloring them; this is the first one.

 

It's not exactly right; I need to tweak the colors of her hair and skin a little, I think, but it's close.  And it was an entertaining little sketch to do.

More Clockwork

This time it's an owl. With big furry feets.

Little else to say about this one; I think I'm nearly finished with the series for the time being (I have one more clockwork bird nearly finished, a red-winged blackbird) although I may pick it up later. For now I think I'm ready to try something different; perhaps some fairy tale-themed images.

For this evening, though, I'm just going to sit down, try to finish playing Spirit Tracks, and wait for it to start snowing.

Not Quite the Season...

But have some very belated Christmas art.

Back in 2006, I did an advent series with my character Mink, and ended up with 25 black and white images. It was a very cute little story and I really enjoyed it, but sadly the art itself is now looking rather dated, so I can't put it in any portfolios.

So I'm redoing some of the images now in watercolor, and this is the first of those (although not the first illustration in the book):

New Art!

So the semester has started and so far I'm off to a pretty good start. I've got a few paintings started and I finished up one last night.

Here we have a little girl named Lily and her new friend, the Monster of the Deep.

This will be (one of) my entries for this year's Society of Illustrators contest. Unfortunately the colors are not quite as vibrant in this scan as in the original; I'll have to see what I can do to fix that before I send it in.

Watercolor, colored pencil, ink on wet media illustration board. 10 x 21"

Clockwork Cardinal

And a third entry. This one was a little trickier; it took some time to get  the composition just right. I quite like the colors, though.

And another one!

Didn't initially plan to do another painting so soon, but there's something soothing about these quick little pieces, and besides, once I found pictures of the pied kingfisher, I had to paint it.

A new year and new art

Sorry for the radio silence lately. Between finishing up finals and then the holiday rush, I ended up a bit out of the art loop.

However, I got a chance to sit down and paint yesterday, just a bit of fun with some extra paper and a chance to break in the new palette I got over the holidays.

I really enjoyed playing with the negative space here, and I may well do a few more like this, with other birds. It's a nice little break from more elaborate work, anyway.