Scribbles and Scribings

This week’s Illustration Friday topic was a bit of a freebie for me: right now almost all of the images I have in my portfolio are from various tales and legends! I’ve chosen to post the story of the goddess Diana turning Actaeon into a stag from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Click the image to enlarge, also the detail below. The original drawing of this is among my largest so far, almost filling a 19×24-inch sheet of bristol, so I went crazy with the cross-hatching.

I love illustrating stories! The challenge of picking the perfect scene to set the mood for the tale, figuring out which details to include, getting all the “actors” into position. Metamorphoses is our primary source for many of the ancient Greek myths, and many of them are startlingly dark. Because I wanted to keep a dignified, classy feel to this image, I chose the moment right after Actaeon’s transformation, but before his gruesome death.

This is not getting me out of posting a new drawing on my blog this week, which is something I’m determined to keep up! I hope to post a few character studies later this week; last week’s IF drove home how out of practice I am with those. I have a few other drawing projects in the works too. But posting this gives me a bit of a breather while I finish packing up the Christmas decorations and reclaiming the living room this weekend. For my own peace of mind I need to get the house back into shape before I start in on my next big endeavor: redesigning my portfolio website. It will probably include an overhaul of this blog too, so fingers-crossed!

There are so many ways to interpret this week’s Illustration Friday topic, but my mind immediately went to this character. He’s based on a side character from a big story I’ve been thinking of off-and-on… actually, this guy looks a little too young to be my character, so I guess it’s really one of his tribesmen. Click to enlarge, and see the detail below.

The Plainstriders live nomadic lives in vast grasslands. Smallish tribes wander the plains, foraging and hunting as they go, following the turning seasons. They have very little contact with the outside world, aside from occasional encounters with other tribes of their kind; most of these encounters are peaceful, but some are not. A very important role in the tribe is the long scout, like this fellow, who travels far ahead of the tribe to make sure of the route so they don’t end up bringing their families straight into trouble.

I really should have pulled out the old sketchbooks for this one, because I remember having worked out the anatomy of the legs into something I liked but it’s been so long since I’ve tried to draw him that I feel I made a bit of a mess of it here — a little too human-looking. I used up all my drawing time on that so no colors for now. Inked (rather quickly) with Micron markers on 9×11-inch smooth bristol.

When my husband saw my sketches for this week’s Illustration Friday topic, he thought they were kind of creepy, but even he admitted the finished product was cute. Although I always seem to pull back from total cuteness overload anyway. Click image to enlarge.

I broke out the brush pen again for this one, though I used the Microns for a lot of shading and the little details. And the buttons. I am so out of practice with the brush these days that small circles are just right out of the question; the spool of thread came out ok but it’s a bit wobbly from the brush getting away from me. Very quick coloring job, especially on the background. I used to have no problem with drawing figures with no background at all, but these days I need to put a little something back there. I’m still figuring out the best way to do that without spending forever on it!

Mmmmmm! Nothing like pure, fresh-squeezed orange juice! And I noticed I wrote the typo on the label only just now as I was posting it… D’OH! (Click on image to enlarge.)

The hardest part about this week’s Illustration Friday topic was coming up with an idea. My husband helped out with a great brainstorming session, which is one of my favorite parts of the creative process.

I started getting a little overambitious with this week’s drawing — I went back to pens on paper, where that’s easy to do. Getting to the finished inks stage took a little over 3 non-consecutive hours. Not too bad, but last year that time kept creeping up on me until I couldn’t do it every week. So to make up for it I did the colors really quick and simple, less than half-an-hour. I was coloring all my drawings this way for a while; it’s a lot of fun and the end result reminds me of printmaking.

Spending the time on the ink drawing allows for a lot of flexibility at the coloring stage, and my body appreciates alternating between the drawing board and the computer. I sit at a computer all day at my day job, and anything else is better after a while. Last week’s all-digital drawing really drove home the need to simplify and/or change my mark-making process if I want to work that way; even though ultimately it’s more efficient it’s also uncomfortable and the inability to arc my strokes just so was frustrating. But I really do love the warmth of the marks the pen makes on the paper anyway, and I can just go nuts with texture, so I don’t think I’ll be getting rid of my pens any time soon! (Tho on some of my larger drawings I sure would have liked a “clone” tool…)

… only somewhat belated.

But then, most of those who got these cards in the mail received them late also.

This is the first year I’ve had the time to do Christmas cards at all, much less make my own. I’m VERY happy with the results, both my drawing and the way my cards came out from Modern Postcard (although some notice that they were going to put their logo on the back would have been nice!) But due to a bit of poor planning on my part the cards arrived only a couple of days before Christmas.

Original drawn with Micron pens on 9×12 inch bristol board, about 3 weeks to complete.  Here’s a closeup of the detail:

This week’s Illustration Friday topic was particularly inspiring. I want to grow my illustration business this year, and really give myself an opportunity to soar.

I have lots of plans but as far as New Year’s Resolutions go I have this one: to post every single week to Illustration Friday. This year I petered out a bit in November, as my usual perfectionist streak took over — I have at least three images which made it as far as a “tight pencil sketch” but my usual working style requires at least 2 weeks for a truly final image. Most of the pictures in my portfolio took 4-8 weeks to finish (some even longer) and I’m trying to streamline my process but it’s hard to let go. So from this point on, I’m taking the title of my blog more seriously and if all I have time for that week is a quick scribble, then THAT is what I’m posting. This is something I want to do, but it has to fit around my day job, my more directly business-related efforts, remodeling, and family time.

This week’s image is a bit of an experiment in drawing the entire thing directly on the computer using Photoshop and my tablet. The tablet surface is a bit slippery, and gave me some trouble with my usual foliage scumbling, so it may have to evolve a bit. Fortunately, I have tons of photo reference on eagles from a previous project! I’m not entirely happy with the level of detail, but it’s not too bad for an image that took about 2 hours, start to finish. Click to enlarge.