Scribbles & Scribings

Where did the summer go? Oh, that’s right… between client work, an illustration-heavy project at my day job, and general craziness all the way around, I’ve had very little time for “just for fun” drawing. That’s one of the reasons I like the Doodle Swap Project, a little club of artists and designers who all make tiny trading-card-sized artworks for each other. It gives me an excuse to do some quick, small, simple drawings that I don’t have any time to overthink because they have to get out the door fast.

This time around the theme was “hybrid animals” — chimera, creatures made up of two or more different unrelated animals. Perfect timing for me, since:

a) the idea for little gryphons that are a cross between songbirds and housecats (instead of the more traditional eagles and lions) has been kicking around in my head for a while, and

b) “Backyard” and household fantasy creatures are the theme of my Sketchbook project book. More about that one later…

So, this was a little bit of two birds with one stone. Or something like that. Here are the first few of the cards, I’ll be posting the rest soon. They’re all 2.5 x 3.5 inches, drawn with ink and watercolor pencils on bristol paper.

Anyone else think that these will make nice little notecards?

Here’s a quick piece of new art from my RedBubble site! Sometimes I’ll jump into one of the many challenges or drawing jams there to try something a little different with my style and tools. This time, instead of using inks I made the drawing entirely in pencil, and colored it all in Photoshop. It’s just a quick little study, which is why the background is so very bare.

I’ve been busy dusting off some of my art to make some new items for the Critterwings store… keep an eye out for new announcements very soon!

click to enlarge

Getting back into the swing of things, I was feeling inspired by this week’s Illustration Friday topic. Of course, it’s not exactly seasonal — around here we just had what everyone is hoping was the last big snowfall of the winter before spring starts seriously springing — but the word “breezy” always brings to mind those crisp autumn days when the wind just picks up the leaves and swirl them around. Wouldn’t it be fun to hitch a ride?

She’s a little rough and quick, but I couldn’t resist dressing this inked sketch up with a bit of quick color.  I have a hankering to draw more fairies, but costume design has always been a bit of a challenge for me. Hmmm… maybe that’s why I want to do more of it.

Whether this week’s Illustration Friday topic refers to her current status or her barely contained anger, I leave up to you… but I don’t think I want to be around when she finally gets out! Click the image to enlarge it.

Let Me Check My Notes… (click to enlarge)

So many possibilities for this week’s Illustration Friday topic! I decided to go with a post-poof moment this time. I hope the effect comes through ok with only inks, no time for color this week. Or a background!

I think I may be reading too much Girl Genius lately. Last week I lost an evening of productivity when I got book 7, despite the fact that I’d already read it online. I love the humor in the drawings and the writing, but there’s also an intriguing mystery afoot with lots of interesting characters. Phil Foglio has a great loose style that just works, with tons of little extra details hidden in the background. I deliberately avoided too many stylistic swipes in the finished drawing, but the influence is obvious in my thumbnail sketches:

Interesting (or not) trivia factoid: these sketches were done in the dentist’s chair while waiting for the Novacaine^TM to kick in. The note in the corner was a leftover snippet from a trip earlier this year, and in no way intended to be a slur against taxis in general.

PS: More mad-science-y fun can be had at Narbonic… another clear influence at work here which I will have to re-read when I have a week free sometime…

I got a little overly-ambitious with this week’s Illustration Friday topic, so the drawing is still only at the sketch stage, but I was just so tickled by the idea I couldn’t help myself! (Plus some of my drawing time was eaten up by the arrival of the new Girl Genius book…) Who wouldn’t like to have a pantry full of canned gremlins, bottled genies, and vacuum-packed-pixies. Even I don’t know what she’s got in some of those jars… but she’s clearly been very busy! Click the image to enlarge it.

All of my drawings go through a stage like this: I’m tightening up the composition, working out the perspective, and figuring out as many of the details as I can in pencil so that when I get to the inks I can just concentrate on building textures with the ink lines. Thanks to my light table I can scribble as much as I want with the pencil and not have to worry about marring the surface of the paper for the inks. Sometimes I’ll paste in elements or photocopy them and move them around until I’m happy, or use an overlay of tracing paper to establish the shading and lighting without obliterating the linework — some drawings have so many layers of tracing paper on the sketch they become difficult to transfer over to bristol for inking. Right now I’m thinking I need to do something else with the lower left corner before it’s ready (maybe move the edge of the table? Or maybe that little guy in the front needs a buddy…) but I’ll have to sleep on it.

Gonna try and finish the inks over the weekend, I’ll post them as soon as  I can!

… or really, more than enough! My rather liberal interpretation of this week’s Illustration Friday topic is one from my archives, but I’ve never used it for anything. The project it was drawn for mutated into a different format before I finished this particular drawing. One of these days I will have to scan it and finish it nicely, because I’ve always liked it, but at the moment I just have this rather poorly-shot photo to share. (click to enlarge!)
This piece is trickier than usual to scan, partly because of its size (16×20) and partly because it’s drawn on clayboard instead of paper. Although the texture is a dream to draw on with crowquills, and highlights can be scratched out like scratchboard, I can’t use my light table to trace onto it like I can with sheets of bristol — had to break out the carbon paper! And because it’s inflexible it doesn’t scan as easily on my home scanner. Also, it’s far more expensive than the bristol, but probably worth it for a very special project.

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is a tricky one for me — I was stumped for something metaphorical, and I haven’t drawn atmospheric effects in a while. Then I remembered this old image which I made a while back for a school project but never really felt happy with. Just add fog: Viola! It’s not perfect, but I think it helped give the picture the depth it was lacking before. Doesn’t do anything for the figures, unfortunately!  Click the image to enlarge it.

The character is from a story rattling around in my head. She’s slipped out in bits and pieces of prose over the years, one of these days she’ll escape entirely…
The drawing itself is from several years ago, when I was still developing my current method of coloring. It’s fascinating to me sometimes to look at how I used to structure my files.  It seems like every few years I change my tactics. I guess it’s partly an evolution of my method, and partly due to the relentless march of software upgrades. (I always seem to switch the way I organize my file archives every few years too… amazing how something that made perfect sense five years ago can seem silly now! )

So, I feel a little bit cheesy about being absent for a month and then uploading another archive piece for this week’s Illustration Friday topic… and yet, that’s what I’m doing! This is just one panel from a short, 7-page story I wrote and illustrated a few years ago titled Feline Dreams. The drawing was particularly rushed in this panel but it definitely embodies “worry” to me — when I was drawing it I was really worried about finishing in time!

Here’s the full page this scene is from, click ‘em to see ‘em larger:

This is one of the series where I really hope my source files are hidden in my CD archives, because they didn’t make the move between my old computer and my current one… As part of my much-needed website redesign I’m planning on making space for this and a couple other more narrative projects I’d done about that time.

As for my long absence, let’s just say that two out-of-state conferences PLUS my big vacation for the summer PLUS coming down with a severe case of the traveler’s plague during the little time I was home this past month pretty much made posting impossible for me. Starting this week I’m getting back into my routine - new artwork next week if it kills me!

Well, it’s hard to post a drawing when I embodied this week’s Illustration Friday topic by failing to draw something new, so you all will just have to suffer with another from the archive:

The Tortoise and the Eagle (Click to enlarge)

This is another by good ol’ Aesop, which seems to cover the topic well enough: the fable of The Tortoise and the Eagle.

A Tortoise, dissatisfied with lowly crawling on the ground, envied the birds who could soar high into the clouds whenever they desired. One day, he offered an Eagle all the treasures in the ocean if she would only teach him how to fly. The Eagle declined the offer at first, but the Tortoise kept insisting and pleading. “Fine, I will teach you to fly,” said the Eagle and, taking him up in her talons carried him high into the sky. As she let go of him, she said, “Now, spread your legs and fly!” But before the Tortoise could say one word in reponse, he plunged straight down, hit a rock, and was dashed to pieces.

Moral: Demand your own way, demand your own ruin.

Yeah, he failed. Big time.