Scribbles & Scribings

I hope everyone out there is having a great Thanksgiving, able to spend some time with family and/or friends to appreciate all of the good things in their lives. Personally, I’m very grateful for having been born into — and married into — a loving family, for meaningful work that supports me, for a comfortable home to live in. These are the things that really matter, more than “Black Friday” and all the other craziness that goes on this time of year.

So what’s up with this somewhat…. unusual picture? Well, one of the things I’m grateful for has been an increase in client work, but it’s been cutting in on my time for making “for fun” work. As a result, instead of something more personal I’m posting a recent piece I produced for Cactus to promote scratch-off tickets for the Colorado Lottery. It should be only the first in the series for a campaign called “Celebrate the Season,” which is already shaping up to be a lot of fun. They wanted an old-fashioned look, so I drew it in ink to simulate an engraving and added subtle tints to color it; the rest of the series should be in a similar style. I produced this one in record time for the complexity of the drawing, and I look forward to taking a little more time to lavish details on the rest of the series.

I wish you all home, health and happiness for this holiday… have a good one!   

This year I plan to participate in Illustration Friday again as much as possible. I’m kicking it off with this week’s word and a quick drawing, “Mommy’s Sweater,” inspired by the cold, cold winter we’ve been having this year. It just makes me want to snuggle up all cozy like she is!

It was drawn with pencil on sketchpaper and colored in Photoshop. Just a quickie, this time!

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!

Well, this one was finished in time only on a technicality… thank goodness the Illustration Friday website is on Pacific Standard Time! Another stab at something different… unlike last week, which was all old-school paint-on-acetate, this week it’s all digital, with no “real” media involved!

Every so often I think to myself “hey, I just want to do something really quick, I’ll just draw it right in Photoshop instead of mucking about with the paper and the pens and the scanner and all.” So far, it’s never been the faster way to go. The slippery tablet and inability to turn the paper around to get the right angle both conspire to make what should be nice, simple lines a constant string of do-overs. Oh well, practice makes perfect. I decided to leave my “sketch” layer in the finished drawing, because it seemed to add a nice bit of extra movement and texture, and since I’d ordinarily consider something with this level of detail a study or a sketch rather than a finished drawing.

It’s been spring-cleaning season around here, but in between getting the garden ready for planting and cleaning the house I’ve been hitting the drawing table. I have a few projects that need to be finished in the next few weeks… I’ll be sharing them here when they’re done!

I missed out on “expired” for last week’s Illustration Friday, but this week it was actually my day job that came to the “rescue” with this illustration of a cowboy riding to the rescue.   This is a work-in-progress for an event poster which is allowing me a rare bit of illustration fun, and a bit of a digression from my usual style. I hope they keep this design, which will have a retro movie-poster vibe, instead of going with the fall-back, which is a much “safer” but more boring design with pretty landscape photography.

This illustration was based on a stock photo we’d bought, although I had to add in a lot of details, including redrawing the horse’s head, which was at an odd angle. This is the unretouched artwork, which was reverse-painted with acrylic paints on acetate and scanned with a black sheet behind it, about 11×17 inches.

I needed a “rescue” this week, as I spent half the weekend with a sore jaw (aftermath of a root canal) and didn’t get nearly as much done as I’d wanted. But I did have a chance to start researching my next personal project, which I’m looking forward to sharing in the next few months.

click to enlarge

This week’s sketch for Illustration Friday is a relatively quick ink drawing based on a photograph generously offered for use by a lovely lady from a RedBubble group devoted to portraits of fellow members.  I chose this particular image because not only is it a very sassy pose, but for the practice in drawing the human figure in extreme perspective — always a challenge! This image can be seen a bit larger in my RedBubble gallery.

Not much else to say this week except to let everyone out there know that Zazzle is having another sale! This week, through March 8, they are offering $4 off all t-shirts and other apparel items — including baby clothes and sweatshirts — with the coupon code 4OFFPATTYTEE

Here are a few suggestions from my Critterwings shop, although you can also customize your very own shirt too.

No real message today, his pretty much said it all.

Just a quick ink drawing from photo reference with my 03 pen over a pencil sketch (erased) on smooth bristol paper. 6″x9″

I haven’t been posting too many actual “scribbles” lately,  so just for a change of pace here’s a little something that emerged when I was supposed to be working on another drawing.

One of my “bad” work habits is having the TV on while I’m drawing.  This is, incidentally, pretty much the only way I watch most TV since it’s one of the few times I’m actually sitting still that I’m not in front of a computer. I make a point of picking shows for this purpose that are mostly dialog driven or aren’t actually all that engrossing, so I don’t have to watch the screen. I was doing this the other day and just happened to glance up when there was a particularly compelling scene, a dark room with dramatic lighting on the actor so that you only saw the very edges of his already pretty dramatic features. I had to hit pause and capture it, right on the page I was already sketching on. Extra points* for anyone who can name the show!

So even though I was “goofing off” with this one, this week I committed the last of the Chinese Zodiac series to paper and scanned it in. I still have to add colors, but they’ll be done soon, which means the whole series will be showing up very soon in my new Critterwings store… you know about the store, right?  I’m slowly adapting my existing artwork into new products — I added a few mugs with Butterfly images to the Critterwings Zazzle shop this weekend — so stop by frequently to see what’s new!

* Note: Points have no value except the warm glow of knowing that you were right.

This is a rare (for me) portrait… a commission for a friend as a gift to her husband. Happy anniversary, guys!  (click the image to enlarge it)

Sorry about my unplanned absence… we were on vacation and ever since we came back we’ve been taking care of a few neglected chores around the house. Oh, yes, and this commission took up a bit of my drawing time, too. But I’m nearly finished coloring the next four images in my Chinese zodiac series, so you’ll be seeing them soon….

… and don’t go trying to change her mind! (Even if it is way past her bedtime…)

I am resolved to simplify things, if it allows me to meet my other resolution to post something new weekly. In this case, this week’s oh-so-appropriate Illustration Friday topic — the word is “resolve” — a fairly quick one in between working on a slightly more ambitious project.

This is also the first piece of new artwork to be scanned in with my most practical Christmas present: an A3 Mustek scanner. Now I can draw on my 11×17 paper without having to scan it in pieces and piece it together in Photoshop! Not that it was an issue with this one because it was so small, but as I said, I have more ambitious projects underway….