Right now I’m making lots of choices, and some of them can be a bit scary. Sometimes it’s almost easier to pick between two unknowns, leave things up to a random fate, than to make a reasoned decision that ultimately has to match up with what your gut is telling you…

This week’s Illustration Friday topic had me a little stumped, so I decided to embrace my current life-drawing kick. Ye olde traditional hands study! The pencil sketch for this was done using my own hands in the mirror. (And it sure is fun drawing your own drawing hand that way , let me tell ya!). I have a cheap-0 “full length” mirror in a wooden frame that I keep loose in my studio for times like these; I can position it however I want to get the angle and light I want. This finished drawing is with my brush-pen, which is starting to get interestingly scratchy, with a little work with the Micron. Not quite happy with the sleeves yet, I wanted to tone it more, both with the inks and with photoshop, and it probably needs to be re-cropped, but this week I’m playing catch-up from being sick last week – with a lot of extra, atypical busy-ness thrown in – so I’m not sure I’ll have time tomorrow to revisit. This one is solidly in the “scribbles” category!

I could probably relate a little too well to this week’s Illustration Friday topic. I stayed home from work for a couple of days with a minor but unpleasant stomachache. One of those things where you’re fine sitting still but everything lurches when you move around. Bleah. I spent most of the past two days curled up with a sofa – spent more time with my DS than with a good book I’m afraid, the effort of picking a new book to read off of the bookshelf (and I do have plenty sitting around waiting for me) seemed a bit overwhelming at the time. (Click the image to enlarge.)

Since I was feeling fuzzy anyway, I picked up the good ol’ Ebony pencils for this drawing instead of the inks… love those things, especially on a nice toothy drawing paper! It could use a little more work but I’m still not at 100% right now.

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…)

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.

Oddly enough, this image was inspired by a conversation between me and my husband last week, before I ever saw this week’s Illustration Friday topic. Micron pens on 9 x 12 inch drawing paper, click image to enlarge.

I’m trying to get back into the habit of posting here, after several weeks of slacking. The remodeling bug has hit and my studio was only the first room to fall victim! But part of the purpose of all this remodeling is so I can focus more on my drawing, so I’m trying to keep my hand in at the same time. I think some of my IF pieces are going to be more sketchlike for a while, as I’m trying to use them to work out the areas where I’m weaker. I’m also probably not going to color most of them unless I’m particularly moved, to make sure I’m not relying on the coloring too much.

This week’s Illustration Friday topic proved a challenge, as I find faces one of the most difficult things to render in pen and ink, and hats – much like shoes – are difficult to draw so they look right. I went through one of the fashion magazines I have on my bookshelf for times like this and found almost every single picture of people wearing hats. There weren’t many, considering the size of the magazine, and most were all taken from the same couple of articles/ads.  Ink over pencil sketches, photographed out of my sketchbook instead of scanned (hence the dubious picture quality this week, sorry). Some of the faces came out better than the others, but most bear the marks of being drawn from photographs. Although one of them was drawn out of my head – can you tell which?