Head "Centaurion"

I have been drawing centaurs lately and this one is actually a caricature of Greg. He is very fun and easy to draw.

Done. Finally. Little Brandon came out better than expected; expressive, buttery, fresh. And if Amy looks labored over--she was! I had to paint her over and over and Greg kept looking over my shoulder, thinking I was insane. Brandon was painted in a tonal values first, then flesh tones were applied. This was very successful, but for some reason, when I tried it with Amy, (I think I got too opaque with the washes) it did not work.

A free logo for Sienna's school. This will be printed on t-shirts. Greg helped me with the props and picking and placing type.

Creatures

Someone at Greg's work asked if I could draw creatures. I dashed these out this morning--got other jobs I need to get a handle on. These were fun, fun, fun. I love drawing animals and people and these are a strange mix of both. These go hand in hand with John Quinn's and Danbob Thompson's "Big Foot" drawings (see John Quinn, right).

Portrait exercise, a combination of layered transparent washes and opaque applied paints. All acrylic. Started turning out kinda Bouguereau-esque, which was not my intentions, but learned a lot anyway...

Lately I have been messing around with opaque paints. Yesterday, at Steve and Becky's 4rth of July bbq, I irritated Greg, Becky and Steve by staring at them and sketching them in acrylic. I am concerned about different skin tones.

I still have a G-4 and it is slow. One of these days, I will update to a faster computer. This means that in between actions, I sketch characters to make the most of my time. Here are some pro bono sketches for a character I am creating for my daughter's school.

Here are some of the other cowgirl concepts I did for a designer. Each one could be worked up into something really nice...I just don't have the time. I am getting better at doing the cute girl art tho.

My client flew to China for a few days, so I picked up the paints again. The first is a quick value study, which is going into color. The second is a quick portrait exercise, with more of the same subject to follow.

Animals are a blast to illustrate, but it is people who are the most challenging and rewarding.

I did a quick cowgirl job for another client this week. Here is a rough drawing of the cowgirl, done without picture reference. I like the rough the best because it really has a nice flow. The final drawing was done after some picture reference and the concept pose was provided to me by the client. It will be placed on a young child's t-shirt.

I digitally inked about 42 characters for Cartoon Network this spring. That and being a stay at home Mom prevents me from really getting serious about painting. I am currently back on the religious toy figurines again.

Ellie the Elephant

I was helping Greg design some plush and started drawing this character. Once I started, i could not stop. I don't usually draw this style and thought I never could. A lot of the concepts are from our 6 year old daughter.

"Wrecks" is based on our neighbor's dog, whom we walk almost every night. The "real" Rex is somewhat a terror, a Jack russell "terror", who, in the same day, picked a fight with another dog who was on a walk, pooped all over the field where he was running, and bit our daughter and gave her a big bruise on her fore-arm. He loves Greg and wants to live at our house.

Another warm and cool exercise; same image as the tiger down below.

Warm and cool color sketch exercises. Acrylic on canvas paper.

Tiger, acrylic on canvas paper.

I painted my sketch. (Compare to drawing below) Acrylic on canvas.

Meet Disney Consumer Products Artists and talk to them about their gallery work and blogs: Vince, John, Jeff, Ryan, and Rich, in Costa Mesa this weekend.

At it again: What makes a big cat look like a big cat? Studies for general surface anatomy and shapes.

Just cranked this out. I went back into the archives, found this previous little thumbnail, worked it up, using my favorite prismacolor pencil: tuscan red. It has such a soft, buttery line. I was going thru some old drawings; drawings i meant to plus out but ran out of time. Compare the old cat drawings to this one. What a world of difference! It pays to practice!

I returned to an eohippus sketch (see blog archives) i did a while back and painted it for an exercise. I imagined a dark red brown creature who could easily slip into the dappled shadows in a mist filled forest. This is acrylic on canvas paper with several layers of gloss medium inbetween the paint.