little boy blue

A sketch of Ryde. He's definitely cuter in real life :)

Runner

Looks like it might be a little while before I will be running due to an injury but I can still draw a runner.

Some dude on fire

Can't say what exactly inspired this drawing but I am fond of it. Sketched in pencil and underpainted in Photoshop.

When drawings go bad

No explanation needed...

lucky sketch 13

I am getting rather used to drawing on the bus. At first I hated it, but I feel I have adapted to the unstable environment. Still the bus will make me mess up, but overall it has become more enjoyable. This study was to draw faces facing right. For some reason, I always default the faces looking to my left, so I wanted to practice breaking that habit. I thought it went well.

#12 - banana posse

Since we are about to start our family summer tradition of "The Banana Stand" I wanted to explore some characters that could represent our chocolate dipped frozen bananas. So this is what I came up with. We have Banana Boy, Sprinkles and Nutz. I figured Nutz would be a bit crazy. I also tried to explore a bit with how the eyes look. So many ways to draw eyes.

sketch 11

One more post. This session was maybe a little less than inspirational. No genius ideas. I do like the horse design. My wife wants to sew a horse shape on to my daughters shirt. So at least I accomplished something. But it is good to keep me sketching.

sketch session 10

Here is my sketch session 10. I did another sketch of my birds-snake, for no reason other than to compare working on the cintiq to working with pencil and paper. Though I love the feel of pencil on paper, I think I like the cintiq a little bit better. I loved how on the computer, I could zoom in real close and get nice detail. Unfortuantely in the real world, my pencil led is the same size no matter what I do. So using sketchbook pro with a cintiq is a nice setup. But barely better than pencil and paper. I would say this is the first time I like drawing better on the computer. But I am sure the more I do it, the better.

Octopii attempt 1

I am making a big wood monstrosity for my living room so I needed to start some sketches for it. And I was kinda thinking what better to put up on your wall when you live in a desert but an octopus. Plus, you know how I feel about Blue planet and glowy fish at the bottom of the ocean. I was thinking an octopus would be a good starting point since it has been eons since I have sketched anything other than people. What could be easier than drawing a bunch of swirling lines? But alas, the anatomy of an octopus started tangling my brain. FUN fun fun to attempt though.

OK me too, even though I'm late

I got these awesome old (like 1960s) Time LIFE books from DI. This lady was a creation from a Spanish flamenco dancer I saw while perusing Spain.

A Week of Caricatures

For some reason I have been asked to create some characters for a new campaign. I am having fun trying something new.

sketch nine

My goal is to produce at least 30 sessions of sketching. Nothing too long, but still separate sessions of sketching. So I am trying to catch up. I did this for some storyboards which I will later animate in AfterFX, so they might not make as much sense in the sketch form. But having fun creating expressive characters.

numero 8 - bus sketching

Okay, did some sketching on the bus ride in, so pardon the... sketchiness. Okay, all sketching is sketching, but bus sketching is not nearly as stable as sketching on a non moving surface, so I feel the final results are not as sharp as I would want. But today was mostly random stuff, just whatever. But what I like about this challenge is that it is getting me to think of sketching during times when I would have otherwise not have thought to.

Character sketches

Some sketches over the weekend. Trying to create some simple characters which for me is awkward. But hey, the purpose of this blog is to sketch and improve, right?

The Big Cake Show

My wife insisted that I watch a new reality show called "Cake Boss". Those cakes were huge, and decorative, but I don't know how anyone would actually flap their gums around one. Here is a logo concept to pay homage to the show.

Puzzle on my Desk

I have a wooden 3-D puzzle on my desk at home and thought it would be fun to sketch. I was surprised at how difficult it was to get the angles and proportions correct. It's not perfect, but enjoyed the time drawing.

Sketch number seven... Eagle Snake!

Do you think if an eagle caught this snake as prey, it would feel guilty for eating it? Do not ask me why the snake turned out to have an eagle head, it's just the way I roll.

Also, I did this sketch on the computer, using a Cintiq tablet, and Autodesk Sketchbook pro. At first I didn't like it, it all seemed fuzzy. Then I realized I was drawing at 72 dpi. Fine for video storyboards, but not for real sketching. Once I changed that, I really liked it. It was nice to be able to zoom in really tight for more detail. Downside, is then you feel you need high detail in every inch of the drawing. So it is easy to get carried away. Another plus with computer drawing is layers of course, but being able to zoom way in and zoom way out, I could use hand strokes to my advantage. If I needed a smooth curve for the curve of the body, I could zoom way out, and keep it smooth and simple with a small hand stroke, whereas drawing on paper, I would need to cover a much greater distance with my hand, leaving more room for unsteadiness and mistakes. Now I need to draw a version on paper, just to compare.

Number six

Okay, I did these sketches on the bus, so it was a little annoying trying to keep a steady hand. Speaking of hands, I wanted to sketch a few hands since hands are always tricky. But then as my mind wandered, I came up with iVillan. A Plankton-esque iPhone that wants to take over the world, and makes statements only in the reference of i. It is impossible for him to say you, or they. Only i. There is no "team", in the word "i".

Ugly Logo

Working on some logo designs for a project. I was drawing out every visual cliche I could think of to get them out of the way and came up with this.

This is one of the finals that was rendered for the client.

T-Shirt Process

Several times a year I create a t-shirt for the Riverton Parks and Recreation Department pro-bono, or exchange for race entries. It is a way to do an experimental project vs. some of the more straight forward assignments things I do all day. I presented a day of using older buildings that are no longer standing and using a modern illustration method with runners in the foreground. It was kind of crazy to stylize the photographs but tracing in Illustrator really helped out.

I also wanted to add an antiqued appearance to the shirt. This is done by bringing in a bit-mapped texture into Photoshop.

Within Photoshop I use the "Select / Color Range" function and select only the black. While the black is selected within your photo "Command-C" to copy the texture into your pasteboard.

To apply the texture, simply create a channel mask in the layer you want to add the texture. The amount of texture can be modified with the "Brightness/Contrast" adjustments within the channel, not the image part of the layer.

The Real Spiderman - Sketch #5

Come on people, get real!! If a radioactive spider bit a human, I think this is a more accurate representation. Sad, but true.

Sketch # 4

Just wanted to explore some fun characters outside of my typical drawing style.

Sketch that happened to Become Finished Along the Way

This shirt design is due tomorrow so it became a finished piece. Sorry for cheating... I will post some of the process sketches tomorrow. I like the way the colors turned out. Hopefully the client will like the design and the 10K participants will buy a boat load of shirts.

Zoey in Motion

Trying to draw a one-year old who is in constant motion was more difficult than I imagined. At least I think the hair was captured correctly.

Mummy and His Cat

Day 2 and 3

Okay, sort of cheating a little bit, on day two I did some really quick storyboards for work, and even though I should be doing outside of work sketching, I still included it. But day three I figured I would warm up with some figures, then create a random creature, my favorite pasttime. I had to abandon much finishing work on the creature because I need to study animal anatomy a bit more, I didn't like the structure of the legs.

Here I go!

Here is a sketch of a co-worker in our meeting this morning. I'm hoping to work on improving my portrait this month. Great idea on starting this blog Eric and Travis!

Each morning starts out with a can full of a bubbly brown substance. I cannot describe the taste except for that it is familiar. In fact it kind of tastes like crap but provides comfort to the soul.

Beginning the 30 days of Sketching

Okay, June crept up fast, so I am already behind, but I did a sketch about a week ago that I wanted to post, and count that for at least June 1st. I actually got this idea from my son. We were talking about dragons, and he was talking about this giant sea dragon covered in rocks, and when he comes out of the water, all these crabs scatter and hide in the cracks in the dragons rocky scales. Awesome idea Andrew! I did this sketch with an ink pen, which is unusual, since I typically sketch in pencil / blue pencil. But I really like the feel of ink, so maybe I will try it more.

30 Days of Sketching

Here it is… the long awaited 30 days of sketching challenge. In 15 minutes a day one of these pencil to paper sketches will be immortalized on the Creative Think Machine's blog.