Cute Enough To Eat

This is part of a birth announcement for my niece Jo, who was born recently in Japan.

Hellboy

I sketched this last night while watching the Hellboy movie. This morning, I added the red with white highlights. It turned out being somewhat of a stylistic homage of Dan Panosian's very cool white-out pen sketches.

A New Me (In Living Color)!

I first attempted to paint this in Photoshop, but it didn't give me the look I desired. I wanted something a little more clean than my digital painting skills could present, so I attacked it again in Illustrator, and am much more happy with this version. This piece has a lot more gradients than I usually use, but was a good exercise in trying a new look. I think the penguin ended up a bit like a shiny Mac icon.

I appreciate every single person that has dropped by and left a comment! Much to my dismay, when I switched to the new Blogger, some comments were changed to anonymous. I know that all of them from the brilliant Sarah Mensinga were replaced so here is a link to make up for that. Thank you again, it's truly awesome to hear from all you very talented individuals!

A New Me (a work in progress)

As part of my new plan of self-improvement, I sketched this guy today with the thought of creating a new, more friendly, avatar.

I said to myself, "Self, now who wouldn't want to click on a cute little penguin?" To which I replied, "Hitler, probably. But I don't want his business anyway." And thus, it was decided.

I wanted the little guy to be pondering what to draw next. Do you think this came across, or does he simply appear to be picking his nose with the pencil?

Figure Drawing 1

Last year, about this time, I took my first ever figure drawing class. And I must say it was long overdue. I don't feel that my skills had ever improved so much in the same period of time. I definitely need to do it more often.

For this piece, the model was laying on his back facing away from me, and I didn't feel a full-body sketch was really that interesting. So, rather than move, I punched in on his face and drew that instead. I think this was a 10-15 minute pose.

Good Enough To Eat

This is a poster I created for the dessert area of a party. There were lots of chocolates and sexy food, so I wanted to make the poster a little sexy to match. I was going for a Shag-like style on the girl, and wanted to make her look like some sort of tasty confection. The overall look I think leans toward a 1970's adult-film poster, which works in a fun way.

Give Me: Music on Vinyl, Movies on Film, and a Giant Stop-Motion Monkey...

As Sarah mentioned on her blog yesterday, breaking out of your comfort zone is tough. Everyone has that one thing they draw well, or that one medium that feels the best. So, I decided I would follow her lead and try something new today. I have had some charcoal pencils lying around for about a year now, and never really given them a chance. And since I picked up Peter Jackson's King Kong last night, I thought I would do a quick sketch of the original, my favorite, and 100% analog, Lord of the Jungle.

Maddy the Squirrel Chaser

This is a quick sketch I did of Maddy, my friend's Italian Greyhound. Maddy happened to be burrowed under some blankets when I sketched this, but I think I captured her "Hey, is that food?!" look pretty well. Maddy also loves squirrels, since they are the only animal she can't catch.

Happy New Year to everyone!