Pet Portrait – Tolly and Jaffa

Because the colours are too epic  and must be shared – a recent pet portrait.

Pet Portrait graphic style - labrador cross

 I have been quiet recently because I have a lot of work that I can't show yet - if ever! I am still drawing and painting and scribbling away...

For this pet portrait I decided to go back to Illustrator - a program I love but don't have the opportunity to play with at the moment.  I am still exploring ideas for the future - but I really, really love working in a graphical style with lots of textures and this was a brilliant way to do both!  This was a lot more satisfying to me than just straight up pet portraits and I think I will do more with it.

However, I would love your opinion on the different ideas below. Do you have a favourite from these images? Is simple best or a splash of colour and texture your thing? Let me know!  And you will be seeing a lot more like this in the future, methinks.

Muppet Pirates – Floyd Pepper

Hey Man…. It’s Floyd!

On to no 3!

Muppets - Beaker

...needs no words!

The Ewoks made it home.

This week’s personal painting.  Progressing skills with environment and storytelling.  After a long adventure, the hero comes home to his mate and daughter – who has a small surprise to share with her own young partner…

This one was fun and quite frankly, there are not enough Ewoks in the world.  Perhaps I should do a Wookie painting to accompany it – I love drawing fur!

Grace and Router Character Design

Redesign of an old, old, old character (The lemur type thing) who also had a rather bad name and decided to turn him into the sidekick of a rather Calvin-esque character. Had a lot, lot, lot of fun with these two, and am planning on putting them into a series of predicaments.

I decided to set myself a challenge with this one and put a timescale on this picture – as in, what if I had a time frame of only two days to come up with these characters. So this is what I ended up with after eight hours of designing and colouring. Admittedly, Router was already “designed”, (albeit rather different!) but Grace was from scratch. It was a lot of fun.

Self Portrait of Crazy Redhead

Hehehehehe.

I hate writing about myself, but thought it might be an idea to have an “about me” page for my pending website… so I did this today to cover most bases.

Best of British

Can’t…. stop…. drawing!

Something slightly different this time.  Wanted to try a more graphical piece and this was a lot of fun! Picked out some of my favourite British birds (can you guess them all?!).  Would love to make a t-shirt or poster with this lot.

Not too happy with the layout, was trying to go for a hear shaped outline almost, but I think it is lopsided.  Think I might rearrange the gang into more of a circle for the absolute final piece.

Fairy Pharoah

Say that three times fast!

A piece for a client from a few weeks ago, and experimenting with new brushes in Photoshop.  Another slightly older piece, but I do still rather like this one.  Typically, just after finishing this one Photoshop had a failure of epic proportions and I lost this brush – still have not been able to replicate it which is very frustrating, but I did come close thank goodness.

I am about to start building myself a website which will have lots of new work available to view – will take a little while but hope to have it done before Christmas!

Little Bit at the market

This picture… was both my baby and the bane of my life on and off for the past three weeks.

It was a fantastic exploration.  I wanted to play with three different ideas; hue, texture and creating a group scene.  I learned a deal about all three topics and so am very pleased.  It felt like the process would never end, though! However,  I have just tallied up my time and it took about 16 hours all in all, mostly fiddling and playing with ideas – so not as bad as I thought.

Anyway, am happy with the outcome.  Little Bit with her dad, visiting the local market.  The next one will be better!

Canine Tarot - Two of Swords – German Shepherd

Forgot I had not put this one up yet – Two of Swords for the canine tarot, symbolising partnership and balance, on a cautious but positive path.

German shepherds, meeting at their favourite tree.

Colours are a bit too saturated, but the general impression of being cautious and uncomfortable in a slightly creepy place came through, I think.

Ewok, Illustrator style

Ee Chee Wa Maa!

Yes, I went on google to find that. Help me.

It seems to be either a love or hate thing with Ewoks. I love them. Furry little gits.  I can remember watching the cartoon when I was a child – and have vague recollections of the Battle for Endor – was that a series or movie? But no matter, Ewoks are awesome and a fun way to practice with illustrator and textures. Makes me want to watch Starwars again.  The originals, not the new three… saying nothing.

I love illustrator, but I do struggle with the more technical/graphic side of things. And being an idiot, I don’t name my layers. Yeah, that’s not fun in Illustrator. I am learning.  I really like using textures at the moment, although they were added in Photoshop afterwards.

Altogether, rather fun! Onto the next one.

psychedelia critter

These rather froggy, lizardy dudes were originally for the COW over on conceptart.org, but muggins here messed up her timing and missed the deadline.  Still, it was a good experience and next time I will look at the clock.

The brief was to create a creature that was dependent on a food-source that was a narcotic.  I went with a reptile that sucks on (and spits out again, don’t worry!) dart frogs. Then sits around saying “dude.” a lot.

Not too happy with the end result, but learnt a lot…

Imp,demon, goblin?

Wow, having a bit of a run of “cute” recently! I think I have been watching too many zombie movies and having to overcompensate?

This little dude is an idea for a practice kiddie book I would like to throw together.  I am wondering if he is *too* cute? However, he will have a counterpart who is a bit more obnoxious so perhaps it will work.  The antagonist will hopefully be in colour by the weekend, and then it is time to start on the book itself.

And he needs a name. Sugar McSweetnheartkissy seems right.

Whoops!

He dropped his icecream!

Trying to catch the second before kiddo realises what happened and is gonna let you know about it.

Also learning watercolours. Oh boy. As someone who is a big fan of lots of colour… restraint is needed. This coming weekend is going to be filled with more watercolours, methinks.

Happy Gecko

It is no secret that I love lizards. Absolutely adore them. Which often gets me strange looks when I enthuse about them in public. Before I took a few years out to travel overseas, I kept leopard geckos and I still miss them terribly.

Dachshund – from reference

I love these guys. They are just like little old men.

From photo reference

“There was something a little bit odd about her cat”

I really liked this when I first finished it – now looking at it, I can see so very many changes needed. Still, it was really really fun and I might redo this one again some day.

Couple of sketches

Fat Cat