Red Head

Well, over on THE DRAWINGBOARD this month's Girls drawing jam is redheads. Go check it out, there has been some really nice work done so far. I noticed that every drawing was of a really nice, pretty, sane looking girl. Now, I'm not one for stereotypes, but every redheaded girl I have met has been NUTS. I mean crazy. This is just my experience. I'm sure there are some very nice, normal redheaded girls out there, so don't send any hatemail my way. I believe that you exist, I just haven't met you.

Here's what the pencils looked like for this...

Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my buddy Scott's birthday, here's the drawing I did for him.

He shaves his head, but that still doesn't really explain this drawing...

Missed it again!!!

Well, another sketchcrawl has come and gone and yet again, I missed it. I have a good reason though this time, I went on a mini weekend vacation to Monterey!





The Monterey Bay Aquarium is an amazing place. The otters are probably the top attraction, and can you blame them? They're not just cute little faces, they have a lot of personality as well. Some great ham actors even. This was a good trip for me since this is the first sea otters I have seen up close and in living, breathing colour. Very helpful when the movie you're working on is about otters!



The various Jellyfish tanks are full of gorgeous yet deadly glowing jellyfish. Okay, they aren't all deadly, but they're in the very least painful. The way they light the interiors of the tanks makes these creatures glow. It's pretty mesmerizing to just watch them float within the blue infinity.



Some good people watching at the aquarium as well.



Eventually we had to leave the aquarium and explore the gorgeous coast line.

Gave me a chance to try some different things. Not everything was successful, but it never is.

Head on a plate

Not sure why I drew my head on a plate for my cousin's b-day drawing, but there it is...

Trying to get looser with my brush inking, but I just don't think I have the control of the tools yet to pull it off. This was alright, but not great. The Bodart loose inking remains elusive, but one day I shall have the loose confident line.

Rose

I may have to rename this blog NEGLECTED. Sheesh. I need to try and keep better track of this thing with more regular posts.

It's been a busy couple of weeks on the job with prepping 2 sequences of boards for story reels, helping direct temp voice tracks for said reels, and providing design guidance for a set of maquettes and 3-D models.

I'm tired.

Any ways, I have of course managed to keep up my daily ritual of searching for inspiration through various blogs. Ted Mathot has been showing some cool process work and sneak peaks of his upcoming book ROSE AND ISABEL 2. The first book was great and if you don't have it, you should.

Any ways, I was inspired to do a drawing of one of his characters.

I will make an effort to post more regularly.

Beware of Polar Bear

So, finally got around to doing my thank you notes from Christmas. I tried to do a little something extra this year turning my gift into a story that I then relayed to my gift giving relative with a drawing to go along with it; all in the form of a little thank you note.

Here's my favorite. Names blacked out to protect the innocent.

Rainy day

Hey look at that, it's another girl! And what's that she's leaning up against? A tree? I didn't see that one coming at all.

This was done for a new monthly thread feature taking place in the girls section of THE DRAWINGBOARD.

Check it out, there are some great drawings in there, and it's growing daily. Some of my favorites are by Rodguen (Rodolphe Guenoden) a very talented animator and storyboard artist at DreamWorks Animation. You can see more of his work at his website www.rodguen.com.

More girls and trees

I drew this as a little thank you for someone.

Hmm, another girl with a tree, I'm sensing some sort of theme.

Vegas baby, Vegas!

Went to Vegas for Christmas, good times. Wish I drew more, but too much going on. I did manage to get some airport sketches in though.

I'm trying to get more caricature in my sketches since getting just a likeness is starting to bore me.


I incorrectly was under the impression that this pen was waterproof. Nope.


This guy's wife was on to me, so I had to pretend I was drawing someone else. I hadn't been too kind to her husband in this drawing, so I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to come over and ask to see it. I guess that's always the danger... and part of the fun.



Have a great New Year everybody and I'll see you in 2006 with more drawings and maybe a book!

Snow on the brain

So, Ed The Monkeyking and I did a drawing exchange. I can't wait to see what he drew, but until then, you can see what I did. I'm starting to like this inking with a brush a lot more...

Make sure you go check out the Monkeyking's BLOG!.

Then, I decided to try out some new custom brushes in photoshop and I threw some colour on it. I wanted to try and do a "different than the usual" colour scheme for snow, as well as see how dark I could make her colours without losing her in the tree. It was of mixed success, but fun none the less.

SEASONED GREETINGS!

Merry Christmas to everyone who checks out this little blog.

And as an embarassing little extra, I kind of tracked the process of this year's Christmas card which you can see below...

I posted the thumbnail ideas for this card a few posts ago. Those lead to this pencil drawing. As you can see, there are MASSIVE problems with her right arm. I just handled it poorly, and my solution to the design was weak. The main problem being that it doesn't look like there is an arm under that sweater.



So, I tried to fix it when I inked it. I think it works pretty well. The lines of the sweater might lose her a bit in the texture of the tree, but I think the colour fixes that problem. Normally I would try and make the character clearly defined at the ink stage, and not depend on the colour, but I changed my mind on how to handle the tree (originally it was going to be just a black silhouette.) I also wanted to maintain some sort of texture to her sweater.

Sketchcrawl 6 - The Living Room!

Sigh, good times, good times. Remember when that guy did that thing, and then you drew that other thing with the bird and the gasoline powered generator. Yeah, that was cool too. The gold bars? Oh yeah! That was crazy! I was surprised that you can catch an escaped rabid tiger that quickly... well, of course everything comes at a price. No, I hear prosthetic limbs are quite good these days.

Ok fine, I wasn't there! I was trying to cover up the fact, but you had to spoil it. Was my story too unbelievable, or was it the lack of drawings?

Any ways, I had to bow out of Sketchcrawl 6 because of other things of a Christmas nature that needed to be taken care of as well as the fact that we (as in my girlfriend and I not the royal we, and certainly not the me and my other personalities "we.") got our couch yesterday and I needed to wait for the delivery truck. In honour of no longer having to sit on a Vietcong Bamboo Torture Cage (AKA a Papasan) I drew this in lieu of a full blown sketchcrawl. I shall be there next time!... unless I'm too busy being comfortable on our new black leather couch.

Rock

For some reason, I drew a quick model sheet of one of the guys I work with. You'd think I have better things to do with my time.

Searching

Looks like more Christmas stuff. I'm still trying to figure out this year's card. I have had a bunch of different ideas (which I guess is better than no ideas at all) but I think I'm finally getting close. Here are some quick sketches of a few of said ideas.

T'is the season

If things went as they should, I would have my Christmas card already designed and drawn, alas such is not the case. Instead, I have designed this year's wrapping paper. This is something I started a couple of years ago when I didn't have much cash. It was cheaper for me to draw something up on 11x17 paper and make a bunch of photocopies of it, than it was to purchase wrapping paper. Now I just do it for fun. I'm pretty happy with how this year's turned out; now if I only knew what my Christmas card will be...

Rockets Away

Hmmm... what the heck is this? It's a rather lame attempt at one of those assignments my friend and I give to each other. This one was Rocketboy. I have no idea where that rat came from or why I've allowed him to have a match around a small child. At least I was smart enough not to light it for him...

Happy Thanksgiving

Wel, my buddy Robert told me this morning that he is attending 3, yes THREE Thanksgiving dinners. This of course required a drawing of him after all of those drawings.

Have a safe holiday everyone and try not to consume too much tryptophan...

For something in the future

Haven't been posting as much as I would like. Here are some sketches that I did in my book as I try to figure out a decent bear design. The design isn't there yet, but I'm getting closer.

Eventually, you will see what this is for, but not quite yet.

Sketchcrawl 5.0 ALCATRAZ!!!

Took me a few days to get around to posting this. I was hoping to post photos as well, but I just haven't had the time to upload them from my camera.

It was another gorgeous day in the Bay area, these Sketchcrawls have managed to have some great weather. I had never been to Alcatraz before and I think I should have gone earlier so that I could focus on drawing this time out. I was caught up in the overwhelming amount of information and massive amounts of things to draw thus, not much drawing was done. Not many people use the word "thus" any more. If I had more pull, I might try to bring it back. Um any ways, as I was saying, hopefully I will be a little more prolific next time...


I liked the shape in this, but I wish I had "pulled the camera back" to see more of the building.


I would have liked to do caricature portraits of all of the famous inmates, but I think people were getting tired of me standing in the way while I drew this. The wonders of digital technology allowed me to take the drawing outside, and slap some washes on it using the pic I took with my digital camera as reference. My teachers in school always told me to draw from life, I wonder what they would say knowing that this is done from a picture of a picture?

Ukelele

Yesterday's assignment was "Little girl with Ukelele." This one is a little messy...