At one point I was invited to be part of a charity anthology that for better or worse ended up dissolving. Anthologies are unfortunately notorious for falling apart before they begin. It's a dedicated process to coordinate so many different creative teams to meet deadlines etc., coupled with the fact that most anthologies are in the red financially, so publishers tend to shy away from them unless they're really stellar.

At any rate, these characters were part of my original story idea for that anthology. They were much younger, as the anthology was aimed at children, but the ideas were the same. They sort of morphed into their older counterparts in my mind, and this illustration was the result.

This illustration is also a bit of a personal pat on the back, because it was very challenging for me, and sat sadly taped to my drafting table for far too long. The colors also fought me most of the way, and while I still don't think I successfully captured everything I pictured, as a whole I think it's a solid piece. These characters have since found a place in a larger universe of stories, so hopefully you'll be seeing them again soon.

Labels: character design, ink, Photoshop, Tree Spirit

This picture has been a bit of a personal failure of mine. It has sat dormant on my drafting table for far longer than I'd care to admit. The problem I believe is that it represents the truest example of the style I've always strived to achieve, and completing it was downright intimidating.

The pencils for this picture I've posted here before, and while I did enjoy those, I always intended this piece to be inked. Another challenge with this was that it was the first picture I tried inking with a light table. I chose all the wrong paper, so that seeing the underlying pencil was a muddied mess. There was a lot of flipping back to the original pencil to see just what I was trying to ink.

All of that aside, I've walked away from this picture with quite a few lessons learned, and hope to stay prolific in the coming months. Next on my plate will be coloring this piece, and cursing out each and every little twig and branch along the way. Enjoy!

Labels: brush pen, giant monsters, pen and ink, Tree Spirit

I ran into some technical snafu's in the past month or so that made getting art completed and posted a bit of a challenge. Hopefully that's behind me now, so I'm posting some things that were completed recently. I'm also brainstorming on ways to add more content to this blog with or without new art to show, but I'll have to iron that out a bit more first.

First up is this week's Drawer Geeks, "Frankenstein":

I wanted to show a bit more of the messy business of stitching someone together of disparate parts. My Frankenstein is falling apart at the seams, literally.

Next up is another Drawer Geeks from the previous round, in honour of the film and book "Where The Wild Things Are".

Played with a whole new palette for me, as well as colouring directly on the pencils and skipping inks all together. Relatively happy with how this turned out, even if it wasn't anything like I pictured initially.

Finally, this is a pencil drawing of a duo that figure into a larger story brewing in my head at the moment. Not ready to talk about it yet, but I like the design enough to show it around.

Labels: Drawer Geeks, Frankenstein, Illustrator, pencils, Photoshop, Tree Spirit, Where The WIld Things Are