Birthday drawing....

It was somebody's birthday today - so I thought I'd draw them something.  It's funny because if someone asked me to draw something I'd be hesitant and drag my feet, but sometimes an idea hits me and I want to get to it before anything else.

It's just a quick sketch - but this person really likes mermaids - and collects all sorts - so I thought I could do something mermaidy for them.

Gonna have an adventure of a time...

I thought it would be cool to do a version of Adventure Time characters, Finn and Jake.

This is my first rough of Finn...and I'll be adding Jake next week (as it's almost the weekend!).

I've only seen the first season of the show - which is amazing.  I gotta find more episodes!

Spy Pope!

 This is the phenomenon known as Spy Pope!  Okay, so maybe there's no such thing, but why not?  Why can't the dude who doles out crackers and blesses babies do more?  Why does he have to be so old and  hobbly?  That doesn't have to be the case.  He could use his high position to do some good.  He could use his big silly hat to house a camera and other spy stuff.  Anything less is just a waste of a pope.

I was listening to the 'Doug Loves Movies' podcast.  It's Doug Benson's podcast and he had John Lithgow, Paul F. Tompkins and Jimmy Pardo on the October 1st taping.

He's been getting some really good guests lately - so I've been listening quite a lot more.  Anyway - on this particular podcast they were talking and somehow they got off topic and were talking about making a movie staring the Pope as a spy and how he'd have a camera coming out of his big hat.

It sounded like a funny idea, so I did a quick sketch of it - and liked that, so I did a little more, and filled out the scene.  It's still pretty rough, but I liked it.

Who needs James Bond when you've got Spy Pope on the case?

IF: Rambunctious Adelia takes flight

Here's a closeup of Adelia:

The last few weeks I've been spending a good part of my Saturday afternoons at the bookstore. For some reason it's been a good way for me to get some drawing done.

This last Saturday (that would be yesterday) I was working on developing the world of Adelia more. When I first attacked this project I wanted it to be very minimal in extra detail and backgrounds. My first Adelia book was done completely in that style. But now it's been about a year and a half that I've been drawing this character - in that time my style has been evolving and Adelia is a good part of that.

The original sketch shows a lot more info than what I eventually put in. I wanted the crayon ship to be more of a rocket...which meant the balloons were out of place. I think, if time permits, I'm going to do a version of this with balloons (which means doing it without the smoke).

I also eventually opted out of using the moon. I felt it would take away from the composition - and it was just loud and clunky, and didn't really fit.

In the rough I did a couple of versions of Adelia - one where she was in profile and the other where she was in a more interesting and dynamic pose (I went with this one in the cleanup). If you notice, there are a lot of faces on everything. in the rough the crayon had a pig face (because of the snout like tip)...I'm still toying around with the idea of having everything be alive and a character all on it's own. Obviously it has Tokidoki feel to it (there are many illustrators using this, and I got into it through researching for a freelance job for Kitson and Nikki Chu handbags - they wanted a series of illustrations in the hello kitty, tokidoki, gwen stefani style). It's a direction I'm exploring as it lends itself quite well to toys. But we'll see...I don't think i'll go so overboard as to put a face on EVERYTHING. But we'll see...

And here's the final illustration:

And I created it for Illustration Friday - Adelia takes a rambunctious ride through the cosmos.

Adelia: relaxing in the sun

This is a revised version of a really old rough painting I did in my sketchbook a couple of years back. I was obsessed (at the time) with doing small 5x7 drawings that could easily be framed and sold. I did a bunch of Adelia drawings in my sketchbook and watercolored them. This is the one that turned out the best:



I had always meant to tackle it again and repaint it for real (not in my sketchbook). But I never got around to it...until this last weekend. I printed out the watercolor lowering the opacity so I could see my revised lines easier, and then drew over the printout. I'm going to clean it up in Illustrator when I have a chance, and then repaint it.



It's very similar to the original - but there are key differences - small bits of perspective, and I changed the hands (because my hands were a little weak originally) and I changed her pose so her body is under her head. I just can't wait to tackle it...

Sadly, it'll probably take a little bit of time as I have many (art related) things on my plate currently...

Adelia: Happy Christmas!

This year I had it in my head that I should do at least 3 postcards for promotional purposes. The first one I sent out was around February and was Adelia holding a heart - kind of a valentine's day theme.

The next one that went out was around August. I had just finished doing the cover for a children's book called "Zebra Berries For Mommy" and I had to show off that illustration. The biggest reason was that it wasn't a penguin! I was as shocked as everyone else that I could draw another animal character other than a penguin.

But I couldn't give up on Adelia - so for my 3rd postcard (that I would send to children's book publishers) was going to be a christmas themed illustration. This is my first attempt. I'm getting a little worried as it's getting really close to Christmas and I still don't have a final image (This one would work...but I want something more...I did some sketches of Adelia peeking around the bannister of her house on Christmas morning looking at the christmas spread - the tree, presents, fireplace. I'm hoping to get this one finished...). Anyhow - this is just a fun little drawing of Adelia (that probably won't be used for any other reason than to show off how cute the character is).

IF: Similar...The Three Little Pigs

For Illustration Friday I decided to post my Three Little Pigs illustration.



It's a story we all grew up with - and it's the first of the zombie baby picture subject matter I chose. There's the bumpkin pig with the straw house, the flighty pig with the stick house and the smart farmer pig with the brick house. The way I've always seen these pigs drawn was exactly the same - similar in every way except the way they dressed. So that's how I went about this drawing, they're triplet pigs, with each sporting a unique style.

Tusken Raiders: Lil' sand person

I can't believe I forgot to draw the sand people when I was doing my sandman series. I have three separate drawings devoted to different characters named Sandman - but didn't draw a sandman from Star Wars!

So, once I finally figured out my mistake - I went about trying to rectify it. Here's my sketch...I still need to clean it up (it's very rough...I drew it on the computer using a cintiq! All of the other drawings I've done in this series have been done in my sketchbook and scanned into the computer for cleanup), but it's a start!



Obviously I'll be posting the final illustration when I have time to work on it.

Lil' Darth Vader

This was one of the first drawings of this sort that I did. It almost got lost in a page of character drawings - but I was going back through what I had drawn and I really liked the death star behind Vader.



Last week I cleaned it up in between my real job (during any downtime)...



I tried to simplify the computerized mechanical elements of the death star by adding some lines. When I was finished with the cleanup I felt like it was missing something...sure it had Vader and a death star behind it...but I felt it needed something else. I drew one tie fighter and copied it (for the back two tie fighters)...originally it was three of the exact same tie fighters...but I changed the wing lines on the front tie fighter because Darth Vader always flew in a different vehicle from the storm troopers (and possibly it helped the audience to identify which one was his).



So I added that to the drawing, and it was ready to color. This is actually the biggest one I've worked on so far. I had to enlarge it to fit in the tie fighters. Usually these pieces are about 8 1/2 x 11 - but this one ended up at 11 x 13. The only downside to it was the slowdown the computer had when I used a bigger brushstroke or when I was applying a filter (which I did very minimally - I just added a little noise to the mechanical elements of the picture to add some texture). And that's it. Darth Vader was done.

The Sandman: one version

So I was all set to do a version of The Sandman (from the spiderman comics)...I had the drawing all finished and went onto google to make sure I had the correct colors - I typed in Sandman and three different comic versions came up. They weren't 3 different versions of the same Sandman, they were three different characters throughout comic history with this name. One of the ones that struck me the most was this guy dressed in a green suit with a gas mask on. I thought it would be fun to do a version of all three of the characters, and the gas mask guy was the first.

In the upper left hand corner is the first comic character named The Sandman. He's pretty much a knock off of the Green Hornet, with the green suit, 'mad men' hat, mask (although his is a gas mask) and gas-gun. It's the 'golden age' Sandman.

The upper right hand corner is the DC comics version of The Sandman. He was created by Neil Gaiman (and while the comic is named "the Sandman," the main character, which I've drawn above, probably isn't named Sandman. From doing very little research, I believe his name is Morpheus and he's the comic's main character. The comic is called The Sandman because the main character is the anthropomorphic personification of dreams.

And finally - the bottom two drawings are the Marvel Comics version of The Sandman. And, in typical Marvel fashion he's quite literally a man made from sand. I did two versions of him trying to figure out if I wanted to draw him with a fist, or just a loose arm of sand...

Anyhow - the first one I finished is the Golden Age Sandman.

Freddy the kid: Freddy Krueger

I've always wanted to go as Freddy Krueger for Halloween. I never did, but one year I bought the glove. 10 bucks. I thought it was pretty bad ass.



Anyhow - I'm in the middle of doing a series of entertainment icons...and since halloween is coming up, I've been concentrating on horror movie icons. One of my favorite villains has to be Freddy Krueger. My dad had my brother and I watch the first Nightmare on Elm Street when we were kids and we spent that night huddled in our beds, scared out of our minds...I remember looking at the door to our room, expecting some form of monster to come tearing through at any minute.

As I grew up - the picture that haunted me the most was of the girl in the body bag walking up the steps (from a basement? I can't remember)...and a creepy scene where Freddy is walking down a alley way scraping his arms against each wall. I saw that scene recently and couldn't believe it used to scare me. His arms grow long to reach each side of the walls, but it comes across as so cartoony. Maybe it's still scary, I'm just watched too many horror movies...

Hellkid

It's been pretty hard finding time to do these...but I'm still trying to fit them in. I've been quite busy at work, and have been finishing up some freelance at the same time. Since it's almost halloween, I've been trying to get all the halloween related illustrations up. I've been working on a headless horseman, but the bridge behind him hasn't really been working out so well...so I decided to take a break from that and work on my kid version of Hellboy. Why do they call him Hellboy, if he's a man? It makes it hard to name a boy version...so I've changed the name to hellkid.

In the original drawing I didn't do Hellboy's big hand, so I modified that in the cleanup...to reflect a first befitting Hellboy.

The Three Little Pigs

I've been working on these for the last few days. I said in a previous post that I had a ton of drawings in a similar fashion - and these are what I've just finished. I want to draw more - I want to keep expanding this line of drawing, and possibly market them...I thought these would lend themselves to a series - as The Three Little Pigs would not only fit into my series of cute characters, but also become a series all to themselves. I did two different versions of them. Originally I wanted them to be completely the same - in the same way that the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were indistinguishable - but what let you know which pig was which was the square behind them:



I started off with the pig shape - wanting just a really cute pig - I figured that once I got into Adobe Illustrator, I could draw in a background behind him. After I finished with the drawing I realized that it'd work better to have more of a hoof on the pig rather than little generic feet (which work with most other characters). So I drew it in next to it (because I could always clean it up and attach it in Illustrator at a later time). Anyhow - I cleaned up the pig, added a square behind him and then copied him two more times. And I had my 3 pigs. I just had to put their signature building items behind them and I was ready to color.



I had finished drawing the three pigs when it occured to me that it'd be fun to do a nude and clothed version. It meant a little more time (but just a little - as I could reuse the pig color and the background color). I like the clothed version better - each one ends up with more of a personality. You'd be able to get more of an idea why each pig would build his house in his particular way.



I still don't know exactly what I'll end up doing with this series of drawings. I'm going to work on getting something licensed - and the more drawings I have, the better chance I'll have towards achieving that goal. In the meantime, these and what else follows can end up in my tiny gallery show in the Nickelodeon hallways this summer. Maybe, just maybe, I'll get enough good stuff going that I'll want to do a real gallery show later down the road. But we'll see...

Adelia Green Lantern

I did this drawing over the Christmas break...I got a book on the art of Brian Bolland (which is fantastic! He's one of the best artists in comics) - and in the book there were several drawings he had done of Green Lantern.Well - looking at art books always makes me want to draw - and I had an idea of drawing Adelia as several different popular characters - so I drew her as Green Lantern. It was quite a rough drawing, but had the full idea that I wanted. I tend to cringe at people looking at my sketchbook because I work really loose until I can scan the picture into the computer and redraw it in Adobe Illustrator. this was my sketch:



After I cleaned it up - I printed it out and redrew the body and the position of the hands...using those hand drawn revisions as a reference I changed my Illustrator drawing (that's the nice thing about drawing on the computer is how easy it is to manipulate the lines you've created).And finally - I used my lunch break today to paint it. I started painting it like I did my other Adelia pieces - with the scratch line technique...but as I was going through it I really thought it'd be cool if it looked painted. So I used more of a brush stroke look to the shading. And this is the result:

Adelia: at the fishing hole

I cleaned it up in Illustrator last night. This afternoon for lunch (in between magazine reading at the bookstore) I did a revision on this. I also decided I should do a light study...not set in stone or anything...I believe I'll have the light source come from the opposite direction from where it is in this picture...but I'm one step away from being ready to color it.

This picture is helping me brew another adventure for Adelia...hopefully it goes somewhere...but we'll see...

Adelia Plays Ball

I was in Spring Training in Phoenix this last week. No, I didn't play - once again I had to turn them down...but I went to watch the Oakland Athletics play (watched 4 games...against the Royals, the Padres, the Mariners, and the Rangers)...anyway - I was doodling a bit during some down time and drew several pictures of Adelia playing baseball...

These are just three of the drawings I did (there were a couple of her running down a ball, a couple of her batting and/or swinging)...I really liked the one where she looked apprehensive about catching the ball...so much so that I had to clean it up in illustrator and finish it up as a painting. I thought it would be appropriate as Baseball season starts (finally!) next week!

And no need to say it's fitting that she's missing the ball because she plays on the A's...if that's all you get out of this picture then maybe you don't deserve to look at it (or maybe you're an Angels fan...and in that case you have worse problems than mocking my silly little pictures)...

Adelia Sketch: on tree

I did this sketch thinking of those little birds that hang off the side of a tree...and I tried to imagine how Adelia would look...I think it still turned into a cute drawing....so I'm posting it here...

Adelia Sketch: on tree

Adelia sketch: surfing

I didn't have access to my computer last night - so I put my book drawings aside (which I'm currently cleaning up in Adobe Illustrator) and I drew this. It really has nothing to do with my book - but I currently enjoy drawing Adelia so everything ends up with her in it...

Adelia Sketch: Surfing

Adelia: More sketches

These are just some of the sketches I did of Adelia over the weekend. Something might come out of them but mostly they were just fun little drawings.

Adelia: sketches

I've really gotten into this character. I've been doing a ton of research on how one goes about publishing a childrens book. I'm going about it both ways (getting it published through the regular channels - so I'm in the process of making a 'dummy' book - and the second way is to self publish. I'm going to finish all of the drawings and then paint and print them. I've even started thinking up ideas for my next book!...and yes...it too stars Adelia the Adelie Penguin)

Here is a sketch! This might end up as a pic in the book, but probably just a little idea and nothing more...

Adelia: in snow - sketch