Camera Commission

Stylist Pen, Crayola Crayons

This is a logo I did for my friend Jamaal's business card. He is a pretty stellar photographer. Check out his photos here: http://jlewisphotography.tumblr.com/ 

Dragonfly For Mom

Dragonfly, Stylist Pen

This evening my mom asked me to make her a business card, something I was more than willing to do. We tossed ideas about over the dinner table and quickly decided on a blue dragonfly, which I drew and inked immediately afterwards. Blue is my mom's favorite color, you see. 

Dragonflies have always been special to my mom, but they are even more precious since Grandma passed away last spring. Shortly after she passed away, two of my cousins were reunited with her in the form of a large dragonfly that shared their beach towel. After some research, my mom discovered that dragonflies are sometimes seen as go betweens with the spirit world. As a result, dragonflies are precious to us. 

My mom is a great peace-keeper and connector. I am sure she is part dragonfly and I am so glad she loves her cards. :)

(Also, special thanks to Joneko for cleaning my line art and making it blue.) 

Warm Up Sketches, No Guides

Today I made a very important decision- to do more "no guide" drawing. This means two things:
1. No using proportion guidelines
2. No references
While this does not make for good, polished pieces... it does help with capturing character instead of worry about "Gah! HER ARM IS NOT LIKE THAT!" all the time. It is also just plain fun!

Tobias, Pencil
This is a pretty good example of what "no guides" looks like: really messy! (Also: look! I have no idea what a guitar looks like!) Actually, when drawing Toby the lack of guides is very freeing because I stop thinking about his skeleton and start thinking "he's a pillow."

Ryan, Pencil
Since I ended up thinking less about anatomy, I got to make some basic but important design changes that better suit Ryan's character. Long hair? Not very practical for the girl on the run. Or the girl with five brothers.

Tobias, Pencil
On the other hand... if I were using guides you would be able to tell that Toby's hands actually make sense in this pose.

Line Art: Toby and Mark

Stylist Pen

The final, colored version of this illustration will be in this weekend's update of "Miki and Sir"- but it was far too adorable not to share! This is possibly my favorite illustration for the series so far.

(Though, really, the one of Sir in that apron is right up there...)

What I learned today: Drawing a one year old is not easy! I had to throw everything I know about proportions out the window for this and one other illustration involving little Mark!

(Mark's birthday is next week, by the way: February 12th.)

Anne Dress Concept

Pencil & Colored Pencil

Pose and dress modeled on an image in Tom Tierney's "Renaissance Fashions" coloring book.

This piece was made to get a better feel for the style of dress I will be using in a painting later. (This exact pose and dress will not be used.)