Past Due

Remember that children's book illustration for The Giving Tree? Well, I've been saying for a while that I was going to show the character design sketches for that. Now that I've finally dug that sketchbook out of the box it was in (I'm one and a half boxes away from being completely unpacked!) I can share!


So here we have the typical character turn around on the top of the page (And on a few of them, you can see the base shapes and forms I used to make the character), but what made this one interesting is having to design him at different ages. The age difference is so vast, that I was worried about not being able to recognize the character as the same -- So, to prevent this, I made an effort to keep some of his features similar. For example, his head-shape doesn't change through the years, and though his nose gets somewhat bigger, it stays the same basic shape. I also kept his eyes the same.

Oh! And for those wondering, I have found a job! I'll be working at my campus bookstore - yay minimum wage?

Practice, Practice, Practice

Just a relatively quick coloring of a drawing of an old character of mine. Practicing my coloring and trying to find a way that works well for me.

I've discovered I find coloring much easier when I use one of the shadow colors as the flat base color, and then chisel out the lights and highlights from there. For some reason the shape just forms much easier and much quicker that way. (I had previously been using a mid-tone for the flat base and then applying the highlights and the darks - and for some reason this took much longer and didn't look nearly as good. Maybe because of a lack of contrast?)

Brother Wart

So while working on the graphics for that blog I'm working on I was reminded of an old assignment, one from a couple years back, an avatar project. We were to pick a person - living or dead, real or fiction - and create four avatars, or representations, of them. These avatars had to represent different aspects of that person.

Obviously I chose King Arthur, British legend, king, and hero. I chose, also, to use birds as the avatars, partially because according to some versions of the legend he was turned into animals by Merlin as a child as a way to learn lessons. I also really like birds (This reason outweighs the first). The songbird represents the fact that he was loved by his people, the eagle represents his power, the owl his wisdom, and the heron his nobility.



The originals had all the bird with little crowns, but I thought that looked silly and unneccesary when I looked things over today, so I took them out. However, the owl still looks pretty keen with his crown.

An Update

So, that was a nice break.

The summer has been a bit wacky. Internship woes turned into job woes, I moved back to Springfield into my first apartment, spent two weeks cleaning the kitchen and working on getting internet set up, I've slept on the couch until Friday, when my Dad was finally able to come down, build my bed, and bring me my desk -- all while woefully unemployed.

This means I should have plenty of time to do art, right?

In a sense, yes. Sketches and doodles, mainly. Though I have been hired/commissioned to do the formatting, graphics, and design for a blog belonging to a friend of mine, so I've been working on that as well, and I'll share that as soon as it's done.

What else have I been up to?

Well, things like this:
One video

And this:
Count 'em. Video two.

And random makings of silly, such as this:
My attempts at being witty

Hopefully, now that I have furniture, I can get myself fully unpacked and I'll be able to find my other sketchbooks and be able to post something worthwhile soon.