Sarah's Sketches

I apologize for the nudity, but mermaids don't like wearing clothes. Used two brushes for this, which I think I like. A big fat flat one for the messy over all and then a softer oil to stick in some details. Friday I felt like all my painting practice last week hadn't paid off, but this came together more easily than I expected in about an hour, so yay! Look at me, drawing Halloween stuff all up to Halloween and then on actual Halloween I drop the ball :)

(Click image for a bigger version!) Although I've been going like crazy trying to finish a project the last few weeks, I was able to take a break for two Halloween parties! Which means costumes! Yay! My favorite! It was my plan to be Dorothy this year from the Wizard of Oz because I already have ruby slippers... but because I've been so busy the rest of the costume never happened. The pirate costume was for Deanna and Aaron's fantastic Halloween bash. I was, up until about fifteen minutes before leaving... having worked until that point, completely costume-less. But after discovering the hat in a box and rummaging around Stephen's closet, I was on my way. I think the key to a good pirate costume is putting on as much crap as you possibly can. Hopefully the sheer volume of costume parts will distract/confuse people and make them think it's a good pirate outfit you put lots of time into. I just realized I forgot to draw the winter scarf tied around one leg and note...

And posting again. First I posted my half finished painting, but it bothered me that it wasn't complete and couldn't afford to spend more time fixing it, so I pulled the post down. But determined to post something for Friday, here it is again and also a scribbly witch sketch so it's not right at the top of the blog annoying me all weekend :)

Okay I already feel like I can paint this cat in my sleep. Thank you everyone for bearing with me and my repetitive posts :) Today I lowered the horizon line to free up his body a bit more, there was a bit of a tangent with the tail yesterday. I also tried to work in darker darks and lighter lights so he'd stand out more from the bg. Instead of just values, I also worked in a cool-to-warm transition to push the background back even more and lightened the little details in the bg to make them seem even less important. I also remembered to paint his whiskers this time. Not sure if I will paint him again tomorrow, because I feel fairly happy with this for an hour painting. I might try attacking another drawing with paint and see how that goes.

I think today's attempt was better. Even though I didn't want to spend more than an hour, I tried to give a bit better indication of a background/environment. I also tried to choose light/dark local colours for Mr. In Boots that would help him stand out in general and also set him apart from his outfit. I still can't seem to get away from a final overall colour tweak, but didn't use it as much as I sometimes do. I used softer brushes and tried to make the lightest place in the painting his face to draw attention to it. I was thinking yesterday how strange it is that it's easier for us to quickly communicate visually with line drawings rather than light and shadow shadow paintings, considering lines don't exist when we look at things in real life.

Okay, not my best, I know. But I'm doing a bit of an experiment this week... I'm going to paint this drawing everyday for an hour (or less). I know I can paint okay if I spend days on a painting or use some sort of trick, like leaving the lines in on a multiply layer, but I want to be more confident with strait up digital painting. I think the fact that I consider it to be one of my weaknesses is why I generally fail at it.

Sam Nielson suggested sketching Natalie Portman, so here's my attempt. It's weird how you just don't notice things about people's features until you try to draw them... like Natalie's crazy vulcanesque eyebrows. Oh and it's the Grim Reaper on drawergeeks at 12 noon today, be sure to check it out. I've seen some pretty cool ones on other drawergeekers blogs :)

Accidentally slept in, so I figured I'd just throw some quick colour on one of the posts from yesterday. It's been a while since I posted any colour stuff anyway. All this caricaturing has made me think of my old college summer job as a caricature artist. I remember thinking "awesome, now I can practice caricatures all day long"..... wrong. People weren't interested in what many of us think to be a caricature, they all just wanted something I'd liken to a permanent-marker face-lift, they didn't want to be exaggerated, they just wanted to look really hot. I remember this one woman's boyfriend sat down beside her. She told him to move or he'd be in the shot... like I was some kind of automatic camera that would just keep drawing everything within range. Ha ha. My other favorite story from that summer was that we also drew portraits (I use that word loosely, as we used cheapy chalk on construction board), the guy who owned the booth (and paid the art...

Please please please, nobody comment too specifically about the show... Stephen and I are still working our way though the DVDs and are enjoying all the little surprises :) Had a weird Lost related dream last night, so I thought it would make for a fun sketch topic. I know the crazy talented artists at Avalanche drew a slew of awesome of Lost drawings recently (definitely check em out ... you have to scroll down a little) but since none of them drew any of the female cast members I thought I'd take a stab at it. I think Claire turned out the best, and I like the Kate sketch least... although I'm not sure if it's just because the Kate drawing looks like a bizarro self-portrait to me.

So as discussed yesterday, here's Rube (Mandy Patinkin) the cool grim reaper from "Dead Like Me". For those of you who may not know this show ( it's worth a watch) you do probably know Mandy Patinkin from his "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die..." days. He's also a former Broadway aficionado and has a lovely singing voice that's worth checking out too. I think I'm learning when it comes to drawing caricatures, that there's a point where you need to put photos away, or it's hard to get away from all the mundane photo details that may just bog down whatever you are trying to simplify.

For Drawergeeks! It's this guy's job to take care of all the smaller creatures, like bunnies, guinea pigs and hamsters. Maybe tomorrow I'll draw Mandy Patinkin from "Dead Like Me", cause if there ever was a cool reaper...

Another quick messy sketch for this morning... my first Halloween costume ever was a teddy bear. My older sister was a witch that year and I spose it must have been my first year trick-or-treating. The next year, my Mom replaced the ears with bunny ears, the year after that I think I was Alice in Wonderland... we borrowed the costume from a friend and I remember thinking it was silly because someone had sewn "Alice" across the front of the dress in big felt letters... it seemed to me that the real Alice would not have done that.

Kevin (bgoz) suggested I draw the Horned King (the villain in The Book of Three) so here he is just in time to be Halloween scary. If this bad guy was after me, I'd run through a dense forest so he'd get his antlers stuck.

I have been reading Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three recently and it makes me wonder about the Disney Black Cauldron film that 'could have been.' The book series is really quite good and the characters very charming, it all calls out for a movie adaptation. Hopefully some film maker will do this imaginary world justice someday, in the meantime it's a nice read. Anyway... here is my take on Taran the Assistant Pig Keeper, Eilonwy (the chatterbox) and Gurgi. (Click image for a bigger version.)

Since Halloween is quickly approaching, here's a sketch of the Four Armed Boy. His first appearance was in one of my second year composition/illustration projects. I hope to someday write a proper story about him and the rest of the characters from that project :)

Yay more late night 3am posting :) I apologize for not being my usual commenting-on-other-blogs self this weekend but I continue to be crazy crazy swamped. I drew this while work files were saving on the computer and I hope to colour it maybe for another post. I'm curious to know if the movie will be good...

Here's a character from another story I love. It's nearly 3 am and I'm pass out sleepy, but I thought I'd post this now so I can just wake up tomorrow and start working on my other project right away. Drew this with pencil crayon... usually drawing with things I can't erase scares me, but pencil crayon certainly does give such nice thick swoopy lines. Remember to check out Drawergeeks after noon today when everyone's Harry Potter entries will be posted! Yay!

Since after I submit stuff to drawergeeks tonight I will be all Pottered out and will want to draw other stuff... here's a whole slew of cast members. (Click on it for a bigger version.) I'm also sad to say that for next two weeks it will be black and white quick sketches only, because I have a super crazy deadline to meet. Eagh!

Another one for drawergeeks! In the books, Hermione always is described as having crazy hair and huge teeth (because her muggle dentist parents don't approve of using magic to fix them), but in the movies they have just made her cute... so I wanted to draw the awkward, bad teeth, crazy hair Hermie. Since Tony said he liked seeing the initial sketch yesterday, I included it today too. Although I should point out I rarely do my original sketch digitally like these last two. It is 99% of the time done on paper. When I opened my blog today and saw the number of yesterday's comments I was so surprised I thought I'd been spammed. So thank you all for commenting. I really really appreciate that so many cool artistic people check out what I do and offer encouragement and thoughts. It definitely makes working outside of a studio and on my own seem less on my own :) And ew drawergeeks analogies! Ha ha! Yuck!

No Harry Potter drawing I'm super delighted with yet. To much 'it's my topic' pressure I think, ha ha. Anyway though... did this quick/messy painting last night at 2 am. I posted the original drawing below. I usually start with a nicer drawing, so it was a bit of an experiment.

Sorry the post is up so late, blogger didn't want to let me sign in. Anyway... here is part two of Friday's post. I woke up Friday thinking that I wanted to draw the tooth-fairy, and first imagined the super-sweet, ultra-healthy-toothed, pink fairy of Friday's post (who I think I accidentally made look a little like the Alias actress Melissa George). But then I got to thinking that a fairy who likes collecting kid's teeth has got to be one strange little person... which accounts for today's post :)