Sarah's Sketches

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 :)

Yay! Internet is still up so I can post today's post too! I was going to do two drawings for today but ran out of time.

AHHH! YAAAY! The Internet seems to be back up. I still haven't finished today's post, but here is yesterday's post in case I get cut off again. My apologies to people if I have not replied to e-mails etc. Any other people know what's been up with blogger lately too? It never seems to want to load and is being really finicky. Has anyone else switched to the new beta? Do you like it? Anyway, hopefully I'll have today's post up today soon too, if not, just know I'm still doing them and will post them as soon as I can :)

(Click image for larger version.) It was my turn to pick the drawergeeks topic this time round, so I picked Harry Potter! Whoo! Anyway, must get started early so I can squish in as much geeky wonderful Harry Potter drawing goodness as possible. Just did a line drawing for today because that took long enough, but I'll colour it for another post. Tried to forget the actors in the movies so I could draw the characters as I first imagined them reading the books.

Ran out of time, so just a could-be-better quickie for today. Was watching the TCM channel all yesterday while working and one of the movies I saw was "Sorority House" (1939). This lovely lady is a character called Merle who (gasp!) is not asked to join a sorority. She tears off into the bathroom and tries to drink poison. There is a lot of "No Merle! No!", face slapping and crying, but then she's okay. Anyway, I just liked the little random black neck ribbon in her 'hoping for sorority acceptance' dress.