My most recent project

A couple months ago I got a freelance job to illustrate a children s book and my dad has been asking me to show him for a while now...so here they are. Sorry it took so long, dad. It is a biblical story about donkeys and horses and the author wanted the illustrations to be simple pen sketches. Its a nice thing to get paid to do something you love doing. Plus, I was able to figure out a work flow for myself so I can work more effectively on future projects.

First, I got a rough copy of the story with the layout,

then, I made thumbnails of each illustration to get an idea of what to do,

then, I made full size pencil sketches of each drawing,

and finally I used a light table to draw over the sketches with pen.
(I decided I like light tables because it saved me a lot of time in case of screwing up drawings.)

I'm only posting a couple because...well ya. Its should be published pretty soon, so I might post some photos of the actual book sometime. The guy I did this for said he wanted to do a series of these stories, so I'll be doing another one hopefully soon.

I apologize for the poor picture quality. I just took pictures of them with my camera. Maybe I'll just scan them and re post them later, but its 6 am and I've been up all night doing my animation assignment so I'm TOO FRIGGIN TIRED right now.

Another Portrait

I've been dating someone for a couple months and I thought I would draw her. The likeness is not exact, and the expression doesn't really fit her(I don't exactly know whats going on with her lips), but I think I like how it turned out...for the most part.

Unfortunately I can't figure out how to get the mid tones to show up when I scanned it so I was a little disappointed with the jpg result. But, I do like the value contrast in the drawing, and I also kinda like the technique of the loose lines.

When doing the eyes, I found that it works good to draw the actually EYEBALLS as circles then draw the lids around the form and then draw the bones encasing the eyeball.

Little rusty at this

Its been a while since I've done figure drawing and when I don't do it for a while I tend to forget my process for doing it. I think I did ok on the first step of drawing, which is a silhouette. It pretty clear and accurate for the most part.

But...I think the first mistake I made was putting in shade and value before getting the drawing right, especially with the face. The face lacks form, as does the rest of the body, and looks concave in places where it shouldn't be. I think one way I could have solved this would be to draw lines around the form of the head before drawing anything else.

There are some nice contrasting values around the head but the overall work is kinda muddy and not showing much contrast between light and dark sides... and the strokes of the background value look icky and inorganic. Plus there are many other things I wish I did different on this.

Soooo....Note to self for my next drawing:

Construction process:

1. Establish appealing and accurate contour drawing/gesture (before moving on!)
-Keep in mind silhouette, rhythm, composition and form

2. Establish core shadows with lines to divide light side from dark side.

3. Fill in dark side and contrasting background values

4. Wipe

5. Highlight brightest areas with an erasure (go AROUND the form)

6. Punch in darkest values (usually eyes, nostrils, lips and some core shadows)