More sketchcards

Wow time flies when you don't update your blog. Here are some more sketchcards. Here are some done with Prismacolor pens, one with watercolor and one with pencil. I have quite a few more to post in the future. Eventhough the blog has been slow I have been working on a lot of things. I have been doing more paintings but their size has stopped me from being able to post them.

Some paintings

For today's post I have some paintings! One of the goals I set for myself this year is to do a painting a day. So this post has last week's painting and one done for this week. Last week's painting is the nude figure, it is painted with oils and is 5.5" x 7.5". This is the first oil painting I have finished and I'm quite pleased with the results. I usually try to paint really smooth, clean paintings, but with this one I was painting a little choppy and messy. I wanted to try working on skin tones so what is better then painting a naked woman? The painting for this week is for Illustration Fridays. The theme for this week is focus. My idea was to paint someone intensly focused on a book, for some clues, and is totally unaware of the person behind him. The painting was done in acrylics and is 6" x 9". This painting was done very quickly and I was going for a loose look for it because of the fast drying time. I've only painted in acrylics up until these last few month's and I have to say I enjoy oils more than acrylics.

What I've been listening to: "The Secret" the audio book by Rhonda Byrne. If you can open up your mind to the concepts this book can be life changing.

Ok here is the next batch of sketch cards I did. This week's theme is Nightmare Before Christmas. All of these cards were painted using watercolors. I have always enjoyed using watercolor paint but it is a difficult medium. I really like the really "watery" effect you can get, like on the Jack and Zero cards(the last 2 cards). I also tried using the paint with very little water to get a nice opaque look, but I feel like it defeats the purpose of using watercolor paint. I think I will need to come back to watercolor soon and really go for the "watercolor" look. Another thing I was playing with is the use of bold color. I tend to like stay with black and white drawings, but now that I am doing more paintings lately I need to get in as much color practice as I can.

This week I have also been doing some reading. I'm in the middle of "The Artist's Guide: How To Make A Living Doing What You Love" by Jackie Battenfield. This book is a beast! It really breaks down the do's and don't's of breaking into the fine arts world. This book is great! It really fires me up and motivates me to want to bring my art into new areas that I did not know about. After starting this book I had to add having my work in a gallery show onto my short term goals list. I'm through half of the book now, and I just started the section on earning money and manging your money, something that is important reading for all artists!

I have also been reading some comics. I just finished reading the Muppet Show Comic and I'm half way through Muppets Robin Hood, both are by Boom! Studios. The Muppet Show Comic is a good book the art is fun and a little crazy, which should fit the Muppets well. The weird thing for me is that they show the character's full bodies too much. It is weird for me to see pictures of Kermit just standing there talking to someone. Muppets Robin Hood, for me has been a hard book to get into. The art is kind of weak and the story is trying to hard to be "Muppets".

And on a side note, I just watched Sherlock Holmes and I thought it was awesome! It was a very fun movie. And I have been listening to the new Kiss album "Sonic Boom" alot, along with Enigma. I think my musical picks are very confused.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

This drawing is of the big splash moment of Big Thunder Mountain at the Disney parks. It is 11" x 17" and was done with pen and ink.

Bride of Monsters Sketch Cards

Here are the last batch of the Prismacolor marker, monster sketch cards. Like the prior posts these were done using the same method of less detail more shape and tone. I found this style to be fun and fast but looking back at them a little over a week later, I kind of miss the detail work. The next batch of cards will be all watercolor and the subject is Nightmare Before Christmas. I started my next batch of cards that I'm currently working on are going to mix the watercolor with the markers.

I have also been working on oil painting these past couple of weeks. I'm really into painting right now and I just finished my first oil painting. One of my goals this year is to do a painting a week. I'm not quite up to that kind of speed but you have to start somewhere. The painting is too big for my scanner but as soon as I can take some good pictures of it I will post it.

On a side note, just finished a great book, "Inside the Business of Illustration". I heard about this book on the website http://www.escapefromillustrationisland.com (which is a most see site for any artist). Last month there was an article about most have books for illustrators and this was one of them. The book is mostly a dialogue between an art director and an illustrator. It looks at topics like style, ethics, promotion and the changing landscape of the illustration world. The book reads very quickly and offers some great insight.

Monster-A-Go-Go

Here is another round of monster sketch cards. Once again they are done in Prismacolor markers. I was trying to be very loose with these and just use the"fat" tip of the marker. I would block in the shapes of the shadows and would keep going over them to darken the shadows where needed. I think working with the markers is fun and fast, and I feel it works well for sketch cards.

With the start of the new year I decided to try some new things. First thing was to start an artist journal that should lead me to posting more often. So what should I start with? How about this first drawing here to the left, is a picture of Lon Chaney Sr from the movie London After Midnight. It is a 3.5" x 2.5" drawing done with Prismacolor markers. I used warm grays on the face and French gray for the background. I had a gift certificate from Christmas that I used to buy some markers so I thought I should put them to use.

Another thing that I did to start off the year was to set some goals: short and long term for my artwork. This was a new experience for me. After years of false starts or little artistic output, I've decided this is the year I really start ramping up my art career. The idea of being in a non creative job is draining me. So, how do I end this rut I'm in? The first step is for me to take myself and my art serious. Step two is just doing the artwork. So that is what I plan on doing.

One of my goals is to get into the sketch card buisness and that is where these three drawings came to be. All of them are mixtures of different gray Prismacolor markers. I will be trying different styles and medias on these cards in the coming weeks. So this week is bringing us some of the classic monsters. I am trying to use little line work and concentrate on value shapes.

I hope you enjoy this new direction for the blog and return for more. Along the way I will have some other stuff to talk about like books I'm reading or comics I enjoy. See you in a couple days!