There's An Elephant in the Room

If you scroll down, you'll see I recently drew a whole bunch of silly, whimsical elephants as an exercise in weight and movement within a character. I sketched them with pencil first and then used ink washes. I really liked how they looked but I wanted to develop this character even more by adding some color. I start with a pencil sketch, inked it, then I used Copics to overlay color. I'm quite happy with the end result!

One character and lots of poses!

(IMAGE REMOVED. PLEASE DO NOT STEAL MY ART.)

I've found that drawing a character often inspires a story I didn't know was there. Drawing the same character in various poses and scenes helps me get to know him/her (or it) better. It's sort of like the common exercise of interviewing your character to understand him better. In this case, it's like a visual interview. I also find I can get easily swept away with these doodles, but I enjoy it so much and have found that I've really grown artistically since getting in the habit of drawing these. TIP: It's also a good thing to show editors who like to know whether you can draw characters consistently in various poses. Don't be afraid to use these in promotional postcards, perhaps on the back side!

This new Victorian girl simply appeared in my sketchbook, unplanned. I really like her and may do some color sketches.

Illustration Friday- BREEZY

The first theme for March over at Illustration Friday.com was 'Breezy'. I'm thinking about doing a sequential piece with this character. I hope to color it this week.

UPDATE! I colored it today! Let me know what you think!

Bunny VS. UFO

In my pb illustration class on Tuesday, we were given an in-class assignment to come up with an 8 page story. It had to have the following:

1 small character (small in physical size)
1 larger character
A problem presented by the large character
The small character has to figure out to solve the problem.
The small character is successful in overcoming the problem.

So my bunny got abducted by aliens. Wanting to get out of his predicament in a hurry, he instinctively poops everywhere. The aliens decided he was too much trouble after all! Bunny 1, Aliens 0. :) We did the whole exercise in class with tempera, dry brush, and black paper. I then redraw my whole concept on Bristol Vellum today and inked it. I thought it would work nice as a wordless sequential. And since there's always a laugh at the mere idea of things like poop, farts, and underpants, I couldn't resist! I may make this into a series. What or who would you like to see this bunny defeat with pellets? I'm all ears (like the bunny!).