Figure Friday: Bony Landmarks

More studies from the crash course I've been taking this Summer... In this session, we were focusing on the skeleton and bony landmarks, hence all the structural lines and emphasized bones. (I do really need to brush up on my bones...)

Whatever Wednesday: Loons

Some more goodies from the sketch archives... Loons sketched at a lake in Maine where my family has vacationed for many summers. There was a healthy population of loons in the area. Sometimes a family of loons would swim right into the cove where we were staying and hang out there, and I'd sneak up on loons all over the lake in a little kayak. The loon with babies was sketched with binoculars from our cove; the one in the reeds was a kayak sketch, if I recall (complete with water damage... It's impossible to keep a sketchbook dry in a kayak!)

Sketchy Sunday: Ninja Doodles

Ninja doodles from my massive archive of Sakura Matsuri sketches... (They have this festival at the Botanic garden every year, and I've sketched it most years. This stuff piles up.) These are from an extremely goofy performance by "Samurai Sword Soul"... How to even describe this group, I don't know. It's sort of slapstick improv Japanese theater in bad English with samurai sword fights. A LOT of samurai sword fights. Which are immensely fun to sketch. Anyway, here's a bunch of ninjas leaping around in flowing robes (I love those guys,) and an evil lady swaggering around and trying to kill people. There will be more Samurai Sword Soul Doodles, because I have a ton of these.

Figure Friday: Muscle Dude

May as well post some stuff from this Crash Course I'm taking... We were focusing on muscles for this class, so we had a chunky, muscular model. (It's a pretty excellent course, actually... I'm learning a bunch of stuff we didn't fully cover in art school, and getting a much needed refresher on things I'd gotten rusty on...)

Whatever Wednesday: WIPs

Not really Wednesday, but whatever. It was 100 degrees on Wednesday, I didn't even dare turn on the computer. TOO DAMN HOT. My computer would melt and so would I.

Anyway, in spite of (or because of) the heat, I've been getting a fair amount of painting done. I'm trying to finish the cover for my webcomic first of all, so I can launch that thing... Of course I planned something ludicrously complicated, so it's taking forever, haha. Here's some details of the WIP... WAY too many fiddly little columns and arches, as you can see. Worse, I made the boneheaded decision to paint this on canvas, at a small size, with tiny details. The smallest columns are maybe 4 millimeters wide; one canvas bump is maybe 1 millimeter across. This means I'm fighting the canvas texture every inch of the way, and it's slow going... I should really have used board or something, but too late now, I just wanna get this thing done. Getting there... About a third to go!

Sketchy Sunday: Random Fish Doodles

Some random fish doodles from the archives, sketched at the Echo Wildlife Center on Lake Champlain, where there are many local fish in tanks. The first one is a gar, I'm not at all sure what the others are...

Happy Bastille Day!

Happy Bastille Day! For the occasion, how about some French-themed life drawings? Art, berets, stripes, and legs, might as well hit all the "French" clichés at once, no? We're missing wine and pastry, but consider them implied. After all, these were drawn at the Society of Illustrators, so the session did include an open bar and snacks... (Technically would've been for Figure Friday, but whatever...)

Whatever Wed-Thursday: Pink Roses

Did I forget Wednesday? I totally forgot Wednesday. So many other things going on yesterday, whoops. At least three different free outdoor concerts happening at once, including the New York Philharmonic, plus fireworks... Wheee! Summer! Anyway. How about more roses? Can't have too many roses (though they're mostly faded now, they don't like this crazy heat at all.) (Neither do I.) Pink roses this time, and a sketch of a red rose, all from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as usual.

Sketchy Sunday: Tiny Upside-Down Bird

These are tiny doodles of a tiny bird that was hopping around in the vines and branches over a pond in the park. It might have been a kingfisher, but I'm not sure. It liked hanging upside-down and nibbling berries, so maybe not a kingfisher. (Okay, still on some kind of delayed Summer schedule here... Sunday, Monday, whatever... )

Figure Friday: Wiggly Sprout Gestures

More random tidbits from the archives, it's too hot to scan anything. These are gestures of a model called "Sprout" who used to be at Michael Alan's Draw-A-Thons. She was one of my favorites, she was so wiggly and funky and always made me want to draw hyper-stylish French Sci-Fi comics or something. So my gestures of her tended to come out rather wiggly and stylized. They were fun, though. (And yeah, I know it's really Saturday. Shush.)

Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Fourth! Figured I should find something appropriate to post, so I went rummaging through the archives and eventually dug up some old sketches of bald eagles... The larger ones are reeeeally old sketches from a raptor rescue center, the one with the pine tree is from a pond in Maine where a pair of eagles was sitting in a pine, and the tiny doodle is from somewhere on the banks of Lake Champlain where we spotted an eagle hanging out on a dead tree. The wild eagles were mostly drawn from too far away with binoculars... Someday I'd like to draw some wild eagles up close, that would be awesome. Sometimes I can do that with hawks, but never with eagles so far.

Sketchy Sunday: Shrimp Flower

A bit late, too hot to post again... But anyway, here's a sketch of a weird flower from the tropical greenhouse at the Botanic Garden. I think it was called a "Shrimp Flower". It did look a bit like a giant yellow shrimp, I guess.