Whatever Wednesday: Canadian Geese

Seeing as it's going on Autumn and the geese are about to be passing through, how about some goose sketches? Done in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and park, as usual (there's always at least a couple of geese who hang out in the park year-round.)

Whatever Wednesday: Random Tree Sketch

So, it's getting to be that time of year again where I can go hang out in the park and work on things. Frequently I take my comic supplies outside and work on thumbnails and penciling. (Somehow it's always easier for me to thumbnail when I'm outside.) But sometimes I get distracted and start sketching other things on my thumbnail sheets... Like this tree that took over the back of my thumbnail sheet one especially sunny, lazy day. I don't think it's part of the plot, but maybe I can work it in...

Whatever Wednesday: A Few More Deer

Remember the group of deer sketches I was posting earlier? Well, here's the rest of them! (This is the same gang of deer posted here and here...) Yep, lots of deer! That was such a prime sketching opportunity, usually when I stumble across deer I get a few seconds before they bounce off into the underbrush. In this case either they were too engrossed in acorns to notice me or the rock I was half hiding behind was darned good camouflage.

A Calendar of Tales: January and July

Well, I went and got involved in yet another contest-type thing, despite a complete lack of time, but but but... It was Neil Gaiman's Great Big Group Project! So I wanted to play, too.

It's the Calendar of Tales project. Neil gave twelve prompts, and people wrote tweets inspired by the prompts, and then Neil wrote stories inspired by twelve of the tweets, and now people are making pictures inspired by the twelve stories... There are links to all the stories here.

This is my illustration for the July tale. A tale of a lonely wilderness of books and bears and Aurora Borealis... (There are snatches of Homer in the northern lights, barely visible... I figured the celestial stories in this world should be something ancient, and it's hard to get more ancient than Homer, right?) This was one of my favorite stories of the bunch because, well, World of Books! (It reminded me very much of my apartment. Heh.)

This was my illustration for the January Tale, which has soldiers, and sharp scary things, and peril in every second. I did most of it in a frenzy of productivity on the last day before the deadline, and finished it around six a.m. and I was fairly delirious by then, so yeah, it got kind of crazy and experimental.

This is the dude I drew for the January illustration, I wanted to post him separate because you don’t end up seeing very much of him in the final image. This was totally an excuse to mess with traditional media ink and play with big sumi-e brushes (I love my sumi-e brushes, can you tell.)

And just for larks, here's the crazy mess I made for the bands of spiky stuff in the January illustration. It was meant as a texture sort of thing but looks kind of neat by itself. I wanted something gritty and messy and layered and sort of abstract-expressionist-looking, so what we have here is a lot of acrylic and cut-up bits of paper bags all glommed together into a… well, mess. Gotta admit that was fun.

I also got carried away and did some life studies for this, which you can see here...

Whatever Wednesday: Wayward Queen Promo Comic

What’s all this, then? Just a teensy promo comic to pimp out my webcomic, The Wayward Queen! Why? Because the first twenty pages are now up, and we’re about to move out of the intro bit and into the real adventure! LOOK OUT! The Wayward Queen can be read on www.queengwenevere.com/wayward-queen! Updates are every Monday and Thursday (more or less, okay, sometimes they lapse into Tuesday or Friday morning… But it IS twice a week, regular or irregular!)

Whatever Wednesday: Deer

All right, I guess we're more or less back to our regular blog schedule after the holidays (I can never keep on top of these things during the holidays...) How about a few deer! These guys were rooting around for acorns and I was halfway behind a rock pretending to be a tree and watching them, they didn't notice me for quite a while... (More sketches of the same group of deer were posted back here.)

Whatever Wednesday: Super Pop!

A card I made for my dad on the occasion of getting his second hip successfully replaced... Now he has New Improved Super Hips and can go anywhere! Congrats, Pop! (Here's the card he got when the first hip was replaced...)

Whatever Wednesday: Deer rooting for acorns

Sorry, I seem to have dropped off the face of the planet for a bit there... The past week or so has been one big mess of deadlines, getting sick, scrambling to make up for time lost to being sick, getting migraines from the combination of being sick and scrambling..... FUN TIMES. It must be Fall. Think I'm done being sick now, though. So, YAY an update!

Some seasonally appropriate deer from the archives - I managed to sneak up on these guys from behind a boulder on one of my upstate rambles. There were three deer, nosing around for acorns, and I got to watch them for quite a while before they got suspicious and took off.

Whatever Wednesday: Webcomic Site Banners

Very sneaky sneak preview of banner graphics for my upcoming webcomic... These go on various sections of the comic site. They ended up considerably smaller on the site, though, so I wanted to post them in glorious full size somewhere. The characters, of course, are all part of the vast, unmanageable cast that appears in the comic. We shall officially meet them soon. Soooooon!
Hoping to launch the notorious too-long-in-the-making webcomic in a week or so! Depending on client interruptions or lack thereof... Wheee, can't wait!

Whatever Wednesday: Comic Roughs

Sneak peek at some pencils I'm doing for a small comic job... I probably can't really divulge the content since it's not my script, I'm just drawing the pretty pictures. But I rather like the way these pages were going, so I thought I'd show them off. Fight scenes YEAH! Life is good when people pay you to draw fight scenes, man...

(Okay, it's not really Wednesday and apparently I missed Sunday... Can you tell I'm in deadline-juggling mode? Yep. Chaos reigns. September is always like this.)

Whatever Wednesday: Another Heron

Another heron... What can I say, I run into them a lot. And they hold still. (Well, unless they're flying... But they even fly slow.) This one was sketched in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, my favorite hangout (obviously.)

Whatever Wednesday: Turtles

It is sooooo Summer right now. I think turtles would be appropriate for Summer. They spend all their time swimming and hanging out in the sun, and that's all I feel like doing this week. So have some turtle sketches! These were sketched at the botanic garden, they have tons of turtles there.(And yeah, things are still pretty discombobulated, hence why there aren't as many posts as usual... But everything should be back to normal in about a week, I think.)

Whatever Wednesday: Bees!

Okay, looks like this week and next week are going to be especially chaotic... (Hence why I missed Sunday...) So there may be a few missed days. Meanwhile, have some bees! During the last aster season there were a ton of bees all over the asters, so I sketched a few. Bees are cool.

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!)

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!

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.

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.

Whatever Wednesday: Yellow Roses

Well, as long as it's rose season... May as well post silly rose pictures! Here's a rose sketch and a plethora of yellow roses from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (and one white rose.)