At the Zoo

We went sketching at the zoo yesterday. It was awesome! Such a beautiful day... I enjoyed it immensely.

Thoughts

Sometimes my head feels like this:

Alien Doodles

Sketches from a couple weeks ago. I was inspired by Will Strong to draw aliens. Turns out it's a lot of fun.








So much watercoloring lately. woosh.

Dragon

Sketchbook doodle inspired by How to Train Your Dragon. Man I loved that movie.

The Little Door

Environment study of the little door ALice finds down the rabbit hole, leading out to the queen's garden. This is perhaps the last of the Alice stuff. There's one more environment, but it's on hold, so... maybe one day.

Spring is here. Que felicidad!

The Rose Garden

The Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit

Next set of characters! The environments are taking a bit longer...





And the sketches:

Final design for Alice

"I could tell you my adventures- beginning from this morning," said Alice a little timidly; " but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then." - Lewis Carrol



Some studies:








I have an environment for the week as well... but it's not quite finished... so, coming soon...

Monsieur Caterpillar

Here's the frst installment of a series of characters and environments from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It's Monsieur Caterpillar and the mushroom where he hangs out.





and the studies:

Red Fish... Blue Fish...

Perhaps this is my new "Thing" now...






I did these for a friend'd birthday card... It took a couple tries to decide if I've gotten one I like... Watercolor is kind of like that.

Fly By Night

My latest assignment was to design a book cover. I chose the book Fly By Night which I am also using to work environment design.



I had a lot of fun experimenting on this peice... I sacrificed my dictionary and thesaurus to create the texture, and I decided to use acrylic paint... which I thought I would never use again after the epic Christmas Card Disaster several years ago... But. It turns out I LOVE acrylic paint. All the best parts of oil, all the best parts of gouache. ah. Love.

I was told I should document some of the "process" that goes into illustration.... Basically I start out with pages and pages and pages of stuff like this:



Until I can do a final drawing and eventual painting. It's kind of a lot more wok than one might think.

Anyways. Here's some environment studies for the other project I'm doing with FLy By Night:

Some Sketchbook

RIP

After many happy years of relaxing on his heat rock and eating hand-delivered crickets, my little brother's leopard gecko, Thunderbolt, has passed away. Landen bought Thunderbolt with birthday money when he turned four... He will turn 20 in February. Who knew geckos lived so long? Certainly not my mother, when she authorized the purchase...

Because of Thunderbolt, I believe I will always find crickets to be one of the more frightening insects. His food supply was inexplicably adept at escaping, and inevitably found their way into my bedroom. Even after we moved. Creepy things.

Hmm. We have a lot of pets.

Well. One less now.

Sketchbook!

I have really enjoyed sketchbooking this past week. Thank you animation class for making me do it.













Also... I gave blood today. I like how they tell you your exact time afterward. Makes it kind of competitive. I came in under five minutes. The guy next to me was over seven. So... Talent.

Provo

A forgotten study from last last semester... I didn't end up using this one for an illustration, but I like it. It's my first plein-air cityscape! Downtown Provo, I think it's an old car dealership.

Ah. I want to go plein-air painting again. Anyone else?

It's winter.

These are the last assignment from landscape class last semester. For the illustration this time we were allowed to use for reference anything from pictures we took on a trip up Provo Canyon. I chose a snowy path... and I happened to be listening to The Witch of Blackbird Pond on CD that week, so...



And the in-class plein-air painting of Mt. Nebo:



And now it's winter semester. I am not a fan of the first week of class. Too many decisions. It was really nice to go home.

ah.

100th post, by the way. exciting.