Sketchbookin'

Various things...

VAMOS URUGUAY!!

Uruguay advances to the semifinals!!! I have been avidly following the World Cup this year... Let me tell you, soccer is quite intense. Love the World Cup. And I am so excited that Uruguay has made it into the top four teams! The game yesterday was AMAZING!! Fa. So awesome.


VIVA LA CELESTE!!!

Hula

If you know me, you might know of my fascination with Polynesian dance... springing I think from the opening sequence of Lilo and Stitch, a beautiful piece of animation. And perhaps from when I used to pretend that I had Maori ancestors, instead of just Scottish New Zealanders... Anyways, I'm taking a polynesian dance class for the second time this spring. I like it. So. Some doodles:

On the Job

I just finished a job illustrating books to teach elementary school kids Chinese. The last few books I worked on were explaining different biomes, and I decided to do them all in watercolor. So much fun!









I'm in watercolor love.

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: