Here’s another little drawing of some Wizard of Oz characters. This time it’s Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. They were my favorite Oz characters when I was a kid. The coloring was done with watercolors, and the linework is all ink. Kudos to my wife for coming up with the caption.

I’m starting to really like working in watercolors. It’s a lot quicker than working in gouache. It’s nice not to have to worry about covering up the underlying sketch, plus mixing the colors is super quick. This piece was supposed to originally be done in gouache. These two seahorses are pot-bellied seahorses (Hippocampus abdominalis). Here are some progress shots. The first shows the original tracing paper sketch overlaid. I don’t normally do tracing paper, but…

Here is the second in my series of watercolor literary / old timey characters.

Flip from Little Nemo. Watercolor, colored pencil, and ink.

Making progress on my paintings for work. Two more animals to go on this one.

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It’s been awhile since I posted much here. I’m going to post some of the things I’ve been working on here in the next few days and try and catch up a bit. Here is a mural and gallery title graphic that I put together. The requested direction for the graphic was to have a bunch of animals on a mural that would draw visitors into the exhibit galleries. The mural is printed vinyl and PVC…

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More experiments with this style. I think I need to take it further now.

Playing around with some visual ideas. Ink with digital coloring.

I think I’ll do watercolor on top of this drawing. I really need to get better at it. Plus if I mess it up I can always go back and digitally color it.

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Brush pen lines to digital layout and coloring. This little guy is going in an aquarium kiosk. He’s actually a vector.

One of my online friends uses crazy colors in his work and luscious line work. I’m copying him a bit with the loud colors. He says that he picks the craziest colors and then just makes them work. The lines were done with a brush pen. Again this seems a lot faster and more expressive than my normal microns.

I haven’t posted anything in awhile. I’ve been doing a lot of programming lately instead of drawing. Code examples aren’t really interesting to post. This is a 3” rough in my small sketchbook for something bigger I’ve been meaning to do. This is my first successful thing done with a brush pen. I’m also playing some with watercolors. I need to get a scanner for my house because the photos blow out some of the…

I figured I’d try to do an anatomy drawing with my own pose. It’s hilarious sitting at subway drawing at lunch with anatomy pages strewn across the table drawing a cow without its skin on. Ink on paper, then digitally colored.

I’m playing around with some more inking. I was trying to render the image with large blocks of dark color to see what would happen. Coloring is all digital, the lines are black ink on paper. On a side note I also drew a shark from life. It’s kind of hard drawing in a dark exhibit with light refracting all over the page.

This is my first time to use gouache. I think I’m in love. I’d read online that inking on top of gouache wasn’t a good idea, but I went ahead and did it. The pens would “gunk up” and not put ink down, but then I just used them on another piece of paper for a bit and they would start running again. I might have to experiment with it some. I’m also using my new…

This is my third inking. Micron pens on sketch paper, with digital coloring and layout. I’m really starting to like this process. I’m trying to see what all I can do with it.

I did this sketch of a tiger from some reference that I took out at the zoo. This is my second inking to do. I’m starting to like the process. It takes me 2 lunches instead of one to do a drawing but it definitely has a level of polish to it that pencils just can’t compete with. Coloring is digital.

This was my first real time to work with a pen. I’d done other smaller things and immediately felt in over my head. I think I might be able to work on this process and get it to work better for me. Definitely a study piece I want to do more pen now.