Illustration Friday: Ninja Mummy

Illustration Friday: Every Friday a word is given on the website, IllustrationFriday.com. Artists and illustrators then submit an image that represents that word all during the week.
This week's word: MONSTER

This is a word of the week that I can really enjoy! So many monsters!

This was a sketch I had originally created around Halloween 2014. It was going to be an ordinary dancing mummy, but I stopped drawing it after doing the top half of it's body and put it aside for several days.

When I went back to finishing the sketch, I saw the character in a new light. The pose looked more like a martial artist stance, so I started to give the dancing mummy some ninja clothing.

The Ninja Mummy fighting in a sand storm

I started to imagine how this character would animate since its a contradiction of two movement styles:
A.) the fluidly smooth, silent and quick reflexes of a ninja, mixed with
B.) the awkwardly slow, stumbling and limbering motions of a mummy.
Merging the two styles, I'd picture he'd be a quick and skilled martial artist, but he would often spastically twitch uncontrollably, groaning and create nontraditional (but humorous) fighting poses.

The original pencil sketch that was going to be a dancing mummy . . .

Doodle: Lil' Batman on Yellow Sticky Note

Been awhile since I posted anything, haven't been drawing much for some time. But I do have many doodles around my desks.

Doodles are images that I simply draw without thinking, as if my subconscious mind has taken over and the pencil just moves. Most doodles are done while I'm working . . . part of the creative process I guess.

Here's one of a tiny stubby Batman . . .

Batman pencil doodle on a traditional yellow sticky note

Illustration Friday: Warrior (aka Sir B' Gok!)

Illustration Friday: Every Friday a word is given on the website, IllustrationFriday.com. Artists and illustrators then submit an image that represents that word all during the week.

This week's word: Warrior

The chicken warrior known as Sir B'Gok, created in ArtRage Pro

Thought Process:
Through word association, the word "warrior" instantly reminds me of bravery. This, in turn, makes me think how a true warrior would never run away from any fight.
Such a warrior would never be . . . A chicken. This gave me the idea to make a "chicken" hero.

The original pencil sketch of Sir B' Gok

UPDATE: Ulric Evil Unicorn

UPDATE:

Had a few minutes to spare, so I colored Ulric, the Evil Unicorn.

UPDATED: added a color version

I thought of this character when the popularity of the "My Little Pony" craze took off several years ago. Unicorns are usually born "Lawfully Good" creatures; so in D+D/geek speak, this means a unicorn should never be inherently evil.

The crazy (and evil) unicorn, Ulric.

But what if a unicorn was insane? Then it wouldn't know it was doing evil. That's where the idea of the horsefly comes in. The horsefly is infatuated by Ulric's shiny horn and flies around it constantly in circles. This in turn drives Ulric insane on two counts:
#1 The constant buzzing sound is driving him mad.
#2 Ulric constantly argues with the horsefly that he is not a horse, so it should leave and find a real horse to bother.
Ulric constantly talks to the horsefly though it never replies back, making Ulric seem even crazier . . .

The original pencil sketch of Ulric the unicorn from one of my sketchbooks

Daily Quick Sketch: Pirate Dream

Continuing my physical painting: (aka, an attempt to take a break from the digital creating and going old school.)

I've been struggling a bit, learning to leave things alone, where before I would simply make any needed changes in Photoshop or Painter. I've even destroyed another painting due to using liquid frisket. (Note: Liquid Frisket is a liquid form of rubber which can be brushed on a painting to mask and protected areas from being painted over or wet.) In this case, the liquid frisket absorbed into the paper and ripped the top layer of paper when it was being removed. I should have tested this brand of watercolor paper before using the frisket on actual artwork.

The finished image of "Pirate Dream", a watercolor and pencil painting

"Pirate Dream" was an idea I had for a story about a lonely little boy, Rudy, who dreams of adventures. The imaginary friends he meets on these adventures are often his subconscious mind encouraging, motivating and inspiring Rudy to face his fear and be a better person.

The very first concept rough of the image, which was originally set in the day time.

I'm not happy with how the night sky turned out in the painting. It's never easy to paint dark watercolors in such a large portion of the image. I originally planned to use liquid frisket on everything but the sky, this way I could easily and quickly paint in the dark night sky. But after my last incident with using liquid frisket, I opted not to used that technique.and simply painted in the night sky.

The original pencil sketch of the "Pirate Dream" image

I find that painting a large area with a dark watercolor is a challenge. Watercolors tend to dry too quickly which makes it difficult to get a nice consistent coverage. Adding more water to the paint often only dilutes the color making in more transparent.

Oh well . . . live and learn.

Daily Quick Sketch: Dinosaur on Toned Tan Paper

I've been trying to get back into the physical drawing and painting world, having been digitally illustrating most of my work for the past two decades. I like how it forces me to change my style and technique, but I also hate when things go wrong. There something assuring and refreshing when a simple keystroke can erase any mistake instantly; but in the non-digital world, a simple mistake can ruin the entire image.

Dinosaur character created on Toned Tan paper, using pencil, ink and a white Gelly Roll pen.

I always enjoy seeing images on toned paper. Usually created with charcoals or pencils with white accents that make the images pop. For this image, I lightly pencil sketched the character first, then colored with a blue color pencil. For an added effect, I tried to maintain a horizontal stroke whenever coloring.

The dino image was made using only old school materials: india ink, pencils and a good ol' white Gelly Roll pen

Next, using a white Gelly Roll Pen, I created white horizontal lines for the light areas and highlights; finishing with the black outlines with a fountain pen filled with india ink.

Illustration Friday: STRONG

Illustration Friday: Every Friday a word is given on the website, IllustrationFriday.com. Artists and illustrators then submit an image that represents that word all during the week.

This week's word: STRONG

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This week's word was easy, because:

HULK IS THE STRONGEST ONE THERE IS!

So many mysteries about the purple Hulk pants . . .