Little Things

I think this picture grew some how out of the desire to paint a snowstorm and some birdcages. It seemed to work out.

I had big plans to paint this in watercolor, but I did this color study and got done instead. Probably a good thing since I wanted to submit it for IF I might not have got it done if I kept going. It is just a sketch with digital color.

Girl and her Cat Again

More of this girl and her cat because they are fun characters to draw.

Another Great Play at the Empress

Here is another poster I created for the Empress Theatre. Once again any one in Utah want to check it out it is really worth it. The plays they have are always awesome!

Another fun Pencil Sketch

I am on a Howl's Moving Castle Kick. I reread the book recently and just couldn't help drawing some of the images. This is the Turnip head scarecrow man. I might have done the turnip a little big and made it kind of look like a pumpkin but thats okay. As a piece that stands on its own it doesn't really matter.

Sophie Hatter

Sophie Hatter is a character in Howl's Moving Castle a book by Diana Wynne Jones. Sophie works in a hat shop trimming hats until a witch turns her into an old lady. Its a pretty fun book with a wizard and magic and stuff. If you like Harry Potter you might want to try it, or anything written by Diana Wynne Jones.

Girl and her Cat

Pandora opens the box

I did a little research before I drew this. In the original myth Pandora has a jar. I wanted to draw a box so I did. Also if you can't tell I like drawing hair. It is a fun design element.

Two Kids and a Goose

Here are some pencil drawings I recently finished. It was a lot of fun creating these characters.

Midsummer Night

I just finished this poster for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is for a theatre here in Magna. If anyone here in Utah wants something to do one eveing this play starts Friday. Every play I have seen at this theatre is great. It is worth the drive out west here to Magna.

Alphabet

Moon

Here is a moon picture. uh.... yeah, thats all I have to say.

Folk & Bluegrass Festival Sketches

This weekend I went to the Folk & Bluegrass Festival here in Utah. It was at snowbird which is a ski resort about an hour away from my house. It was so nice to be up in the mountains for the day where it was only like 90 degrees instead of 100.(I really prefer winter, heaven forbid I ever live in a hot place like Arizona)

The festival was great and as always very inspiring. I really want to learn some fiddle songs on my violin now. Even if I never get to be that good at it. It was my second year going. My dad makes a violin every year and donates it to be the prize for the fiddle contest.

Anyway I did some sketches while I was there and I thought I would post them.
Most of them are during the banjo instrument contests. Some of them are just people I saw around. One of them is a quick sketch of a group having a jam on the lawn.

Characters

I did this a wile ago while I was working out some characters for a book idea that I have. I like them. The book it self still needs tons of work.

Wacky Wedding

This was What I came up with for the SCBWI illustrator contest. It was pretty fun to do.

I had this really brilliant new idea for Illustration Friday, that had something to do with cats and cool period costumes, but I am not going to get it done in time. So you will just have to go with this older Wedding idea.

Millie and Ferdinand

There are cows in some of these pictures (if you couldn't tell). I don't know why I randomly got it into my head to draw a whole series of pictures having to do with cows but here you go. I really like how they turned out.

Farm Girl

Here is a piece I recently finished. I did it for fun really. I think it turned out.The doll the girl is holding is my actual doll. It has made it in a lot of illustrations over the years.

Snow White's step mother, a bad neighbor.

The seven dwarfs would probably make great neighbor's but they are not featured in this picture.

I got inspired to do this drawing because I Jenn's version of Snow White the other day. It got me in the mood to do snow white. Have a look at her's here.
It is beautifully painted.
Obviously mine is not like her's which is good because then what would be the point. I mean really snow white has been done tons of times, and will be done again, so why make it the same right?

Any critiques would be great to hear. I wanted it to be mostly monochromatic so the apple would stand out. At first I toyed with the idea of just having value and the only color red but then I decided to go with green. My sister says there it too much green, so I don't know (she is only 8 but I still think her opinion is probably valid). I also wanted to show Snow White's big dilemma so we got the queen and the apple. Maybe I should make the Mirror stand out more. What do you guys think?

(p.s. really this has nothing to do with the IF theme but I can never get them done in time. this would have been much better for remember. Oh well, you can look at it anyway.)

Pirate

Website Update

I have updated my website, finally. It have been a yearish since it was done but there are all kinds of new pieces in my portfolio so check it out if you want.

Fortune Process 1

I decided to show my process for this piece. Continue to scroll down so see the finished illustration.






All my illustrations usually start out with thumbnails that look really bad. I choose one and enlarge it and use it to draw the drawing I am going to use.

Fortune Process 2

I take my drawing once I like it, and make copies. Then I do a value study and a color study. In the value study I also figure out what kinds of textures I am going to use in the finish. The color study is done really fast, it is usually less helpful than the value study and sometimes I skip this step if I think I can get away with it.

Fortune process 3

I print a light version of the final drawing on bristol vellum so I don't lose stuff redrawing it. (This is a trick I started using only recently and I am a big fan) Then I rework the line with a brown prismacolor pencil. (I go through a lot of these) I really wanted the line work in this drawing to stand out with lots of thicks and thins.

After that I start on the color. Prismacolors are like watercolor in that you have to save the lights at the beginning. Once something is dark you can't go back and put light back in. So I started out with the yellows and just indicating the shadows, and colors of other things. The colors look pretty funky at this point. for instance her hair is blue.

Fortune Process Finish

Here is my finished fortune picture. At this point in the process I continue to make the values darker and unify the colors being careful to save out the lights until it is done. And There you go!

(If you are visiting from Illustration Friday you can see my whole process beginning with the post titled "Fortune Process 1" Hope you like it)

Green

I have been working on this for the last week. It is convenient that it goes along with the IF theme. I did it for fun to be a cover for Ella Enchanted. It is a really fun book. If you have never read it I highly recommend it. (it is nothing like the movie so if you don't read it because of that you are really missing out, really) SO go read the book and tell me what you think of my cover art. (really missing out, I am not even kidding)

Little Dog laughed.

Here is a sketch of a character for hey diddle diddle. It is the little laughing dog. I figured that a fiddling cat and a cow jumping over the moon etc. must be a gang of traveling performers. Any way here is an idea for the dog.

Total

She is totally in love...or desperate?

Sketches

Here are some sketches I did with some characters from Mother Goose Rhymes. I had a lot of fun with them.

Wired

I had a lot of fun with this. It's just a sketch painted in Photoshop. I love painting on the computer because its fast and there is no clean up.Taking back your mistakes is pretty nice too, if only we could ctrl Z when doing a watercolor painting. oh well.

Communication

You can communicate through music, so here you go. I had fun painting on this old piece of music I have. I used gesso, watercolor, and prismacolor pencil. Also if you feel the need I finished my color illustration for 80's It's the next post down.

80's in color

A couple of weeks ago I entered this for Illustration Friday theme 80's but I didn't have the color piece done. It is supposed to be 1880's. Here it is finally. And just so you know my fingers hurt from learning to play guitar. That has nothing to do with this post except I can feel it as I'm typing. Okay...that is all. Bye.

Crash

Here is my crash entry. Check out my sprout entry too. I didn't get it done in time for IF last week but it's done now.

Sprout

"Mother, I told you they were magic!"

RED

I think the muse hit on this. Don't ask me what it is about I have no idea

BUZZ

This man is a result of one of two things. Either he has eaten too many pies and insead of getting fatter he gets taller and taller, or there just happend to be this tall skinny peice of watercolor paper laying around. You can decide which it is. They are really good pies though so it could easily be the first. Who knows.

Mother Goose

I had this idea for these characters the other day. They are on the way to save mothergoose land from the wicked Old King Coal(He has kidnapped Mother Goose because he wants more power then her, he is the king after all). Like my last post, these are just the value studies. I am headed home tomorrow and should be able to start on the final color drawings then.