Sketching at Work.

Just thought I’d share some sketches I’d done on my laptop at work (during quiet moments). Just to show that a true artist can draw no matter what tools they are presented with (or not presented with, as circumstances may be).

A colleague was having a series of really crap days. So in lieu of an actual hug, physical distances as they are:

Done in Paint, with a mouse. Bleh!

The same colleague was sick another day, and still had to come into work, which kinda sucked.

And this was done on Talk Like a Pirate Day, using the drawing tool in MSN messenger:

Yargh!

This is why I need a portable scanner or something, so I don’t have to use these horrible not-for-real-drawing tools. Sigh.

This lady has charm…

Another ink sketch. These are quite fun to do because they tend to be much quicker to do than pencils. There’s less room for messing around as there is with pencils though, and putting down the first few lines can be daunting. It also doesn’t help that I don’t know what I’m drawing when I start.



The lovely medusa. There are a few tricks to drawing scales, and I’ve used them all here because, and you can trust my experience on this, it’s really not worth the effort to draw each scale properly, unless you enjoy wrist pain.

Quick Demon Scribbles

Was watching The Middleman (S01 Ep02) again, involving demons and the underworld. That show is really growing on me. I don’t normally start watching a series again so soon after the first time. It’s so sad it’s been cancelled. Why? Why?! *sobs uncontrollably*

Ahem, anyway, these were both done in ink pen (blue felt-tipped) so, no eraser, no guidelines, just what you see here straight up. Well, ok, maybe a little erasing in Photoshop, but that’s it.

I don’t know how to explain a buff, pony-tailed, cigar-smoking, towel-clad, katana-weilding demon, but do I need to?

Happy Easter and Sea Turtles.

Happy Easter and lots of chocolate for everyone.

Still getting back into the habit of drawing something every day, which can be quite difficult since excuses abound aplenty.

When you see animals up here, it’s usually because I’ve only managed to carve out a small niche for sketching and I google whatever animal pops into mind.

In this case, I chose turtles because apart from being an amazing animal, I’ve always found them difficult to draw. A friend has a book with instructions on how to draw them, and reputedly, she now has the ability to draw them perfectly. I’ll just say here that I never once did see that claim put to the test ;). I never did end up looking at that book, either…

Hopefully I’ve managed to capture some of their calm and unhurried grace in these quick sketches.

Concept Sketches

These are some sketches as I hash out ideas for a project I’m working on at the moment, based on the Grimm Brother fairy tales.
See if you can guess which stories the characters here are from. Well, to be fair, the swan could be from quite a number of them.

Creatures of the Deep Sea

Just sketching while watching The Middleman (S01 Ep05) about Zombie Fish. Ended up with this.

This was without any reference (can you tell?), but it got me going on the whole ocean theme, so I looked up some images in Google, and we end up with these.

Okay, so the squid and octopus are from my head, without any reference either. But they’re so fun to draw. Look, isn’t the octopus cute? He’s waving hello.

Some Wildlife...

The latest sketches. Drawing animals is lots of fun, but it often feels really difficult to capture that spark or sense of character that each animal has.

Some cockatoos, reference images are from Google, a modern artist’s best friend.

Bilbies. In case you don’t know, these are Australian marsupials http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilby

Since it’s coming up to Easter, don’t forget to get a chocolate bilby at Darell Lea instead of an easter bunny. Money raised goes to helping save bilbies from extinction. A worthy cause

Did I mention how cute bilbies are?

And here are some golden eagle sketches I did. Feathers are my bane. Seriously difficult to get right. I love drawing birds though. Perhaps I’m masochistic…