i’m drawing more.  i went to ICON6 this past week, and man, that was crazy.  i went on the advice of a good friend, and it was very educational.  probably in ways that the board of directors hadn’t even intended.  i drew more in those 4 days than i had in weeks.  probably longer.  i learned that i probably don’t want to do commercial illustration — i already have a job that isn’t too dissimilar.  i learned that instead, telling stories is what i want to do.  i also learned that i’m afraid of not having any.

most importantly, i accidentally let go of my fear and wound up drawing people as they talked on stage.  drawing likenesses has always been a hang-up for me.  it feels good to have overcome that.

sara’s story about the elephant was awesome.  it turns out to be an idea for a picture book that’s also a mystery.  again, i’m not at liberty to illuminate you, but when it hits the shelves at your local bookstore, i’ll call you and let you know about it.this is a very fast sketch i did for sara this morning.  i was already late for work, and i should have drawn it last night, but i didn’t, and so i was slightly later than already anticipated.  meh.  the scale of the plate of cheese is slightly off, but i like the way this one turned out anyway.  i don’t know how ‘open’ this pic is to interpretation, but i have no doubt that sara will surprise me, as she always does.

sara’s out for the night, and you’d think i’d be playing zelda. but NO, my brain wants to draw something. *sigh*.so i thought about sara’s second line that she had given me:

Sometimes she’d remember her old life and she’d forget to smile.

and i knew i wanted to try my hand at a more detailed face. this sketch (maybe an hour or so?) is the result. a friend had lent me his old ‘mode drawing’ books, and man, were they helpful. though i drew her arm wrong twice. :)

i’m going to go rescue zelda now.

no idea what the story is for this one, but sara had a whole story thought up before i managed to send her the picture (she had seen it briefly in my notebook last night though). i’ll let you know how awesome it is later, when i’ve heard it myself.i like this one, since i feel like i learned a little about line weight. i’ve been trying to do it in the other pictures i’ve inked, but i think i really succeeded here, and that makes me happy.

hey, i’m close to 100 posts!  that’s a lot of commitment for me for any given project.  usually i pick up web technologies and then play with then, and then throw them away or let them gather dust.  i’ll have to save post #100 for something… special?

the story sara wrote to this picture is so awesome, it’s killing me to not share it with you. when i drew it, i imagined a terrible apartment in a squalid downtown slum. the kind you imagine when the drunkard hero gumshoe goes home to his crappy flat on the lower east side in some hardboiled detective novel. lonely, poorly furnished, and depressing. the actual story that sara wrote, i must tell you, is wildly different.

this is the first scene i drew for sara. i’d tell you what happens in the story she wrote, but since she makes her living writing things, she was (understandably) loathe for someone to make off with her ideas. so if you were hoping to read what she wrote, you’ll have to just imagine it for yourself. ;)as for me, i harbor no illusions (currently) that my work is professional enough to steal, so i’m going to continue to plague you with it. it’s good work for where i am, though. it’s very rusty here.

sara and i started doing this exercise for each other. she writes one or two lines of text for me, and it invariably makes pictures in my head, which i then try to put on paper. in turn, i draw a simple picture for her, and she turns it into a few paragraphs or a short story or whatever comes out. we’ve done it a few times already, and though i’m behind (i’ve only drawn one of the lines that she’s given me), i’ve drawn three simple scenes for her.  starting here is the first sketch i did for one of her lines, which was:

“Alabaster Cove?” he scoffed. “You can’t get there from here.”

i like what resulted, though i wanted him to come out more ‘loom-y’ and imposing. still! not bad.

i don’t draw bears (or animals for that matter) very often, and so i’m still taking stabs at how to draw them. this sketch was nice, but not the right style for the illustration i want to do. a little too cartoony still, but better than the previous one.

a few thumbnails tucked under my belt, and here’s a first pass. maybe i was trying to channel frank miller while playing with flora and fauna, but this slightly odd sketch is the result. it’s technically not there, but the idea manages to come through anyway. practice, practice! more bearish-ness to come.

i had an idea for an illustration where a big shambling bear comes upon a tiny little bug in the clearing of a snowy forest. i did a couple of thumbnails, and did a quick pencil of a lantern that i wanted the bear to be carrying.