Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Nightwatch and Watchmen

Here's another fairly quick commission I churned out yesterday - an arctic fox character named Nightwatch.And in other news, I've been reading Watchmen lately. I was intrigued by the trailer for the upcoming movie version they showed before The Dark Knight. It looks like one of those movies which will either be an incredible triumph or a terrible disaster. In any case, I want to see it so I can decide for myself. I just hope it doesn't get rated R. But I downloaded the original graphic novel from the internet and have been reading the first couple of chapters. So far it's really interesting. I don't have a whole lot of experience with comic books, but this one definitely seems to be very well-done. The writing is good and the drawings have a cool cinematic feel to them. And there's all sorts of layers of symbolism and emotional turmoil. Fun stuff. I'll have to read the rest of it to see if it really is as good as it seems. In any case, it's more believable than the first issues of Iron Man...

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Approximately 13,419 Hairs So Far

This commission is going to kick my butt. But it is also going to look all manner of awesome.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Anthropomorphicism

I'm back from Michigan now, after 13 and a half hours of driving and a couple days of catching up on sleep. So I'm gonna start off today with a couple sketchbook pages from my stay in Detroit.
Dachshunds run in the family.
This was my contribution to the Anthro Sketch Exchange on LiveJournal for this month.
And this is a commission I just finished. Definitely not the sort of thing I'd draw just for kicks, but it does feel good to get paid to draw.
And here's my sketch for my next commission, which will be much more elaborate, time-consuming, and expensive. So hooray.
Ya know, contrary to popular belief, I've never considered myself "an anthro artist." Apparently, the majority of my followers online seem to think otherwise, since all the requests and commissions I've ever gotten over the internet have been for animal people. I've always thought the whole concept of anthros was weird, and still do. I enjoy drawing humanized cartoon animals, like the kind you see in Dreamworks movies and such, and werewolves are always an interesting artistic subject, but realistic furry people with animal heads on them have always been a little freaky in my book. But wouldn't ya know, I do one all-out anthro piece in a fit of angst about a year ago, and the fan base goes wild. Now it seems the online community has discovered that I have some talent in blending human and animal qualities and has dubbed me an official member of the anthropomorphic community. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Caldwells

My most recent portrait commission, the three Caldwell kids from my ward here. I managed to finish and deliver it just in time to pack for my trip to Michigan. So now I'm back in the city where I was born, staying at my grandparents' house. So no sketchbook pages for now. I'm still drawing plenty, but my scanner's a couple hundred miles away at the moment. P.S. I'm still open for commissions, so if you happen to know anyone who may be interested, don't hesitate to send 'em my way.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Character Designing

I've been trying to get the hang of drawing more interesting characters lately. I sometimes feel like a lot of my drawings sit on an uncomfortable middle-ground between realism and stylization, not really fitting into either category. So for the past little while, I've been working on pushing the stylization, exaggerating shapes more, and generally just making more appealing characters. Please give me some feedback, since I'm not really sure yet how this whole character-design thing is supposed to work. At least let me know if I'm going in the right direction.

So first off is an extra-beefy lion I drew a few days ago and decided to color tonight. I'm actually really pleased with this one.

I drew this raptor when I went to work with my dad this last week, using a statue of a roadrunner in the same pose as reference. My dad had been given the statue by some university clients of a school whose mascot was the roadrunner, and I thought it looked rather dinosaur...ish.
And this has nothing to do with character design, but is just so everyone will know that I have the coolest Iron Man action figure ever.
You know you're jealous.