lost Girl redo

After meeting with a couple of Art Directors during the Illuxcon 2009 show, I got a bee in my bonnet to rework the Lost Girl illustration to incorporate their suggestions. Now it looks finished. Thanks Jon and Ben for your advise. I appreciate it very much.

red door sketch night 112109

Red Door drawing Group. I dug out some old paper... fought with it a bit due to it's low brightness and intense saturated color, but had fun with the group. A good turn out. Join the fun on Saturday nights.

Mojo and the X-Babies prelim.

After absorbing the conversations that I had at ILLUXCON2 during the Thursday and Friday sessions, on Saturday I decided to apply what I took away from a couple of the artists that reviewed my work and offered what opinions that they had. One artist, Justin Gerard, a fantastic artist and delightful speaker offered up a comment that I take my work to the next level. REALLY finish it out. A full cast of characters, every bit of setting that needs to be there, don't skimp. This way, I get a taste at what level I consistently need to produce, and when I produce at this level on a regular basis... how do I feel about it? IS it something that I love and can't get enough of? Is it something that I like, or is it something that was a "grass is greener" scenario? We will soon find the answer.

werewolf dwg on the airplane

Note to artists out there: if you have an opportunity to go to a Comic book convention, an Illustration convention, a Gaming Convention, and you come home really inspired and ready to work... don't be surprised if as you are working on the plane or in the airport on creepy drawings if you don't get a couple of whispers and pointings directed your way... and not all in a good way. In the land of "Heightened Airport Security" leaving your illustrator unattended and unsupervised can get themselves, shall we say, um.... noticed? No body cavity search, but just about everything else.

I didn't know that I even had a maiden name.

hurakan

ILLUXCON sketch: 4am Friday morning. Lee Ann is still asleep, So I pad off to the bathroom and close the door. I sit on the floor on some towels and bring in my drawing book and some pencils that I grabbed in the dark. CRAP! blue pencils... I knew I should have never packed the blue ones. Oh well, I start working a doodle up that turns into a bit of a sketch for me to begin to think about a scratchboard illustration for Jon's Challenge for Hurakan. I filed through all of my father's Machu Pichu/Equador/Peru/Galopagos Islands photo shoots to look at wildlife, surroundings, things like that. Jon once asked of someone, "what does a bad weather animal look like? And what did one look like to the Mayan's?" So I thought, Ocean, and looked at all the galapagos animals... most of which are way too cute for words. Iguana's arent too bad but they look like dinosaurs... Sea turtles just look like that tootsie roll turtle; "Ask Mr. Owl, I never made it without biting." So I went with a dinosaur looking (protosceratops) and a turtle (snapping, hey Don't give me any lip out there...), but had it arive down from the eye of the storms like out of dimensional rift. I am considering working it up in the scratchboard technique that got such strong comments... but with a wrap around format, of course.

doug doodles from Illuxcon

A lot of Eyes, Ears, and Heart wide open on this trip to Altoona Pennsylvania to Illuxcon2. A convention for Illustrators of the Fantasy/Science Fiction genre. There were lectures and demos. There were portfolio reviews for students and people that want to follow a dream or follow a fool's dream depending on how you look at it. I am looking to see where I fit in the world. I asked some questions, met wonderful people, and got to have my work seen by a professional audience outside a gallery setting for the first time in a long time. These are of a girl at the airport and a quick selfportrait early Thursday morning around 5:30am. Too excited to get this thing started.

Wednesday sketch group... a better day than recent ones. I think the Red Door Studio drawing sessions are starting to really help.

Red Door Studio Drawing Group night moved to Saturday nights. For the first time since it started, I wasn't late. It is good to get out there and reconnect with others, to reconnect with drawing, and to get away from the TV. I have actually seen an improvement since I have started going... and seen an improvement in the Wednesday Noon sketch group drawings as well. Little tiny steps forward, but when I look over time at the drawings and doodles, it shows. It always does.