Friday, May 31, 2013

Pixelated Cutie Patooties

Game glitches Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph and MissingNo from Pokemon Red & Blue. Loving Disney and Pokemon, I really enjoyed working with this little crossover!
MissingNo was very challenging to tackle here as I wanted to give the pixelated block some character to compliment the energetic, ornery Sugar Rush racer.

Vanellope Von Schweetz, Sugar Rush and Wreck-It Ralph (c) Disney
MissingNo and Pokemon Red & Blue (c) Game Freak/Nintendo

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Of Chupacabras, Jersey Devils, Pygmy Goats and Peking Ducks


Pappy the Chupacabra design - portfolio mascot


Jessibelle the fashionista Peking duck sketches


Lulu the Jersey Devil character design idea
Poco the pygmy goat sketch

"There's no business like show business!"

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Character Couple in Scarves


Played around with pens and colored pencils while drawing a pair of my original characters.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Paper Toy Sketches

Fantasy creature and being design sketches from a spring semester toy project.

Behemoth, Leviathan and Ziz from Jewish and Biblical folklore

Krampus from Alpine folklore

Baba Yaga or Jezibaba from Slavic folklore

Holy Moley!


My exact reaction when I first opened my Moleskine art journal is now appropriately recorded on the inside cover.
Also submitted to a Moleskine fan-community on Tumblr.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Stella Sketches

Weeklies doodles from a while back. The meeting theme being character models and cats, I sketched characterizations of my furry family member, Stella.


Sunday, May 12, 2013

E. Nesbit's The Dragon Tamers

The dragon had purred till he was quite out of breath--so now he stopped, and as soon as everything was quiet the baby thought everyone must have settled for the night, and that it was time to begin to scream. So it began.
"Oh dear," said the dragon, "this is awful."
He patted the baby with his claw, but it screamed more than ever.
"And I am so tired, too," said the dragon. "I do so hope I should have a good night."
-E. Nesbit's The Dragon Tamers
 For Studio Concepts & Practices, our class was assigned to illustrate a story passage of choice. I always enjoyed reading stories involving well-behaved, non-menacing dragons and The Dragon Tamers was my first and final choice for the given project -- the most memorable scene being the iron-plated dragon watching the protagonist's infant child.

Using Higgins black ink, I began by washing my values in with Sumi-e brushes.  Lastly I finished with linework using dip quill and Sumi-e bamboo pens.

Ammut the Devourer

Ammut, or Ammit, is the crocodile-lion-hippopotamus beast from ancient Egyptian lore. The creature was said to devour impure souls before they fully reached the afterlife.

After finishing transferring the sketch, I traditionally colored Ammut using watercolors and colored pencils on cold press illustration board.

I scanned and finalized Ammut with Photoshop CS5, adding a hieroglyph texture into the background as well as additional tints and shades.