Lamp

It's back to "quick sketch" mode for this one. Did this one in about 10 minutes with a single brush, no erasing and no turning the canvas.

Squirrel

Just a quick cartoon today.

Character Sketch I - Nermal

I wrote a children's book several years ago called Nermal's Thermal Underwear. I never finished illustrating it. Okay, I didn't get beyond making a few character sketches. I'm hoping to complete the work on it, and will be using Doodle-All-A-Day to post some of my sketches and ideas. This is the first sketch, and is an idea for the title character.

Bonus Material: Behind the Scenes

I did a screen cap (using CamStudio) while creating this sketch for anyone that is interested in getting an idea of how I work. The above sketch took a little over 20 minutes to complete. I did speed up the video, though, so you won't have to sit through all 20 minutes:



I use a Wacom Intuos3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 for the majority of my artwork. I have a blank canvas template set up in Photoshop that includes four layers - Background, Sketch, Shading and Outlines - which are linked. Photoshop doesn't offer an easy way to rotate a canvas while you work, so I set the template up oversized and use a custom action to rotate the canvas at 30 degree intervals at the touch of a button. This simulates turning the page as I'm drawing.

I begin sketching on the Sketch layer. This is a really rough outline of the final drawing. Basically it's just guidelines to help me visualize the piece. Once the final sketch is completed I turn the opacity way down on the layer (usually to about 30%) so that the sketch is barely visible. I then move to the Outlines layer and begin drawing more definite lines. For sketches I usually only use a single brush - though I vary the width of the brush frequently. For this, and most of my sketches, I use a graphite pencil from Dave Nagel's Brushes Series 33. When the outlines have been completed I move to the Shading layer and lay in the shadows. Keeping everything on separate layers makes it much easier to control the various aspects of the drawing.

When the final drawing is complete, I save the file as a JPEG and upload.

Hide 'n Seek

Score one more for the elves and faeries... I suppose it's time I started thinking of some new subject material. I'm not sure what this guy's hiding from, but unless he finds a bit more concealment, it'll probably find him soon.

Baby Attack

It's a scary thing when babies attack... No warning. Nothing. You could just be walking along in the park and POW! a baby drops out of a tree and starts gumming your head...

Faerie Dude

Yesterday it was an elf. Today it's this guy. I seem to be on a fantasy genre kick...

Elf

One of the things I really like about drawing on the computer is the ability to experiment with different brushes. I did this one using a brush labeled "Graphite Pencil." It was apparently a very dark graphite pencil.

Bump in the Night - Color

As promised, here is the color version of Bump in the Night. I was really pleased with how this turned out.

Peroxide

Because you demanded it!

A bottle of hydrogen peroxide!

(and there was much rejoicing - yay...)

Needed to work on my shading a bit. A bottle of peroxide was close at hand. Enjoy!

Captain Obvious

I watched Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog a few days ago. Unfortunately, by the time you read this they will have taken down all three Acts (but you can get it on DVD soon, if you're really interested). Anyway, it inspired me to continue my "superhero" theme a little bit. I named this guy "Captain Obvious," for reasons that may not be apparent.

Bump in the Night

While we were hiking in Yosemite, a bear lumbered across the trail right in front of us. Unfortunately, he was in a hurry and we weren't able to get a picture before he disappeared into the woods (of course, that might have been a good thing). Ever since then I've been wanting to do a picture with a bear in it.

This guy heard something go bump in the night and had to get up from his hibernating in order to investigate. I'm hoping to colorize this picture eventually, so you may see it again in the near future.

Ouch!

This counts as a doodle! It does! It does! It does!

My New Hat

Nothing terribly exciting today. I picked up a new hat while we were in Yosemite. It looks something like this.

My Best Friend

This is a picture of my favorite person in the whole world (who, as of today, is a credentialed teacher [just had to brag on her a bit]).

I spent considerably more time on this one than any of the pieces I've posted so far (she never deserves less than my best). Once again I used Illustrator to create the outlines. I also played around quite a bit with layers, brushes and different tools (mainly the Smudge tool [my new best friend... at least in the digital art world]) in Photoshop.

What the... II

I like to draw all kinds of weird creatures. Generally, my technique is to scribble a few lines and then let my imagination take over. That's how I ended up with this guy. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. I imagine it's some sort of alien pack animal, somewhat like a horse. You decide...

Doll's Head

"She doesn't have bad dreams because she's just a piece of plastic."

That's one of my favorite quotes from the movie Aliens. If you've seen the movie, you'll get the reference. If you haven't, what are you wasting your time reading my blog for? Go watch it! I know the movie came out 22 years ago, but it's a classic!

Dolls can be pretty creepy when you take out their hair and an eyeball or two. This one was fun to draw. I made liberal use of the Smudge tool to get the shading, and then adjusted the layer opacity a bit. I like the effect, but still think I need to work on my technique a bit.

Tenaya

This is probably one of the only times I'll do this. This picture is actually a scan from my sketchbook and was done entirely in pencil (graphite "B").

As previously mentioned, we went to Yosemite for a few days. I left the computer at home, but brought my sketchbook. Unfortunately, I didn't get time to do much drawing (too much to see). It's too bad, because if there is one place on earth that is begging to be sketched, it's Yosemite. However, we did spend one lazy day up at Tenaya Lake (swimming and paddling our little inflatable boat about), and I was able to quickly scribble this one out.

Also - if you're interested - it was a wonderful trip. We did a lot of hiking and went to some spots we hadn't been to before. Unfortunately, we have to get back to real life now.

Dog Tired

Just got back from camping in Yosemite. Feeling about like this right now...

Ork

I decided to try working in a bit of a darker medium this time. I used a couple of charcoal brushes to do this sketch. I've always enjoyed drawing orks. I'm not sure why. I usually draw them looking much tougher. This guy looks like he just got in trouble for something.

Foot

Ok. Feet are just ugly and not fun to draw. Still I can definitely use some more practice.

Rabbit

Note to Self: Work on drawing feet.

Superhero

I used to dream about becoming a comic book artist when I was a kid. My heroes were people like Frank Miller, John Byrne, Wendy Pini and George Perez. I've mentioned before how I used to doodle in the margins of my schoolwork. Superheroes were frequently the subject of those drawings. I would create all kinds of mock battles between Spiderman and the Green Goblin, Batman and the Joker or Daredevil and Bullseye.

For this sketch, I wanted to work on a bit of figure drawing. Superheroes are great for that. After doing a couple of color drawings, I've gone back to doing something rough. This was done completely in Photoshop using a single graphite pencil brush. This sketch only vaguely resembles a certain "man of steel". I call him Generic Man.

Apple

I'm starting out with the basics here, I know. An apple is a good basic shape and a little more exciting than just drawing spheres, which is why I chose it as a subject for this drawing. Once again I've used Illustrator for some of the line work, but I left in my original sketch lines, because I thought it would give it a bit more of a natural feel (as opposed to digital) to the piece. I've also been experimenting with some of the Wacom tablet/Photoshop brush dynamics (pressure sensitivity and so forth).

Peace

The human hand is difficult to draw, at least for a lot of people - myself included. Even cartoon hands can be difficult, so it is probably fitting that I made an attempt right off the bat.

I cheated quite a bit on this one, though I still created the entire thing digitally. I needed a bit of practice using the Wacom tablet with Adobe Illustrator, so after sketching the hand in Photoshop (see original sketch below) I used Illustrator to create the outlines. I then brought the entire thing back into Photoshop and added the color. I also made liberal use of the Undo command and the Eraser tool. Won't happen again... at least not too often.

What the...

I really don't even know what to say about this one... Remember when I said that I'd be posting things that are barely recognizable as scribbles? This is one of those times. Really, all I was doing with this one was trying out some different brushes and messing around with Photoshop layers a little bit. I kept the main sketch on one layer and dropped the background on another layer so I could play around with the opacity (nothing overly complicated). I'm not even sure what this picture is supposed to be depicting...

Missy

I almost hate to admit that this is a sketch of my cat, Missy. It barely looks like her. My self-portrait looked more like me than this looks like my cat. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

I'm finding that one of the hardest parts of creating work for this blog is posting stuff that I'm not really happy with. But one of my goals for this was to just draw and let it be what it is. I'm trying to lay off the Eraser tool and the Undo command as much as possible (though I cheat a bit here and there). I figure that if I strive to perfect my sketches, nothing will ever get posted.

Scoundrel

This is my second doodle offering. I didn't use any reference material while sketching this guy, but that's probably pretty obvious. Just a random character, and an example of what happens when I just start pushing the stylus on the tablet and go from there. Sometimes it works out well, sometimes it doesn't. I have mixed feelings about this one, and don't think it's the best example of my cartooning ability... Of course, like I said, I'm just starting out and hope to see improvement as time goes on. I titled this one "Scoundrel" simply because of the smirk on his face. He looks like he's up to something.

Self-Portrait

When I was a kid the margins of every school paper I ever turned in was home to a myriad of different scenes that I had doodled. Dragons, superheroes, spaceship battles and whatever else struck my fancy at the time dotted the landscape of my work. I'm not sure what drove my teachers crazier, the fact that my papers were not neat and tidy, or the fact that I would make all kinds of sound effects while I was drawing.

I've started this blog partly in homage to that era of my life, and partly just to get in some practice. You see, on my 40th birthday, my wife gifted me with a Wacom tablet. It's been 6 months, and I've barely had time to play with it. It has been years since I've done any serious drawing or painting, and I'm sorely out of shape.

To that end, I am going to attempt to publish one doodle/sketch a day to this blog for an entire year. These will be completely unfinished "works of art" (in fact, I hardly dare call them that). Everything posted here will be created using my Wacom Intuos3 and Photoshop CS3. Some of what you will find here will barely be recognizable as scribbles. At other times I hope to present work that I've spend more time refining. We'll see how it goes.

To start, I present a self-portrait. I don't do this out of some sort of vanity. Really. Mostly, I thought it would be good for those that don't know me to get a picture of who they're dealing with. Of course, if you do know me, you may be thinking, "Hey! That doesn't look like you!" True. There is only a vague resemblance. But do keep in mind that I only spent about ten minutes on this.