I know it's shark week, but...

I like the octopus a lot better than boring old grey sharks.  Lookit the COLOURS!

This is for a round robin journal swap I'm in - everyone does one 2-page spread and then sends it along in a timely fashion, and eventually you get your own journal back, full of all the other participants' glorious artwork.  It's fun to see what books people choose (this one was actually hand-made) and what kind of paper you get to work on.  This one was a very light kraft paper so I knew I wouldn't be able to use any wet media.  I ended up going with Verithin pencil crayons and finished it up with a black china marker.  Unfortunately the china marker sort of took it from "fine art" to "colouring book" but luckily for me, I like it.

Hope you're rockin' your day,

Love Shelley!

Still Drawing; Not Rich and Famous Yet

This elephant is taking FOREVER.  She's not quite done yet but we're getting there.

Instructor did "surprise life drawing" night - I wondered if he had naked people stashed away somewhere that he was going to spring on us.  But no.  Some people had talked about having trouble getting fabric draping drawn correctly, so he gave us a chance to practice.  He was even kind enough to model for us, although he did yell, "Oh my GOD, it's HIDEOUS!" when he saw my drawing… presumably he doesn't love seeing his likeness any more than I like seeing mine….or, it's a really bad drawing. 

These are the triplet bear cubs from the movie "Brave".  Some days the drawing goes well and some days, not so much.  I drew about three pages of stuff over the course of two days and this is the only drawing I'd even want to show you out of that batch.  Bleah.  

It occurred to me that I might want to learn to draw hair, since most people have some.  

Everything went well with this pic of Andre Braugher until I tried to a) draw his face and b) make his skin black.  Bah.

I reverted back to cartoon characters - this guy is cute AND has a little girl playmate that I plan to draw next. 

 I dug around and found all the different lead hardnesses to start this class, but I've found I use mainly two pencils: a 4H and a Palomino Blackwing.  And a lot of erasing, of course.

These are just the pics out of my sketchbook.  Next time, I'll show you a couple of my assignments.  One even has COLOUR!

Until then,
Love Shelley!

So I'm taking this class...

I signed up for Childrens Book Illustration, a night class offered at the community college, and there is A LOT of homework.  Which is good, because it forces me to draw.  Want to see?  Good, let's go!

* * * * *

This was the first assignment I handed in.  We had to draw children in three different age ranges; and in three different states (standing, sitting, in motion).  I used reference photos from the internet, and the bottom two are in pencil, various lead hardnesses.  The flying kid was sketched out in pencil, and then I used a manga set of markers to shade him in.  Sorry about the demon eyes.  I got a little carried away with the marker.

Sketchbook - we're supposed to fill three pages in our sketchbook every week.  Doesn't sound like much, does it?  (ha.)

Again these are all from reference photos.  I wish I had the imagination to make up stuff like this on my own, but nope.  This was all done with a red Col-Erase pencil.  It's a pencil crayon but erasable.  Allegedly.  I was sitting on the couch and was too lazy to get up and look for an eraser, so I just scribbled harder to go over the parts I didn't like.

The cow went on some outgoing mail; I found her by doing a google image search for "cow" and she came up as "curious cow".  She was outlined in a Micron pen and then coloured in with Copic markers, kind of a quick-and-dirty job since I'm really not great with markers (YET).  Then I found a website that is all about character development, (visual, not like working hard and never telling a lie) and it's not in English, but there are a ton of great reference photos.  All the hamster drawings are in pencil.  I love this little guy.  From the website it looks like he's in the Disney movie "Bolt," which I haven't seen.  I figured I'd better start working on some kind of stuff that kids would like, since the final project is to illustrate a 16-page kids' book.  I'm sweating a little just thinking about it.  Then again, being challenged like this is sure to make me grow. Or have a nervous breakdown - one of those two things.

This big momma is a work in progress.  I just got started on her last night.  I hope to finish her tonight, because I still have to complete two more sketchbook pages for Monday, PLUS my assignment.  Yikes.  Anyway, this is from a  reference photo from a National Geographic book I snagged at Value Village.  So far I've only used a 4H pencil and a Palomino Blackwing.  I  might add more values with different pencils, but I'm not very good at that yet.  Since I used to just cross my fingers and hope you could tell what it was supposed to be, I think I've made some progress.  HA!  (Oh, and if I haven't, it's an elephant.)

I have a LOT more work on the go for this class.   I'll post pics as I go along. I'm hoping to see some real improvement between now and the end of  March when it's over.  Critiques welcome - you might see something I don't, so let me have it.

Love Shelley!