Kitty sketch

Those cats... need to stop being inspirational.

Sketch of my friend Katie

I did this from a photograph, which had really awesome lighting. Sometime I might create a portrait of her digitally sometime. For now, a sketch.

Weekly sketch

This is some sketches for a character I will be drawing as a webcomic soon. My friend is writing the story, but we probably won't have any panels out until January. I just started some concept designs. This is for the face of Paloma, the main character. She's has a Spanish background (her name means "dove" in Spanish). Then I got side tracked trying to figure out how to draw a human face in profile (grr... that's frustrating...).

Study sketch

Sketches of some noses, mostly. Not very detailed, but this is from my head and not looking at anyone. I'd like to do it again with some models :)

People of Chicago sketch

Here's a sketch I did while in Chicago this weekend. I had some time to wait for a train, so I spent it in a Starbucks, getting inspiration from the random people that walked in. It was a fantastic exercise, to try to portray the diversity of people here. Makes me want to live in the city again.

I want to start a webcomic soon/someday, so it was a good way to think about characters and character design.

Landscape sketch

As much as I love nature, I'm really bad at drawing it. I can never get the textures right and get the space and depth to come across as well. Unless there are buildings--buildings I can do. But, I do love nature, so I gave it a shot. This is a sketch I drew while referencing a photo from Cougar Mountain in Washington state.

Then I tried coloring it with Illustrator brushstrokes... hard to do.

Weekly sketch: owls

Here's a sketch from this week. I was exploring some designs for cute owls. The figure in the lower left was used for a personal silkscreen project.

Weekly sketch

Some sketches of origami pieces. I like how their shape lends themselves to simple and elegant line drawings.

Sketch: Website layout

This week's featured sketch isn't horribly exciting--I made some thumbnails of layouts for a website I will be remodeling. The site is for Project Neuron at the University of Illinois, where I am employed half-time. I actually do a lot of writing and lesson development, not just drawing, and I enjoy it a lot. The website right now needs more explanatory text, better navigation, and a crisper design. Hopefully I will be able to accomplish that this semester!

Sketch: James

My sketch this week is of my boyfriend, James. We went on a date to see Another Earth at the Art Theater and had some free time before the movie, so we went to the park in downtown Champaign. This is the first drawing I've ever made of him (and he said he was nervous).

By the way, Another Earth is one of those good scifi's where there's a concentration on interesting plot and characters rather than special effects. I recommend it.

Sketchbook scan

This week's sketchbook scan is primarily a study of a guitar, particularly the lighting on the side of it. I've been interested in lighting on various surfaces lately, because I haven't paid much attention to it in the past. At least not on obscure things like the sides of guitars. I did a gradient bar--perhaps useful for an Illustrator illustration one day.

Also, more cats. And cat ears. I'm adopting a kitty soon, so I'm a little obsessed.

First sketches

These are two sketches I made this week, focusing on cat heads. I observed two different types of head shapes, one with an elongated face with a jaw that sticks out and the other more round and compact, in some cats I saw in real life. The sketches themselves are from photographs I took myself at different points in time. (I termed the different face types "french cat" and "british cat" for no apparent reason--perhaps the cats faces remind me of English and French styles or fashions. "Turkish cat" is from a photo of my friend's cat in Turkey).

Since I was concentrating on shape, I started to notice a "hidden geometry" in the faces of the cats, particularly circles in the checks. So, then I tried a sketch that explored the shapes I could find in the cat's face--that's the second sketch.