Sketch Dailies Dump

I'm on Instagram a lot. I really like it. Most of the people I follow post pics of food, cats and best of all art! One or two of my friends over there were participating in this thing, Sketch Dailies, and I decided that I wanted to do it too. 

From the Sketch Dailies Facebook page:
Sketch Dailies is a daily character topic posted online for artists across the world to use as a little inspiration.

They post a new topic everyday, Monday-Friday. They post the day's topic on their Twitter feed, Instagram feed, and their Facebook page. While I've been sketching out the art with pencil, I've been following through with a digital redraw. I'm trying to work on my speed & I'm also trying to use a vector based program I have on my ipad more. It's called 'Inkpad' if anyone would like to look into it. And I highly recommend that you check out Ron Letkeman's blog, 'DigitalDrawer'. He's got great tips & tutorials for using Inkpad. (And from what I can tell, Inkpad is FREE right now from the itunes store, so if you have an ipad and you work in vector, you should try it out. You can't beat free.)

So anyway, here's a bunch of stuff that I've been doing. Velma from Scooby Doo is the most recent, and the only one I did this week, as I have been ill and haven't been in a drawing mood. Enjoy!

Velma

Jem

Egon Spengler - Ghostbuster Extraordinaire

Baba Yaga

Robot Monster

Come On and Get Yer Goat!

Well, the day has arrived! I now have stickers, with my art on them!! Yay! This was a very exciting thing for me, since I've always had a great love of stickers, going back to my childhood days of sticker collecting. You can get your own goat sticker by going here. Or go to the tab at the top of the blog that says 'Stickers'.

Quantity for these are limited, so get 'em while they last. Any reprints or new sticker designs will totally depend on how sales go with this run.

I expect to take some of these out to ZaPow sometime this week, possibly Friday. So you can pick one up in person, if you're in the area.

Book Signing Party

Today I worked on this. I came up with the idea for this last year and had actually started working on it.  About a quarter through it, I decided that I didn't like it and that I needed to step away and/or start over. Then about two weeks ago, I came across some of my sketches of 'Corbis' (that's him on the left there), and decided that I wanted to at least complete a figure of him. Cause he's so ding-darn cute! I started him over from scratch, and when he was complete, I pulled up the piece I began last year to see if there was anything I could salvage from that file. I had saved some work I had done on Lavinia (her on the right), so I worked off of what I had already. With those two figures done, I thought it would be a shame to not just go ahead and do the Goat of Mendes, because then it would be complete. It's not what I had planned to spend my day working on, but oh well.

So this is 'Book Signing Party' and it features Corbis, the Ram from THE DEVIL'S RAIN 1975,  the Goat of Mendes from THE DEVIL RIDES OUT 1968, and Lavinia the witch from CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTER 1968.

Bates Motel: An exercise

Today's piece was originally intended to be yesterday's piece. I wanted to have it up for Valentine's Day. But unfortunately, we got hit with Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse, which ever you prefer. I was away from home and just returned yesterday afternoon. I did try to get this done last night, but it didn't happen.

We have Netflix, and recently they added season one of the A&E series BATES MOTEL. I decided that I'd give it a go and found that I actually kind of liked it. I'm looking forward to season two, which begins next month. So as an 'exercise' I thought I would draw a BATES MOTEL spot illustration, featuring Freddie Highmore, who plays Norman Bates in the series. My ideas for it were to make it look like something that might run in an entertainment magazine and that I wanted to use a very limited color palette. AND keep it SIMPLE! Simple shapes and construction. Well, what was suppose to be a 3-4 hour project turned into a 8-10 hour project. It probably wouldn't have taken so long if knew exactly what I wanted to do with the background when I started working on it. And I spent a long time fussing over Highmore's likeness. ALSO, my computer crashed 3 times while I was working on this. Luckily, I'm a frequent saver. Even though I spent waaaay more time on this piece than intended, I'm very happy with the way it turned out.

So this is my Valentine's Day piece. A day late. Happy Valentine's  Day, if you're into that kind of thing. And Happy Birthday to Freddie Highmore, who's birthday was apparently yesterday as well.

'Creepy Cute' Art Show opens tonight at ZaPow

14x18 Cradled Wood Panel, Posca Paint Markers & Acrylics $275

Tonight is the opening reception for gallery ZaPow's first group art show of 2014. The theme is 'Creepy Cute', and this little fella is my piece for the show. I had a couple of other ideas, but didn't manage to get them started in time. However, I will probably still do them, since I thought they were good ideas. Creepy cute is a really fun theme.

For this painted piece, a did a finished Illustrator version that was to serve as a reference for colors and also so I would have a digital version for other things. Other things like...... STICKERS! So be on the look out, I am planning to have goat stickers for sale very soon (fingers crossed). If these stickers do well, I hope to get more designs printed up.

Here is my digital goat piece, that will be used for the sticker. It will probably be a die cut and will not have this background. But I haven't decided just yet.

Danny talks to 'Tony'

Here is my third Horror Kid. This time it's little Danny Torrance from 1980's THE SHINING. For the background design, I went with a cold, frosty kind of look and used the famous 'REDRUM' that Danny writes on the door. I decided that I wanted to do something different, since the most obvious choice would have been to use the iconic carpet pattern used in the Overlook Hotel hall carpet.

I probably only have two more kids to do, unless I think of some others. These have been pretty fun to do.

The Power of Christ Compels You?

Well, believe it or not, here is my second Horror Kid, Regan from 1973's THE EXORCIST. I love this film. I've always said that my favorite horror films of all time were the unholy trinity of ROSEMARY'S BABY, THE OMEN & THE EXORCIST. I have an old sketch for a ROSEMARY'S BABY piece, maybe I can work it up and add it to this series.

I do have two other Horror Kid sketches that I want to work into final pieces, so maybe I'll have another one next week. I've been working on several different things at once, including new Halloween art for 2014's countdown. I'm trying to get ahead since I always feel like I'm dragging behind...