Inky situation:

Sometimes when the mood is right and all my thoughts align, I can knock out something like this in about 14 hours...

Black ink only.  Sandhill Crane.

I'll drop it on my Illustration page.

T-Shirts!

My Ronnie Ray Gun design is finally done. I think it looks great and I've gotten great reactions so far.

Now I'm working on finding a vendor who specializes in printing shirts and hosting designers work on their site. I found a couple so I just gotta do it. I'll link my blog to any sales pages I set up.

After that I'll get an Etsy account or something setup for my bird nests. 

I love when production gets going. Lately I've had to slow down quite a bit to spend more time with family but I promise I'll get back up to speed soon to give you guys something to look at and more stories to read.

Another portrait started, this time a pet.

I can do pet portraits as well though they can be somewhat more complex than people.

Here is a shot from my sketch book.

While the final piece will look nothing like what's here,

I used this space to define for myself what I think the colors, texture, should be.

Also I worked what I think the personality of the dog is since that will make or break what the owner of the dog will see in the final piece.

A person could conceivably a take drawing from an animal that is not the animal of request and try to match the coloring since for example many dog breeds have a very similar if not nearly identical coat pattern and color within the breed but the personality wouldn't be there and as a fellow doggie owner, I know I would probably spot the difference.

So, that is what I work out in sketches. I did something similar for the "Granger" composite.

cheers

One work finished a new one started

After a bit of a break for the family I finally got around to posting what I've been working on...

This is a composite of the character "Hermione Granger" from the estimable Harry Potter saga.

I started with the mask, just the face area, of the character and tried to read into the character and her story to come up with something completely unique within the bounds of the client's instructions.

The job was basically the illustrators' version of fan fiction and of course I claim no rights to the character in any way, just the unique drawing.

This type of thing can be done with any portrait. I can drop you or anybody into your favorite movie or book and can finish to any level off detail you want.

I can make you or somebody into a serious drawing, a caricature, traditional drawing, digital painting or photo composite. It all works the same. Priced by medium, number of colors, number of figures, and size for traditional drawing.

cheers.