illustration friday: "retro"

Long time, no post! I have been drawing, just not so much for myself. I'll get around to posting up the commissioned stuff soonish (famous last words), but for now here's my take on this week's Illustration Friday theme, "retro." I just felt like drawing some olde timey beach bloomers, but I had so much fun with it that I ended up going all the way to a finished piece. Somewhere along the line it turned into a bit of a bad day at the shore... I went into this one without much of a plan, but I really like how it came out.

illustration friday: exotic

Vampires are exotic, right? I didn't intend this to be my IF piece, but it works.

illustration friday: disguise

A last minute IF drawing, and my first post of the new year!

illustration friday: power + pll

This is a bit of an odd scene, but it's your average Tuesday night at my house these days. I've recently added weight lifting into my workout regimen - which I am loving - and on Tuesdays I do it while watching ABC Family's amazing, cracked-out teen mystery soap Pretty Little Liars. It's pretty ideal multi-tasking.

I don't usually post sketches or line drawings or unfinished stuff, but I think I should start - I'd post much more frequently if I did. For example, this, which I wouldn't have been able to finish completely in time, but is a perfectly cromulent drawing all on its own.

greetings from watkins glen

This week's Illustration Friday theme, "travel," is a bit fortuitous - we just got back on Monday from the first vacation I've taken in more than a decade. We spent 4 days in Watkins Glen and Ithaca, NY for my birthday, hiking, visiting Farm Sanctuary, eating obscene amounts of coconut milk ice cream, and just generally enjoying being in the middle of nowhere. I sketched out a whole series of little vignettes I want to draw from the trip, but this is the only one I've finished so far - an ode to Watkins Glen State Park, with its 19 (!!) waterfalls and amazing gorges.

illustration friday: farewell

This is Pancake. He loves breakfast and math. He doesn't want you to leave yet, even though the bus is coming. Pancake has trouble with goodbyes.

This week's Illustration Friday submission is brought to you by the letter C for Corgi.

illustration friday: wild

A couple of weeks ago on my way to work, I passed this kid (well, basically) on his way to school. His mohawk hoodie made my day and really stuck with me, so when this week's Illustration Friday email came and I saw the that the theme was "wild," well, I took advantage of the opportunity to draw this little wild child.

Rock on, kid. You rule.

illustration friday: egg

It's not 9 pm on Thursday and I'm posting my IF illo! What is this topsy-turvy world? Is nothing sacred? Well, no. I guess not. In any case, here is a kid in a chicken suit. As you may be able to glean from the text beneath the drawing, there is a little story to go with this. It is very stupid and will never see the light of day, but it does exist.

I think this is the fourth or fifth little kid in a bird suit I've drawn over the course of my adult life. I guess I have some kind of deep-seated fascination with giant beaks on the verge of consuming childrens' faces? In a cuddly sort of way.

NONE OF THIS MAKES SENSE. But I'm posting it anyway. Happy Wednesday, internet. Enjoy the chicken child.

illustration friday: swim

I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do something for IF this week, which bummed me out because I already missed last week - but then I was able to churn this out this afternoon/evening, so yay! And I'm actually I'm super happy with it, which is always a plus.

This is a bit of a departure from the muted color palettes I've been favoring lately - the brighter, summery palette obviously worked with the theme, but it's also just because I am DYING for some warmer weather. I feel like I've been wearing a bulky winter coat for 100 years. Ugh. BRING IT SPRING.

illustration friday: yesterday

This is the second illustration I started for this week's IF topic, "yesterday." The first one was kind of personal (UNDERSTATEMENT) and super depressing and while I would like to finish it one day, I knew I couldn't now, and even if I did manage to, I was never going to post it. I got as far as a color comp before I abandoned it and decided to go with something a little less actively miserable.

The first thing that came to mind after that was the phrase "yesterday's news," which got me thinking about what if there was a little girl named Yesterday who put out her own newspaper and called it "Yesterday's News?" And she has a cat named Headline or Byline who "helps her," and by that I mean mostly rolls around in her notes but also sometimes discovers things or gets her out of jams too. And maybe they solve "mysteries" and uncover "secrets" around the neighborhood or whatever. Kind of like Harriet the Spy meets Nancy Drew, except with a super horrible name.

PSA: Do not name your child Yesterday. Do not name your child Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday (even if she's a vampire), Today, or Tomorrow, either. These are not names. Also a better, if less thematically appropriate, name for this cat would be Waffles. End PSA.

ANYWAY. There you go. I should just really stick to drawing.

illustration friday: talent

Nothing big for this week's IF, just another bendy circus lady, this time doing some double-hooping. I've been experimenting with color and technique a lot these last few weeks, and the streak continues. For this one I decided to work in Photoshop from start to finish (I usually work in Illustrator and then just take it into PS to add texture at the end) - and I didn't hate it as much as I expected. I kind of liked it, actually. I still think I prefer the results I get in AI - I like very smooth lines - but this method certainly had its merits and I'll try it again sometime.

I feel like I'm slowly figuring out how I want to work, through a series of hits and misses. Like, last week's piece? I hate it. A few weeks before that, for the "storm" prompt? I really liked that one. It's an interesting process.We'll see where I end up.

illustration friday: whisper

Getting my IF piece for the week in just under the wire - again. I see a pattern emerging. I actually did the sketch for this as soon as I got the email with this week's topic, it just took me a while to get around to finishing it. I'm still having lots of fun playing with color - this palette is a bit of a departure from the muted tones I've been favoring lately, but I felt like getting (slightly) outside of my comfort zone and trying out something that wasn't just strictly realistic in terms of coloring.

And I'm still all over hand-drawn text. I just want to draw pretty loopy writing all over everything now.

illustration friday: wool

You guys, my vegan is showing.

When this week's (this week's for another 1 hour and 34 minutes, anyway) Illustration Friday prompt  - wool - landed in my mailbox, this is the first thing I thought of. Mostly I just wanted to play with hand-drawn type - the sheep is pretty secondary. I think it came out pretty well considering I've never really done this sort of thing before. Looking at it now, as I'm posting it, I'd add change some things (when wouldn't you?), but... overall I like it. I think it ended up having kind of a vintage kid's book vibe, somehow.

illustration friday: storm

This week's Illustration Friday topic was, appropriately, "storm." Nemo (cutest name for a storm ever) dumped a whoooole bunch of snow all over the Northeast, but thankfully Philadelphia was mostly spared. We had some minor snow but nothing worth elbowing an old lady for the last loaf of bread over. Still, this is how the winter is starting to feel. It hasn't even been that bad, comparatively, and it's almost over, but February always seems like the gloomiest month.

illustration friday: wheel

As seems to me by way, here's my last minute piece for this week's Illustration Friday theme, "wheel." Except it's not really last minute - I sketched stuff for it last Friday, but just never got around to finishing it until tonight. But no matter; it's still Thursday, so it counts! Here again we see my little preoccupation with bendy circus ladies making an appearance, this time during the backstage practice portion of the show.

illustration friday: wings

Right under the wire! Also two posts in one day?! What is this, I don't even. Anyway, this week's Illustration Friday theme was "wings." If I titled my drawings this one would probably be called "now where did those come from?" Or similar.

I like the wings least of all in this entire thing, but no matter how many times I redrew them they never looked right. So it is what it is. And I do like the color palette quite a bit. I'm way into muted orangey-coral, sage green, and tan shades right now. Highly unseasonable. Maybe it's because I'm so flippin' cold all the time, and come summer I'll be all about the frosty lavenders and pale blues. Pantone, takes me awayyy.

illustration friday: myth

This week's Illustration Friday topic and a current job/project of mine happened to coincide perfectly! I'm doing a label for an indie perfume/bath & body company called Arcana Soaps, whose products I loooove so it's very exciting for me. The label is entirely black and white (and I'll post it when I get the okay), but I liked the design so much I wanted to do a color version just for fun. The fact that it allowed me to do IF this week was just a bonus.

illustration friday: lost

I've been working on a pretty all-consuming project for the last few months, and even though I really shouldn't squander my time on non-essentials, well... you start to go a bit crazy if you don't take a break sometimes, you know? The Accurate Depictions of Animals have mostly been filling that role for me lately (and there will be many more of those to come!), but today I took a peek at the Illustration Friday topic and decided to give it a go.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out - if you check the (very rough) sketch above, you can see that it ended up becoming quite a bit more developed than I'd intended. I originally had in mind that it would just be a character against white with a little background vignette behind her, because I didn't want to spend a bunch of time on it... but then I got carried away. I always think I hate doing backgrounds until I actually do one and then it's fun as hell. At this point that applies exclusively to nature-y backgrounds, though - cities and stuff still make my eyes twitch. One day.

IF: sneaky

Girl Detective returns! Sneaking around at night, searching for stolen jewels - which everyone knows you should hide on your freakishly large black cat for maximum protection.

I'm not super into this, although I can't really put my finger on why. But it's been forever since I did an IF piece, so I'm posting it anyway.

IF: slither

What I came up with for this week's Illustration Friday theme - "slither." I've always liked sideshow stuff so there wasn't really much question about where to go with this one. (It was either this of the movie Slither, which gets points for starring Nathan Fillion but loses points for making me almost throw up just thinking about it.)

Rough sketchy goodness.