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.

pioneer

Last piece of the year, done for this week's Illustration Friday theme: pioneer. The first thing I thought of was an Indiana Jones-ish explorer guy, so I ran with it. The more I play around with this coloring style the more I like it, and you'll notice this contains both a GUY and a BACKGROUND, two things that I rarely, if ever, draw - and not a scantily-clad girl in sight. I mentioned in a previous post that I'm trying to work on backgrounds - well, the same goes for menfolk, because what with them making up roughly half the population it's really impractical to pretend they don't exist.

In this case I'm quite pleased with how both came out. I feel like this piece and the cavegirl I posted previously sort of represent the direction I want my work to go in - they've both had a level of polish that I often feel my stuff is lacking, if only due to my own laziness - and I'm excited to keep going with it.

Since faux-Indy is blocking out most of the background in the finished piece, I thought I'd post it on its own. Considering that the only planning I did for this was a rough thumbnail (literally the size of my thumbnail, too), I think it's serviceable. Apparently I really like drawing rocks and cliffs and stuff. Who knew.

And with that it's almost time to close out 2009. Happy new year, everyone!

concept art: environment design

My final project in Concept Art this semester consisted of many facets: character design, model sheets, environment design, and storyboarding. I'll post all but the storyboards in the near future, and maybe a photo of the final storyboard if my teacher doesn't keep it (it's 30x40 and therefore will not be getting scanned anytime soon). This is the environment design. The story (an animated film) is set in the woods, so... here's some woods.