Back from the Dead

[Crow]

Wow I've been away for quite some time. Well, now that I've remembered my password I'm back, and hopefully for awhile. I had taken a hiatus as I was working on illustration jobs (of the non-concept variety tho), so I feel like I need something to help keep me driven to draw what I want more often; a sketchbook thread should do it.

[Crow]

This first one I got from observing the shadows from my pen as I put it near the page. Kinda exploded into some mechanical hell-beast.


This I got from reading City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer; an amazing book, the first in a trilogy, it's similar to Lovecraft with Fungus instead of Old Ones.


Trying to draw the guy sitting right next to me at Charlie's, a bar here in Seattle.


Street doodles, with a little Ningauble of the Seven Eyes finding his way in.

[Crow]

Started doodling at the bar. For me, I can't focus enough to effectively doodle after I've had some beers in me.


Dream Dispenser


Based on a species of creatures in Iain Bank's "the Algebraist"

[Janos]

Nice concept on the sand man. I like the graphical approach.
I also like your bar sketches. I don't feel comfortable drawing at a bar, so respect for that.

[Crow]

Hey thanks! Yeah, it's defiantly not an easy thing.



Did some quick little token cards for Magic the Gathering creatures for a friend

[Crow]

In a monster mood


Playing around with an older sketch that the above is based on.

[leanunlibro]

Your bar sketches are awesome even the drunk part hehe. Your creatures are coming along nicely. Keep it up

[Crow]

Thanks for the encouraging words, and happy new year!

Decided the barbarian in the previous post was really Fafhrd, so here's a Gray Mouser to go with him. Both characters from Fritz Leiber stories.




Playing around with sketching directly in PS. And yeah, I dont know why it is, but I love to draw noses.


All right, I'm feeling that I need to buckle down and work on taking some stuff away from sketches and towards a more finished look. We will see.

[Gumpshmee]

Looking at your old sketchbook and your new I can see an obvious progression.

I agree with your move to start polishing some things up. With the time that you put into sketching you could start filling out a portfollio. If you have the wherewithal to work digitally you should try speedpainting.

Rather than simply colorizing line drawings you might find it refreshing to work purely with color (or grey scale if you rather).

It looks like your work is about ready to take off.

[duckfukker]

clean pencilling. enjoying your style.
I agree with Gumpshmee.
you could try taking a silhoutte to finish without using lines to practise value and light?

other than that, i think you should drink&draw more often ^^

[Crow]

Gosh darn. Been too long since I posted. Was sick for a bit, then took a holiday into the Internetless woods, then was just plain lazy. But here I am.

Gumpshmee-Yeah, that's what I feel I need to work on now too; to do more actual painting rather then coloring in line art. Grey scale might not be a bad place to start with.

Duckfukker-Thanks, dont mind if I do! Now about those poor ducks...

Anywhoo


Being sick sucks. At least for me, it makes it hard to focus; so I just played around with random blobs to try to just get it going.


Saw the COW about Europans, doodled.


Playing around with ship designs. Deep space and some planet skimmers.


Speaking of silhouettes (damn you, odd spelling). Want to go back in and paint some detail onto them.


And a space dude. Kind of like a standing frog man.

[lennon]

Great linework! You must show more stuff. Painting over the line work is not bad, in fact it's more difficult to jump stright to color. Very solid stuff.
Some of this concepts are really great overall. Perhaps you could develop them further adding more details so that the eye can travel.
You could also add some more environment here and there.

[AustenFM]

Extremely fun stuff in here, I really like your pencils and inks, and i love the concepts you've thrown in here. Maybe a little time on your figures underlying structure would help iron out some proportion issues, you ever work with gesture figure drawing? Once i got the hang of that it really helped me out.

Great work again, can't wait for more!

[Craz]

You have a lot of really great designs, and I dig the cleanliness of your lines. This very rarely happens, but I have no criticisms!

[Crow]

lennon-Hey! I was just looking at your SB last night. Yeah, environments probably rank as my #1 weakness. One more thing to work on! More drawing!

AustenFM-I wish I did more gesture drawings. Seeing as how I live not too far from Pike Place market I have no excuse to not draw weird people doing weird things.

Craz-Thanks!

OK, so I've got the whole "work on actually painting, not just drawing" thing stuck in my head, so last night I started a painting based on the last sketch I posted.


Some works-in-progress. I'm actually psyched to work on this. Now if my work schedule would just cooperate...


A detail.

[danlucas]

Sweet! I like your imagination.

[Crow]

Of course on the day off I have, the day I was planning on spending time down at the market to draw all the people doing stuff at the park, it rains. Instead I sat facing out the window at the coffee place next to the entrance, to get people as they scurry about trying to dodge the bullets of rain.





Plan on doing some speed painting enviro stuff tonight, should be fun/learning experience.

[lennon]

Pretty interesting what you captured. The face on pencil looks pretty neat, but you have some other stuff that is rather good (lot's of people turning back). The drawing with perspective looks cool too.

[Crow]

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Here's some stuff.


Been reading some comic books, haven't read any in years.


Doodle at work, and a gypsy woman.


Guy I saw at a diner



Was at the library and found a book of classic Sci-Fi art; made a list of artists to check out.


Was just doing a basic "guy standing", but got carried away and ended up doing Wolverine (with a haircut), then got even more carried away and played around with some palette swaps

[Crow]

Oh hi there.

Arf.



A revisit to a Mr. Potatohead I had done.



Octo smash!

[pixel cheetah]

Very nice linework and some crazy creatures! I agree with the others that it would be nice to see some enviros as well. Where are these crazy creatures come from, where do they live?

[kidult]

Cool work here....keep it up!