Atomic Beethoven

I'm late getting this done today because I goofed around and did other things till about 6:30pm I sat down with no ideas and a black screen listening to Beethoven and this sort of came out stream of consciousness. I recorded it all in a speed painting movie so I'll edit that up and get it up before too long.  This took about 30 min. to draw.

Caricature of Will Vinton

I worked 12 years at Will's Animation Studio in Portland. I made a speed paint movie of this drawing being created set to music.

Easter Bunny-001

I used the same technique I said I used in yesterday's sketch of a young black man. This is using the smudge tool for a paintbrush while having the "fingerpaint" option clicked and the smudge tool set at 97%. This creates a painting environment similar in feel to painting with oils on glass or maybe a white enamel surface like a butcher's tray pallette. I chose to make this my first speed paint demo movie.

I'm sorry for the slow speed. This was my first video and I forgot to set the frame rate to not capture at real speed.  So you are watching this as I drew it with all the pauses and hiccups.

Young Black-001

Normally I paint in photoshop with the paint brush tool selected but I painted differently in photoshop today! If you select the smudge tool, set it to about 97%, then click the finger painting radio button up on the upper menus, any color you have selected will paint as you stroke it on but then it will blend with the background as you smudge it further along. This has some posibilities for making oil looking paintings I think.  This painting was painted with a wacom tablet. It took about an hour but some of that time was just experimenting with the brush strokes and the smudge tool settings.  Smudge tool-97% with the fingerpainting option clicked.

Sepia Rat Head Study-001

I love drawing faces. This morning I started out drawing some more full body poses and I don't feel they turned out as well as I'd like so I launched into another rat head study. When drawing fails me, just sketching a head is like eating comfort food.

Rat Pirate Swordplay-001

Today I'm putting up imperfect work, warts and all.  This is the first stab (pardon the pun) at a composition of two characters in the rat pirate universe having at it with swords.  I wanted the smaller mouse-like character to be cool and have a classical fencing form.  And I wanted the bigger rat pirate character to be more awkward and clumsy... maybe tripping over a barrel or backing back into a mast pole.  There are some tangents where hands line up with tails in confusing ways that I want to correct.  Also I need to get some better drawing pens.  All I had this morning was a big sharpie and a smaller drafting pen.

I want to buy Mark McDonnell's book, "The Art and Feel of Making It Real".  I've budgeted it to buy next month. It costs around 40 dollars but I feel it will be worth the price.  I think I could benefit from reading it.

Signs of Spring

This is a quick 30 min. sketch done with the wacom tablet in photoshop from a dig cam shot I took this morning on a walk around my neighborhood.

Pirate Head Turn-005

Okay, I'm going to stop here with the head turns and move on to expression studies or maybe some costume ideas. There are some things that computers can do better than the human brain and these "analog" turnarounds are imperfect and have some inconsistancies. But I feel I could draw this character type in just about any pose now. I think it's time to move on to some full figured sketches and costumed ideas.

2-21-10  This took about an hour to do.

Rat Pirate Head Turn-004

This is the fourth installment of a character head turn around that I'm making for the basic Rat Pirate character.  It was done with the Wacom Bamboo digital graphics tablet and photoshop.  It takes me about an hour to create one of these. ( Feb 20, 2010)

Captain Fieldmousen -001

Another sketch I made at odopod.com today.  To watch a flash movie of this sketch being drawn click:
http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/149733
I was playing around with some pirate rat costume designs for a sea captain and this took about 10 min.

Rat Pirate Head Turn-003

Eventually, you will be able to toggle through these turn around sketches and get an animated sense of the character turning in space.  This took about 1 hr. It was done with a wacom bamboo digital tablet and done in Photoshop.

Rat Pirate Head Turn-002

Feb. 18, 2010: Second installment on what may be several different views of the same character's head turning in relation to the viewer. In animation we call these Character Turn-arounds. This is the basic character I want to use for some rat pirate characters I'm developing.

Gentrified Mouse-(Rat Pirate Universe)

You can see this drawing being made in a flash file at: http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/149139/edit
I'm considering introducing some mouse like characters into the rat pirate universe for gentrified high class people. The better born you are the more mouselike and cute you look and the more rough or low born you are the more rat-like you look. So for instance a pirate might be a full blown rat character but a kidnapped damsel might be a cute mouse ... This was done as I explore how the mouse characters will look. This sketch took about 10 min. and I used the online odosketch site who's url is listed on the right side of my blog.

Rat Pirate Head Study- (profile)

I'm going to make a series of tighter, more photo-realistic head study turn-arounds and also some expression studies for the Rat-Pirate characters I'm developing. This was done with a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet inside photoshop. It took about an hour.

Rat Pirate Head Study-001

This is a head study for a personal project I'm working on that involves "Rat Pirates". You can see an animated flash movie of the creation of this drawing by clicking:
http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/148708/edit

This took about 10 min. and was drawn online at the odosketch site. You can find a link to it in my links on the right in my blog.

Time lapse animation: Pirate Ship Sketch

I'm trying something NEW today!! (thanks to Jeep Naarkom over at "speed paint a day" group for showing me this site) I found a website that creates movies of your sketches while you draw at their site. Here is an example of a pirate ship I drew this morning. (15 min.) http://sketch.odopod.com/sketches/148420/edit

Valentine for my wife

This morning I got up early and painted this. Then my wife and I went out together to breakfast and later some shopping. This is watercolor on watercolor paper. It took less than 15 min.

The Noble Pirate

Feb.13, 2010: Just doodling with the wacom tablet today. I seem to have a penchant for pirates. This took about 2 hrs.

The "Draw Me" Pirate

This morning I sat down and tried to think up an idea for another "rat-pirate" image and suddenly it hit me. What is the most famous and ubiquitous icon for a pirate in the last 40 years? Well the art instruction draw me pirate of course! This is my own perverse homage to a pirate image that most of my fellow artist friends have tried drawing at least once while growing up - you could find ads for the Famous artist school home instruction in almost any comic book or magazine in the 50's, 60's, 70's & 80's. They still are going strong with a website now acting as their portal to young artists.Arrr arrr arrrr!!! Ye can take the pirate out of the rat but ye can't take the rat out of the pirate! Shiver me timbers!

Rat Pirate!

Feb 11, 2010: My fascination with Howard Pyle's pirate illustrations and my love for rats have finally combined into something ....awful. LOL

Feb.12,2010 : Artwork blog created!

Hi folks. I created this blog to make my daily sketches and paintings available to a wider group of viewers.