worn (aprons)

Saturday, June 27th, 2009 | General, Illustration Friday | 7 Comments

The latest experiment in my continuing quest to make digipainting look more organic. Done in pencil, Photoshop, and ArtRage. Inspired by a photo taken by Judy Thomas of some aprons hanging in a shop window in Ellicott City, MD.

Pet Peeves

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 6 Comments

What part of “Meow” didn’t you get?

Heavy – Lady Macbeth

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | No Comments

This past weekend we saw the show currently known as “Teller’s Macbeth” (though it’s actually co-directed by Aaron Posner). It was the best staging of Macbeth I’ve seen to date and it’s currently sold out through the end of the run. I was inspired by the production to draw this heavy – Lady Macbeth. To be clear, she was NOT portrayed in the play the way I have sketched her here. I decided I wanted her to be very young (too young to gague the consequences of her action appropriately), ambitious, and super sexy (so that an older Macbeth would be captivated into pleasing her). So yeah I think my lady M is a bit of a rock star.

I did this sketch all digitally and very quickly (so it’s still very unfinished and still just a sketch). I tried another loose technique which started with my tracing a photograph of myself.

Choose

Saturday, February 9th, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 4 Comments

I painted this image about 14 years ago in my purple & silhouetted people phase. The original was done in watercolor and acrylic on a brown paper shopping bag. Two years ago, I recreated it digitally in order to make a template so I could build a three-dimensional Valentine’s card from it for a small competition (it won). This time, I decided to go back to the rough digital and clean it up to make it available for sale on Greeting Card Universe. Conveniently, it also happens to fit this week’s Illustration Friday theme.

The inside of the card reads, “Of every heart, I choose yours. Be my Valentine!” I realize it’s a bit of an odd image for a Valentine’s Day card, but Happy Valentine’s Day!

Blanket

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 4 Comments

What is it about February? I had actually finished the pencil sketch for this one when I realized I drew pretty much the same idea a year ago for “crash.” That was posted February 9th of last year if you’re curious. This version is a lot better. I can definitely see myself improving as I go along. Drawing 29 pages of book in the last 2 months helped quite a lot too (4 more pages left to draw and then I get to start coloring it). Incidentally, you may notice both cats have little hearts on their sides. That’s because they’re modeled after our real cat, Char, who really does have a black heart on his left side.

Tales and Legends

Sunday, January 27th, 2008 | General, Illustration Friday | 7 Comments

How could I resist this topic!?!? Ok the first thought I had for this was to do “Swan Lake” but that required research for me. I wanted to find the original story. Guess what? The Tchaikovsky ballet IS the original story. There are other iterations that it was based on but otherwise, apparently, that’s that. And it has various different options for endings. This got me thinking about writing a version of Swan Lake someday and i just got carried away. So that got shelved.

Instead, I have done a version of Elaine, also known as “The Lady of Shallott.” Here she is looking out her tower window as Launcelot comes, by chance, to Astolat. I was thinking I was going to regret painting it in low-res but there are enough things I’d want to change on it if I were doing it “for real” that I’d have to do a bit of it over anyway (like run her braid down her back instead of over her shoulder and out her armpit. oh well). I started a version of this story about 10 years ago so I didn’t have to do the research. Someday, maybe, I’ll actually finish writing my version of this story, but for now, I leave you with Tennyson:

Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
–LANCELOT AND ELAINE by ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON