Illustration Friday: Climbing

This past week's Illustration Friday word was "climbing".

At first I thought about sketching one of the many kinds of climbing that I've done when I was a kid (mostly trees). But likely because I did some concepts based on McCaffrey's Pern last month, I was inspired to do a quick illustration of Menolly (from the book Dragonsong) climbing up the cliffs in order to rescue the fire lizard clutch from the sudden high tides covering the small beach below.

And here's the original sketch I did before coloring in Photoshop 7:
(sketching - about 1/2 hr.; painting - 1 hr)

Random sketchings for the New Year

I've posted a few rough sketches from my sketchbook done in the past month.

I've been in the middle of artwork for an upcoming SCBWI local meeting to pull together a promotional dummy book for critique and review. It's been awhile since I've gone so I'm looking forward to checking it all out again and meeting some of the local childrens book writers (and hopefully, illustrators!). I've also been rather busy creating some new administrative forms for my "illustration studio" using the Art Office book as a guideline, as I've been recreating the forms in Illustrator, with much customizing targeted to my own use and the type of projects that I currently do rather than focusing on gallery work: book illustration, product design concept art (specializing in Christmas) and so on.


Of course, I have various other creative projects going on as usual...and, once again, it's past time to update that online portfolio/website of mine -- the deadline is January 31! :)

Concept Art and Massive Black 2009 Workshop: Dallas!

I just posted this over on the Dallas Sketchgroup blog, but it's totally worth posting about twice! :) Four days of art and creativity immersion -- can't wait!! Here's the announcement that was posted yesterday over on the CA website:

ConceptArt.Org International Art and Design Workshop:
DALLAS TEXAS - March 28-31 2009

The next workshop is coming hard and fast. Are you ready? We are.

Conceptart.org and Massive Black have put together a stellar list of instructors, great sponsors, and a fresh program covering aspects from the games, toy, film, and fine art industries. The venue is beautiful. We are right next door to a gorgeous museum full of world class art, and have more planned than ever before. When I say we have more planned, I am saying we are pulling out all the stops. Art, jobs, culture, music, performers, training, and even more will be happening. We have a great list of sponsors including Google, SMU, the Guildhall, ReelFX, the prestigious AFI film festival, Corel and many others. This is going to be a big show with more art than ever before.

Time is short. Much to do. The official announcement will come this week and all info will be released then.

Tuition is 600 bucks and we will have an early bird offer which includes free downloads, cheaper tuition, and more. All the info will come this next week. Start getting ready folks...we are going to Dallas and will be shaking the art world from the top to bottom.

We chose Dallas as it is central to everyone here in the US and is a very affordable city to travel to. Of course, the local sponsors are world class too. This is going to be a great show.

The Shanghai show is still in the works but has been moved to late 2009 in order for us to find addtional sponsors. Dallas will be the only workshop we do in North America in 2009.

See you all soon!!

Figure Drawing: January Dallas Dr. Sketchy

More people showed up at the January Dallas Dr. Sketchy meeting. Yay! And, oh well, that's what I was afraid of -- I'm glad I got there early to pick my table as it was much more crowded than the last meeting I attended. It may mean a change of venue if it gets even more popular. Parking is easy to find at the current location since there's a public garage just across the street. And, it gives me the random opportunity to get to know the downtown Dallas Arts district a bit better I suppose, heh.




We had two great models again this session. "Hansel" was a particularly awesome model since he showed up costumed as "town crier" and then kept up that character the entire time with some rather hilarious poses. There were multiple requests for Hansel to come back and model again for us, too. The other model, Ginger, a burlesque dancer, complimented Hansel's character when they shared poses for the drawing group. My only slight unhappiness with her was that she kept changing her upper body poses (tilting her head differently, repositioning her shoulders, and so on) and expression in the longer poses. Hard not to do, I know! I've posted a few of my sketches from this and a previous session. I mostly used a combination of Conte crayons and charcoal for the gestures and 10 minute sketches, adding Sharpie markers for the longer 20 minute drawings. I also took a few photos this session for my image morgue.



It was good to meet other people involved in the DFW art community, too; it was a nice mix of gallery, hobby and professional artists. Hard at times to make myself talk without stuttering since I'm rather shy, definitely introverted, and get extremely nervous in large groups. Yeah, I hate giving presentations, too; but have managed to force myself as needed. One of my ongoing resolutions, ha. In any case, I'm looking forward to attending the next sessions as my work schedule allows. Drawing from live models rather than from my own imagination or photo images is a really nice change of pace, and I can definitely see that I could use the practice!

Happy New Year -- 2009!

For some reason, this new year resonates to me as being the year of The Fool...which is why I came up with the above quick illustration (original pencil sketch posted below) based on the following fortune-telling tarot card description:

"The Fool is considered to be a card of infinite possibilities. The bag on the staff has all that is needed to do or become anything, one only has to stop and unpack. While the Fool is on the path to a brand new beginning, it also comes with a little bark of warning: stop daydreaming and watch your step, lest you fall and end up looking like a fool."

Sounds like good advice, eh? Well, we'll see how it goes...