Christmas Portraiture

I was commissioned a family portrait weeks before Christmas. Be it illustration or portraiture, I still love to paint and draw! Pictured first is the initial sketch. The client wanted to utilize a photo taken years ago, but incorporate current hairstyles and the children at their current age.



And here is the final painting:

Happy Halloween!

It's been too long. Sorry I'm recycling old art here, but you do what you gotta do. I think I posted this last year: a simple illustration of youthful role play. Of course, when I was a child, it was a bedsheet for a cape. But the Charmin mummy works too!

Illustration Friday: Artificial

It's a classic story that is familiar to most of us: Carved from a piece of pine by a woodcarver, he was created as a wooden puppet, but dreamt of abandoning his artificial state and becoming a real boy.

Illustration Friday: Double

Wow. So many connotations with this week's topic since I spent SO much time on it and found it challenging in a wonderful way: Double the effort. Double trouble.

My newest piece is truly a labor of love - mixing elements of fantasy and dealing with somewhat macabre themes. The idea comes from my neighbor and friend who is an aspiring children's book author. She wrote a story about a spoiled princess, called "The Princess Who Ate Dragons." The princess treated everyone badly, so, as punishment, her parents exile her to spend time with dangerous dragons. But, fearing nothing, the princess merely jests "I'll eat 'em, You'll see."

I included images of my photo references and the sketches. I spent a lot of time with the dragons as I wanted them to look a specific way.



As I was working on the sketches, I must have reworked the main dragon a dozen times. He kept taking on the look of the dragon from Shrek! After my initial sketches were done, I shot them with my digital camera and started composing them together in Photoshop. The last image is that composition.


This is the final sketch that I transferred to use for the painting. I printed the Photoshop-ed comp out and drew more on it: the stone wall and the ground. Notice that I changed the butcher knife to a spoon in the painting. My 10 year old son casually glanced at my sketch and remarked, "Don't you think that knife is a bit violent?" This is a story of a spoiled princess who eats dragons! But he was right, she had almost a murderous tone with that knife!

From the Sketchbook

Here are some sketches I just finished to prepare for an illustration. I wanted to focus on certain expressions for this character, who is not the nicest little girl in town. :-)

Illustration Friday: Giant

An unlikely friendship blossoms as the boy looks after the giant chihuahua. One of their favorite games is "hide and seek."

Illustration Friday: Satellite

This cow has set high ambitions after being inspired by her favorite rhyme. Our familiar satellite looks on with concern. :-)