a wee silas and friend. it’s unlikely that i’ll finish this soon because i don’t have a periwinkle prismacolor marker and i like to be rather accurate on proper coloring of characters, which means it’s dumped here for you dudes. this is the first ink job i’ve done in a very, very long time, as i’m not very fond of it. in any case, i hope to have more regular updates from this point on, with my larger projects finished!

just dicking around with some new ideas and old desires. i really don’t like adding color. i so much prefer sketches and monotone lines. ah well. i’ve perfected my french onion soup as of late and i suppose this is commemorating that.

here’s a doodle from a few weeks ago. if anybody is on pottermore, hopefully you’d get this, but for the uninitiated, i’ll provide a brief explanation:

as you explore through chapters on the pottermore site, you can collect various curios for your devious wizardly purposes. one such item is a jar of bat spleens, inconspicuously located underneath the huge shadow of a mountain troll (in the halloween chapter where the trio first becomes the trio.)

naturally, my vulcan brain’s first thought at this was how inconvenient a time and place to not only find, but to collect a jar of bat spleens. i imagined how the scene would unfold as my pottermore cohort and i arrived on it. the rest is self-explanatory. 

ps. gryffindor for life. 

hello rad folks and groovy new followers! my apologies for the large hiatus. i’ve had loads of work pouring in and little time to indulge in my own work, so today, I thought i’d finally share a little bit more of the concepting for my children’s book that i’ve been so hesitant to post before! 

this was the first completed color test for my in-the-works children’s book, featuring small and shy Silas. as it goes with process and progress, this is no longer the current color test, so I feel I can share it without giving away too much yet before it’s completed. this was a nice preemptive experiment, but now, onto bigger and better styles! the nice thing is that the relative scheme will remain the same.  

strangeteeth:

pinecone dance ✎ (Taken with instagram)

reblogging from my non-sketch personal blog. owl spirit girl, in better spirits and dancing with pinecones. mmm, mechanical pencil, you are delicious to wok with. 

i like drawing children because it helps me keep the mindset of my children’s book. i like drawing characters because they can express things i bottle up. today i have mixed the two.

strange, sad little owl-spirit girl. i considered giving her actual horns, but the suggestion of them by use of hair curls is nicer in it’s subtlety, i think. like me, she is self-conscious about the size of her nose. we may share a few other similarities as well. thank you little owl girl, for being my vessel. i will draw you happy again soon. 

i feel like if i have spent my minimum or more amount of hours a day (usually 4 at least) doing work drawing (commissions, portraits, design), I am entitled to draw something fun for myself. usually this means I’m up later because my peak work hours are early morning at late afternoon into night, so by the time i’m done with everything else, it’s already quite late. that being said, today’s two hour practice was pretty successful in experimenting with how i want this next commission to look.

here i’m taking a little bit of fun because i appear to be floating on magical mint green clouds, and my nickname is cloud. ho ho! also, i miss my pixie cut like crazy these days, but i’m doing my best to stick it out and reach that bob phase. that being said, i have officially lost all control of my hair.

phew! after working so long with so many projects in one particular style, it can feel a little strange to revert back to another. i’m working on a really cool, very big, super nerdy and way rad commission for someone that’s going to be done entirely in a cel-shaded style. i’ve got the basics layout and first sketch layer all set to go, and now comes the painting! i decided to take a break and practice a few new techniques i’d like to use in said piece, so i doodled up a little squishy Ryiane. I really don’t draw her enough, and haven’t drawn her in a while (she makes an appearance here), so this was pretty refreshing to work on. she’s part of the whole big graphic novel project as well, but all that is for another time!

another couples portrait i just finished, for anna and paul! i’ve never drawn a husky before, but this one turned out just as silly looking as she is in real life!

here’s a little doodle for you guys. randomly drew a small boy with grand ambitions. i very much like small children. whoever this kid is, one day he’ll be as big as the stars.

so i’ve discovered that i can still do my own little sketches in between work as long as they’re done in the dead of night! hooray!

anyway, here’s a sketch of the merchant and the tutelary spirit of the woods. musing, as they tend to do. i didn’t want to just post the lines, so i threw some vague grey stuff up in there. one day i’ll get my shit together, and finally get this personal cosmology of mine into a graphic novel where it belongs. and then we shall see. until then, riddles, riddles. 

this is also kind a revisitation of “wolves at the woods” - one of my oldest, but still favorite pieces. and if no one’s noticed yet, yes, i’m awfully fond of canine motifs.

yeaaaah, you know how in my last post I said I wouldn’t be able to do any personal sketches for a while? that made me a little sad so I sketched this up last night as a final pretty thing for you folks before the new work takes over. still shape style, but a little grown up. a what I wore post because I like my new coat. also, I’d never wear penny loafers in the snow, but ah well.

also my hair is getting awfully long and being all the more retarded for it it.

i’m not going to have time to do any personal projects or work on my children’s book for a while now, so there’s very little chance i’ll get to finish these little sketches. when i design characters, i like to have them in every situation possible, even if they do not occur in their specific storyline or media. here’s 7 year-old Silas again, without his frog hat and blanket cape, but in his stripey pj’s. he’s usually rather timid and pensive, so this would have evolved into a series of his other various facial expressions, but all i managed to get to before work piled up was his, “i’m so sleepy but i wanna keep reading” face. can’t say i’m unfamiliar with the expression…