People About Town

I wish I sketched people more often, you see some characters walking around. Here is a pair I saw crossing the street. She: knit cap, striped sweater, body tapering to very small legs. He: frayed jeans, vest over t-shirt, eating Froot Loops right out of the box. Drawn with my $1.99 Japanese brush pen.

Dig that crazy dancin' bear!

Been a while, whoopsie. I felt like drawing dancing bears. Well, one is skating. The right one is supposed to have a Russian hat that I didn't feel like researching.

This one can do ballet!

A standy bear who's too shy to dance. These are done with my weird "ink" pencil.

Sooner or Later You'll Dance with the Reaper

A thought that popped in to my head: the Grim Reaper as a baby. I did a little doodling on brown paper, and came up with these. I thought a pompom and lace around the robe would be funny. I guess these look more like just baby skeletons in clothes than Lil Reapers. I wanted the scythe to look like a little plastic version, like a child's toy and not a real sharp thing.

Ink and gouache.

Grab It!

Guess I ran out of artsteam after October. Well, once again I hope to make more art and to enjoy 2012. Here's a little painting of made-up creatures. I was inspired by some new art books I got for Christmas.

Figure out what you want in the new year and keep reaching for it!

The Resurrectionist

Meant to post this one on Halloween, but close enough. The final Halloween drawing, which also happens to be the last picture in a sketchbook. A body snatcher at work. It's supposed to be a view from inside the hole, but perspective and me don't mix. Yay!

Hope everyone had a marvelous Halloween, and may the fun spookiness continue for the rest of the year.

Do Fear the Reaper

Aw, missed the 30th by an hour! Oh well. Here's an anteater grim reaper. Watercolor pencils and ink.

A Sailor Travels to Many Lands...

The yearly Pinki the bilby in costume picture. I've been wanting to dress in a sailor outfit for a while now, but they're all very tiny and revealing and cheap looking. Some day...

Watercolor in the Japanese watercolor pad I got for a dollar, so it's not very good quality.

Can't Look This Horse in the Mouth

The headless horseman rides a headless horse. And holds on for dear life (dear death?) A stupid doodle, only 4 more days 'til Halloween!

Aw, It's Only Smokey!

Some kind of vaguely creepy digital thing. As usual, I like the original sketch better.

Long Pig

A quick sketch to get back on track. Scary boar butcher! I've heard that human meat has been referred to as "long pig" in certain cultures, and that pork is the meat that tastes closest to people. Another reason why I do not eat pork...

Fury

A mother werewolf protecting her baby. I should've gone further with the were-ness and rage. I did make her wearing the traditional plaid that werewolves seem to prefer.
Watercolor and sepia ink.

How do you get them so small?

A minor background character from Beetlejuice inspired this picture. I like the traditional makeup and illusions that are used on the dead waiting room people. I watched the 2 scenes that this explorer with a shrunken head is in. He looks like he has big eyelashes in my drawing, when he really has wrinkled bulging eyes. I think it's funny how he has this staring expression. I used my heliotrope pen to rough out a sketch while watching the movie, then went back after to tighten it up. He's contemplating what to do with his hat now.

Things I noticed: in the first scene, his hat has a plain khaki band, but in the very end it has leopard/cheetah spots. He's also has a National Geographic on his lap in the first scene, and what appears to be the Handbook for the Recently Deceased in the second scene. So I did a bonus super-quick doodle of him checking out the magazine.

Beach Bummy

A mummy enjoying a day at the beach. I didn't want her to look this dead; well, you know what I mean, she's dead, but reanimated and is just taking a nap on the sand. Anyway, a non-water soluable pen sketch blended with water, and a touch of watercolor. She has a big hole from where they took our her organs.

Oh no he didn't

I had a tape recorded off TV of the Will Vinton Claymation Comedy of Horrors special. I really liked all the different characters in it. Rewatching it now, it still has its charms. I'm a sucker for stop motion animation. A large part of the story takes place at a kind of monster convention on Halloween. This is a swamp creature guy who shows up a few times. I thought his sweater vest was great, and I liked how he stood with his arms bent funny and half-closed eyes. I think a monster he doesn't like just walked into the room as he was sampling an anchovy-and-octopus eye appetizer.

Watercolor and blue pencil drawing.

Toil and Trouble

A small sketch of the end result of a witches' brew. After Shakespeare:

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble


I drew the ones I could easily show missing their parts. And that are about the same size.

Grinning Ghost

Happy October! This seems to be the month when everyone wants to do lots of art. I won't kid myself and say I'm going to post a new picture every day, but I hope to make some spooky pictures and post them more frequently. We start with a Photoshop drawing, pulling out all the dumb tricks. Transparent layers! Soft brushes blended around the edges! Crazy filters! I don't know how to draw rain but I wanted to get something up. Not all my Halloween art will be scary, though I'll try to do a few creepy ones.

Testing, testing

I bought a new pencil called Derwent Inktense. It's supposed to be water-soluble ink in a pencil form. Kind of like a watercolor pencil, but harder. Where watercolor pencils usually turn to a lighter color that blends easily when you wet them, this pencil got darker and had a shorter time being blendable. Once the lines and washes dry, they're not going anywhere, unlike watercolor pencils that can be re-wetted. Interesting, fun to try out but I'm not switching over to Inktense-only art.

I made a big ol' bear and a pronghorn jackalope! Wee! The color is bark.

Underwater Pineapples

Pineapple fish look very cool. Swimming bilbies like to chase them around.

Watercolor and heliotrope ink sketchy painting.

An aye-aye went to sea, sea, sea...

My sketchbook has sketches, of course, but it also has incomprehensible scribbles and various picture ideas in word and drawing form. I finally did a rough brush pen doodle of a sailor aye-aye that was just a dumb pun on the bottom of a page. I'm glad that it looks moderately aye aye-ish.

Folderol, Musical Edition

Another mini observational comic. There's a neighbor somewhere that loves having all-night-long parties, on various days of the week, not just Saturdays. As most of these partiers seem to like, these folks love their techno bass-bumping "songs". There's no way to hide from them, they rattle the house!

Now why is it that someone with musical tastes similar to mine never does this? I wouldn't object to these types of parties. 2am blastings of Michael Jackson, Oingo Boingo, the Beatles, and crazy old 30s jazz songs? Turn it up!