Chamois Process

A few months ago, David Bressan, the author of the Scientific American blog History of Geology whom I have previously created illustrations for to accompany one of his articles, asked me to create a personal logo for him.  He requested both an anthropomorphic cartoon Chamois and a more normal four-legged cartoon Chamois.

I consider Chamois to be one of the world's cutest sheep/goat/antelope-types, and so I gladly agreed.  As per tradition whenever I wrap up an illustration assignment, here is a selection of the artwork that led to the final illustrations:



Here are the initial studies and sketches.





And here's the line art for the logos. They look a little more like character designs, don't they? David wanted several views to chose from.  I really love the front view of "Goat Boy".  So cute!

(And how often did I get a slightly modified version of this song in my head? Don't ask...)

Progress Sketches and Paintings of my Illustrations for "An Essential Field Guide to North American Earthquake Beasts"

Over the summer, David Bressan, the author of the Scientific American blog History of Geology, asked me to create illustrations to accompany his upcoming article about legendary creatures said to cause earthquakes.  I gladly agreed.  He sent me descriptions of the creatures he was thinking of writing about, and I had great fun visualizing them.



Here's the initial sketch for the A'yaho, a fierce monster who often appears as a deer-snake-dragon thing. I had a lot of fun designing him, and the final version is almost identical to the bottom drawing; I just had to give him a more ferocious expression.



As you can see, I nailed the Giant Toad's character design pretty early. He's almost identical in the final painting!



Interestingly, Thunderbird and Monster Whale were the only Earthquake Beasts who gave me trouble, at least initially. It isn't often you get the opportunity to draw something as awesome as two gigantic elemental beings at war, but it took me a few tries to figure out how to best depict their battle. I decided on the lower-left idea, since it actually shows the earthquake happening.



And here's a cleaner drawing of that lower-left idea with regrettable and rather garish digital coloring. This was the style I was initially going to do the final illustrations in, but after finishing this version of the Thunderbird/Whale battle, I decided that style did not fit the creatures at all. I decided to go with good old watercolors instead.



I drew the illustrations very lightly in pencil, and went over that with a watercolor wash.



I inked the outlines, did some details in colored pencils, and did as little cleanup as possible in Photoshop. If you compare the two images, you'll notice that Thunderbird and Whale had the most extensive Photoshoppery, mostly in adjusting their scale.



Here's the initial painting of A'yaho...



And the very-close-to-final-version.



The initial painting of Giant Toad...



And the very-close-to-final-version. I say very-close-to-final-version because these versions needed a little bit of size adjustment before they were ready to publish.

I want to thank David once again for this terrific opportunity.  If you haven't read it yet, here's the article with the final versions of these illustrations: An Essential Field Guide to North American Earthquake Beasts

"Get in the Damn Ball Already" Progress Pictures!

Last weekend, I worked hard on a piece for a contest held at the Pokemon Daily group in DeviantArt. The rules were simply, "have your team of six Pokemon battle a Legendary in it's lair."

Now, I briefly considered making a Big Damn Painting of a Big Damn Epic Battle. Then I remembered that I tend to stink at battle scenes, especially if they involve more than two characters/figures (one-on-one fights are more dramatically interesting anyway).

But more importantly, I remembered what actual in-game encounters with Legendaries are really like...





So I whipped up the sketches you see here. With an end-of-the-month deadline, a big painting was out of the question, but I didn't really want to do yet another digital painting either. Watercolor felt right. I just didn't want this piece to look "too neat", it wouldn't fit the tone I was going for.



Get In The Damn Ball Already by ~babbletrish on deviantART ---- Feederwatch Thursday! Downy Woodpecker 1 White-breasted Nuthatch 1 Carolina Wren 1 European Starling 16 Northern Cardinal 1 House Sparrow 15 ---- And speaking of Nuthatches, I added these cards to the Zazzle store just in time for Valentine's Day!

Nobody Doesn't Like Therizinosaurs!

In which I describe the step-by-step* process by which I made a picture for the Therizinosaur Gallery, which will appear at the ART Evolved website in March.
* - You're going to get the song in your head anyway, you might as well listen to it now. :)
Step One: Where we can have lots of fun.
I can't show you the real Step One, coming up with an idea. I hit upon a concept that has to do with one of the reasons why Therizinosaurs are among my favorite animals: paleoartists had such a hard time trying to work out what these animals *were* -never mind what they looked like- throughout the years.
So I sketched out a drawing of a modern, accurate-as-far-as-we-know Therizinosaur (on the bottom here) looking in confused disgust at some earlier interpretations. Then I scanned it.

And here's the scan as it appeared when I opened it up in Photoshop.

Step Two: Where there's so much we can do!

I rotated the image and saved it. Now the "Therizinosaur" on the far left is based on an old shame in Gregory S. Paul's otherwise excellent book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World. He thought they were some kind of "predatory prosauropod", or even a mishmash of bones from random animals!
The guy in the middle is a happy character from the video game "Dino Crisis" (shows up at the 6.50 mark) - though I know I've seen this "look" before. Seems to be based on the assumption, "well golly, they got big gigantic claws, they MUST have eaten meat!" Of course.
Before inking the sketch, I got out my copy of Predatory Dinosaurs and looked for a drawing of an actual Therizinosaur skeleton online. Turns out the proportions were a little off - generally, these animals are more awkward than you think they are.

So I sketched out their longer necks in blue. (I love my Wacom tablet.) I'll use this as a guide in the next step.

Step Three: Where it's just you an' me-e-ee!!!

Here's the inking halfway finished. I do each figure on a different layer. That way, I can move them around and make sure they're all standing on the same "floor" when I'm done. I can also shift the two long-necks around so I can trace their original heads, then move them to where they should be according to the blue sketch.
Since I got my Mac, I've fallen in love with some of the stranger brushes in Photoshop CS4. Now I usually ink with a calligraphy pen brush. This keeps the drawing from looking "too neat".
Here's the inking all finished:


Step Four: Where I can give you more!

The "Predatory Prosauropod" is now in glorious extra-color. Note the gray background, which helps me not forget to paint in the white areas. This step usually takes the longest depending on what coloring method I use. (This time, I used a variation on the method detailed by illustrator Tony Cliff in this tutorial.) This is most often the step where I say, "Thank God for layers".

Step Five: Doncha know that the time has arrived!
And here is the final piece!

Is the "Dino Crisis" guy too gory? Nah.