I've decided to post the warm up sketches I do (almost) every day. I got the idea from the late Mike Wieringo (Tellos, Fantastic Four) who kept a blog where he did a full character illustration a day. I'm not quite that fast yet, but I'm working on it. God bless Mike Wieringo, he really made me get excited about drawing every day for yourself.

Here's his blog/site, which is still maintained with his last post intact.
http://www.mikewieringo.com/

That's the end of a massive upload. Thanks again to my girlfriend Jen for reminding me to do this. :) This guy is the dreaded music teacher. I looked at Beethoven, Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, and many other classical composers for inspiration (and oddly enough, the shape of a metronome). He's a frustrated man that likes order and dislikes a wrong note. Villainous? Maybe. My imaginary backstory for him is that he wants to be a court composer but is stuck teaching rich brats their scales and arpeggios.

Being a children's book, you usually need a kid in the story (that's how it goes). She is a girl (8 or 9) living in the 17th century. She's fairly affluent and is getting to the age where she is forced into being "accomplished" (painting, calligraphy, piano, etc...). I imagine she doesn't like taking piano lessons and is terrified of her teacher. That's not to say she isn't fond of music, she just doesn't like the anxiety associated with playing perfectly. I picture her as clumsy and kind of a tomboy, which is at odds with her environment.

Here's the son of the creature in the previous post. This is for a children's book, so I upped the cuteness factor, I think. I looked at a lot of reference material of pianists and composers since this little guy is a proficient virginal player (a precursor to the modern piano). This design was fun because he's basically a smaller, rounder, and softer version of his daddy.

Hey gang! I have been working on new work during the past few weeks but have been lazy about getting things posted (thanks Jen for bugging me about it!). So my project right now is a children's book that I either hope to self-publish or get picked up by a publisher. In any event I'll have some more pieces to add to my portfolio. This guy is a creature that lives in a bog or the moors if you like. He's a run-down father of many little monsters. I'll elaborate more on him when I've added color. The rest of the characters are coming during the week.

This is my first outing in the world of self-promotion. I found it really hard to create a corporate identity for my art. What I ended up doing is making as list of my favorite artistic subjects and combined them to make a logo. I'm really fond of the detail in the original drawing, but at the same time it seems really complex for a logo. And so I simplified it to a (almost) silhouette. Anyway, I expect to do other things besides monsters in the next couple of weeks so....watch out!

I thought this was insanely clever when I first conceived it. A kid is afraid of a monster under his bed so he gets a bunk bed for Mr. Scary to sleep on. The idea is that the monster you don't see is more frightening than the one you do see. Of course, a T-Rex seen is as terrifying as one not seen. Ultimately this image will be in my senior show and will represent my style and subject matter to potential clients on my promo card.

P.S.- this image might take a while to load.