If you've ever wondered...

what a grandmother turtle might look like, here's one possibility.

I'm sure this is in no small way inspired by Estelle Harris and her portrayal of George Costanza's mom on Seinfeld.

Knock Knock

A few years ago I did some concept work for RedEye Animation. One client was Kidmo, a Company that did Christian programming for kids. I was asked to do design a series of doors for a segment called "Knock Knock". There would be a short song, and this door would be seen opening, before a fact or lesson would be given. But my job was just to design some doors. Here are 3 that I did.

The doors themselves are all traditionally painted with Guoache. Then for some reason I can't remember, I added some quick photoshopped backgrounds. I think I just did the doors initially and then was asked to add the backgrounds, and for the sake of expediency did it in Photoshop.

Some time later, one of the other artists at RedEye took the green door I had done and created the clip below to show how it might be animated.

All images Copyright Red Eye Animation.

There he is again!

But who is he?!

Turtle at the Bus Stop

Watch Out!

This little guys been showing up in my sketchbook a lot lately. At first it was only intermittently, but I'm seeing him more and more frequently. He looks like trouble...

Turtle sketches

Some sketches from back when I was trying to develop that turtle character. Just trying to play with shapes and stuff to get something appealing.
To see more of this character, click the turtle label below. Expect to see more of him in the coming days also.

Topknot

This little girl was probably just under a year old, and was running around the lobby at my daughter's dance school. She had one of those single ponytails on top, that look like a vegetable growing out of the kid's head. We call them sprouty ponies in our family.

Point Mugu Pt 2: Electric Boogaloo

Just another quick landscape from my camping trip this past weekend.

Art History Teacher

My art history teacher was really fun to draw. I filled a sketchbook with drawings of her. I don't know if it's that she was any more expressive than other people, but she was active, and had a stocky shape, which lends itself well to quick drawings. Here are just a couple.

Point Mugu

This past weekend I spent some time camping at Point Mugu with my brother and his pals before his impending wedding. I didn't get much sketching in, but did try some landscape drawing with the grey marker and pen that I brought.
This isn't my usual subject matter but I am pretty happy with the results. I wish I had tried this sort of thing on some of my more exotic vacations.

Sitting

I found an old sketchbook, and started scouring it for drawings that I liked. I didn't find any until the last 10 pages. This is one.

It's not a particularly insightful sketch, but it's got a solidity I like.

Forest Background

This is a background I painted for that Kidmo music video I mentioned in a previous post.

Nothing too special- I like that other one with the Island a lot better, but these were quick jobs. If I were doing it again it might be fun to stylize it a bit more.

Long day

This is a kid who was a bit too big to still be in a stroller... ...but who hasn't felt like doing this after a full day at Disneyland?

More preschool yearbook animals

Some more of the illustrations I did for my daughters yearbook some years back. Some of these have breaks in the art, where they were overlapped by either text or a photo. Below are the Yellow Ducks:
The Purple Caterpillars:

And the Red Dinosaurs (I think these are my favorite).

Just a quick sketch

...of a mother who was at my daughter's ballet class.

I like how accurate this is despite it's simplicity.

Happy Anniversary to me...

In honor of my 8th wedding anniversary, here's a color version of the drawing I posted of my wife. Happy Anniversary Babe! Love you!

Brown Bears and Blue Alligators

A few years ago I did some small illustrations for my daughter's preschool yearbook. Each class had a animal name that incorporated a color. These were done so quickly, I am amazed that they came out as good as they did. In actuality they have a tremendous simplicity and appeal that I think I lose if I work too long on something. I literally sketched these each in a minute or two and then on the final yearbook layout page tried to reproduce the design from my sketch as best I could with guoache- no underdrawing. I tried to use a very limited color pallete, keeping each animal monochromatic as much as possible. Here are just a few today.

These are the Brown Bears:

and some Blue Alligators:

More to come in a later post.

Haylee Vs. the Venusian Vegetation- a bit cleaner

Here's the cleaned up sketch that I'll paint. You can see I got rid of the big cheeks on the largest alien plant, and significantly altered Haylee's expression from the way it looked in the rough sketch. Still not sure how much of a background I'm going to give this. I really would like to. We'll see.

2 Quick Girls

Just some doodles today.

Haylee's Back!

Back when I drew Haylee Komet for Drawergeeks, I kept thinking, "Now here's a character I could see revisiting". Unike a lot of the stuff I post here, that illustration suggested some backstory as well as other adventures that she could go on. So I decided to put her in a new situation. I'm still not sure what style I want to use with her. I've stretched out her proportions quite a bit here, in no small part to the inspiration of Dean Yeagle's Mandy who is very tall. Mandy's a bit skinnier than I like, and it's incredibly hard to make myself draw Haylee that way, but I figure if I push her beyond my normal style, maybe I'll wind up advancing that style a bit. We'll see. The Haylee you see above is going to be paired with the plants I posted yesterday.

Girl-Eating plants

These carnivorous plants are tugging on a piece of torn clothing. For a digital painting I'm working on. More to come so stay tuned...

Big smile

There's that pose again- leaning on the elbows.

Before ballet class

I sketched this of my daughter just before her ballet class started. The pose came out pretty good, but the face on the right is more accurate than the one on the body.

My wife, cleaned up

I decided to work on, and maybe even paint that sketch of my wife. Here's the reworking. Actually a pretty decent likeness, as caricature is not really something I'm great at.

Tell me a story, Grandpa!

This is the Grandfather of the Turtle I posted previously.

Golden Retriever

This little pup is friends with the Turtle I posted a few days ago.

Inspired by...

...my beautiful wife. Not intentionally, but I think anytime they have shoulder length blonde hair and big eyes they are subconsciously inspired by my wife.

Just a girl

Nothin' special. Just a quick doodle.

Daniel Striped Tiger

After I posted my artwork of Corny, from Mister Rogers Neighborhood, I got a lot of requests to see the other characters I had done, with Daniel being by far the most requested.

Ironically, I didn't do any sketches of him in his standard wide eyed shy expression. My main question in tackling each of these characters was to see if you could get any facial expression into them while still keeping them recognizable. I will say he seems to be the easiest. I think his kitten-like appearance is a somewhat familiar cartoon form, and that made it a little easier. That's not true with some of the other characters.