Dodos

I'm currently reading "The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde, and in them, mankind has figured out how to bring the Dodo back from extinction. Not only that but it's the pet of choice for most people. So I figured I'd draw some Dodos.

Channeling Chuck Jones

I thought I'd draw some more sketches of Haylee and for some reason the pose and propotions of this one remind me of Chuck Jones' stuff. I kind of like how much looser she feels in this, more animated than my previous versions.

Nose in a book

One of the Eight

Merry Christmas Everyone! And God bless us, everyone!

Squirrel!

Where did he get the tiny scarf?

Beach Ball

Not very Christmas-y I know. But, WOW! A girl drawing I think I'm 95% happy with! The style, the simplicity, the pose, the overall appeal- I think this is a step up from what I've done before! Merry Christmas to me!

Girls with Style

I'm trying so hard to find a simpler, yet appealing style to drawing pretty women, something beyond my Disney Princess inclinations. While these are a bit different, they still feel too grounded in the Disney, or perhaps Pixar look- they are desperately 3 dimensional. I think what I want is something very 2 dimensional looking.

Like I've said before though, baby steps...

Mr. Chinbunny and Uncle Fletcher

Two more characters from Paul Rhymer's incomparable Vic & Sade radio program, which I wrote about last week. The first one here, is the local high school principal, Mr. Chinbunny.

Poor Mr. Chinbunny, the youngest principal in the state, is so worried that people will equate his age with inexperience, that he's always trying to make himself look older. He shaves the top of his head so people will think he's bald. He also enlisted the help of Rush's father Vic, to teach him how to smoke cigars, so that he would appear to be an old pro when the other principals whip out their cigars at an upcoming meeting.

Below is Uncle Fletcher. By far my favorite character on the show, Sade's amiable Uncle Fletcher knows everyone, and has a million stories. He resides in a room at Miss Keller's boarding house, though her meddling often causes him to consider taking up residence at the Bright Kentucky Hotel (much to Sade's distress).

Uncle Fletcher is a bit hard of hearing, but that doesn't seem to stop him from interjecting into whatever conversation happens to be going on at the time. He has an extensive watch fob collection (including a half wit watch fob that's gone and turned to putty!), and a collection of correspondences (not his, just correspondences from lots of different people). His favorite pasttimes include sleeping on the Courthouse lawn and, as I stated previously, riding on Gumpox's garbage wagon. Brilliantly voiced by Clarence Hartzell, Uncle Fletcher was the first new character added to the program. I often equate him with Kramer from Seinfeld- being a bit on the periphary of the family, he is a bit wackier than they are, though not nearly as wacky as all of the friends that he has (Claude Dirtshirt, Sweet Corn McBlock, and of course Rishigan Fishigan from Shishigan Michigan). Uncle Fletcher would often bring up the fellow who walked to his own funeral: "He made his plans, walked to the mortuary. There he later died."

Again, if you would like to meet these hilarious characters for yourself, you can download the only surviving Vic & Sade Episodes here.

Meow

While I tend to be much happier with the results I get using my gray marker together with a darker ink pen, I feel like lately I've been overdoing all the shading and stuff. I kinda like the simplicity of that last cat there.

Cute brunette

Another Turtle?!

Don't know why. There's something fun about drawing these guys.

Bears

Mr. Gumpox, the Garbage Man

This is inspired by a character from the classic radio program, Vic & Sade. This brilliant, simple show followed the life of Victor R. Gook, his wife Sade, and their adopted son Rush (later Russel). For most of the shows 14 years on Radio, Vic, Sade, Rush and one other character, Uncle Fletcher, were the only characters heard, though through their clever dialogue we learned about all the other wacky characters in the small town they called home. With names like Y.Y. Flirtch, Robert and Slobert Hink, Pelter Unbleat (and his imaginary brother), these characters were unbelievably entertaining without ever even making their voices heard. One such character is Mr. Gumpox, who drives the garbage wagon. Gumpox is never described but through the various storylines, we get the impression that he takes his job as garbage wagon driver (and collector I assume) very seriously. So seriously that I picture him wearing some sort of uniform, probably a cast off from the local Railway Depot (the Chicago & Alton Depot to be precise). Those reins he's holding belong to his faithful horse, Howard. I had hoped to write a short bio of my limited knowledge of Gumpox, but sadly the Holidays are eating up so much of my time I just didn't get a chance. Do yourself a favor, if you'd love to hear the original "Show About Nothing", sit back and relax and download a few short episodes of Vic & Sade.

Drawergeeks: Season's Greetings 2009

Here's my entry for this weeks Drawergeeks theme of "Seasons Greetings". I wanted to try my hand at a cut paper design, and it's really fun! This little guy measures 4 inches tall and was based on the doodle I posted a few days ago. I had actually planned on making a half dozen of these as stand-alone ornaments for various family members (thus the way his hat closes into a loop for a hanging string), but as long as this one took, I don't think it's gonna happen- other projects must take precedence. If you'd like to see some other great paper designs- paper sculptures really, then check out the amazing work of Brittney Lee and Kevin Kidney.

* Looks like my submission may have been accidentally left out of the posting this week, but you can still check out the other submissions here.

Rambunctious

Slow & Steady

An oddly naturalistic sketch for me. And for some reason I decided to change it to brown tones in Photoshop...
...cause it's my blog and I'll do whatever I feel like!

Palate Builders revisited

Last year I posted a piece I did for my brothers wine shop, MAWL Wine. I just came across this quick digital mockup I did in the early phases of that project. He really wanted something that involved wood and traditional building materials. I was finding it hard to get any appealing designs with that sort of thing, and the wood used here is pretty unimportant to the whole thing, but I actually kinda like this, even in it's very quick digital form.

Santa's Little Helper

'Tis the season to be jolly...

*Edit 12/11/09- Check out the paper sculpture that this doodle became here!

A Nervous Alien

Girl pigs and a chick

Oh and completely unrelated to this artwork, Happy 108th Birthday Walt Disney!

Girls Friday

Send in the Griffins

Some more Griffin sketches, which I'm so much happier than my previous attempts. I changed their forelimbs to eagle type claws as seen in most depictions.

Bruno

A quick sketch for a friend.

Let's start December with Pigs

Cute Turtle

Vulture

Happy Thanksgiving 2009!

Not the prettiest bird in the farmyard but they sure make for good eats!

F is for Fox

Fox

Not the Easter Bunny

* For some truly beautiful wacky character art, check out my new favorite Artist Robb Mommaerts and his two blogs: RobbVision and Paleo-Buffet . Great stuff!

More pigs

A few more results from my swine drawing session a while ago.

Griffin

I've always drawn cartoons, and have never really delved into the world of "Fantasy Art". I can appreciate it, and really enjoy the ideas and themes depicted, but while the art is Fantasy, the style it's done in is usually very realistic. Still, I wanted to try drawing some Griffin ('s-?) and really tried to push these beyond my normal style. Not wholly successful, but fun just the same.
Ok, this one is pretty cartoony. And what are those ear tufts? Somehow I had it in my head that Griffin just have to have them. Don't know where I got that from.

I like this one best, but doesn't he look wierd without his ear tufts?

Water Bottle

I didn't really capture what I wanted to with this sketch- this shows the pose about half a second before the one I was trying to capture. BUT I do like how few lines I got this with, instead of totally overworking it like I usually do. Baby steps, baby steps...

Billy the Kid

"Mama, ca' I pease have a appo?"

Still not the Geico Gecko

It is so hard for me to create a random doodle that is both well designed and doing "something". I concentrate so much on just the various aspects of the design that I forget that there's got to be some overall pose. Consequently a lot of these characters are static looking. Of course, this is easily remedied by simply drawing the character a second time, this time with a better pose. Too often though, I'm just dissatisfied with the sketch and move on. Having doodled a couple of lizards on the page already, I conciously set out to give these a bit of an attitude. Might be fun to color someday.

Skinny kid

This kid had a funny satisfied look on her face.

The eternal struggle

I don't know if this is a really small monkey or a really big banana.

A toddler scorned

This little toddler was just adorable until you stopped her from doing something she wanted to do and then she just stood there giving you the evil eye. It was pretty hilarious to watch...