Vespa Santa

He's done and on his way To Miami for a well deserved vacation.

Thanks to those who had suggestions for improvement.

As you can see I added the candy cane guard rail to the foreground to add a little bit of depth. 

And I drew up my own penguin to go along for the ride.

The day after Christmas

This is a work in progress.
It started out with this sketch from my sketchbook.

An old guy on a vespa because I was searching for a motorcycle image on the web for a client drawing and some vespa images came up.

This is where I am at so far...

Since it's winter and Xmas time I decided to portray the guy as Santa.
I didn't want to do Santa in his work clothes, he doesn't deliver toys on a vespa after all, so I put him in his street clothes.
Then I decided that he would be headed for a well deserved vacation, thus the Dec 26th calendar page and Miami sign.
I'm working on the background now.
You can see that I have some snow drifts back there.
I'm thinking that I'll have to add something in the far background to breakup the blue sky.
I might put his workshop back there.
I think I may add a trailer loaded with luggage being pulled behind the vespa to add to the going on vacation feel.
Let me know what you all think of the image so far.
I'm looking for comments on color, contrast, detail, does anything look "off," that kind of thing.

Head games

Lately when I do art for myself it's with traditional media. Watercolor, gouache, pen and ink or pencil.

I like having a finished piece of art to look at and hold. It's a nice feeling of accomplishment.

Most of my client work ends up being digital, even if it starts out being drawn traditionally.

So I have been trying to figure out a "style" to call my own when doing digital art for myself that wil hopefully appeal to future clients.

With that in mind, I was flipping through my sketchbook yesterday and found a really rough sketch of a head. 

When it comes to digital work I prefer Illustrator over Photoshop. I like creating flat/graphic areas of color over trying to make the figure/object look 3 dimensional.

So I drew up the head in Illustrator and played around with variations of it.

Here it is...

The 4 on the left are just changes in facial features and their positions.

The others are the Base 1 head with variations of facial hair and accessories.

After doing the pirate guy my daughter wanted to see him with a beard so I came u with this version...

I like the way he's looking so I'll be figuring out what kind of body to give him and put him in a simple setting.

Next she wants  to see a girl pirate, so I'll post her in the future.

I just realized I need to change the color of his eyebrows to blue.

He's looking kind of like an elf with the big ears so I'll have to experiment with the idea of elfin pirates.

So if you ever find yourself stuck or bored when you are sketching, draw out several simple circles or ovals or whatever and just see what you can make out of them.

This is an experiment I recommend to everyone. It can stimulate your creativity and lead you to new ideas for your art.

IF-Racing

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

This guy was a work in progress that I grabbed and added a simple background to just for fun.

He was created in illustrator and then blurred in photoshop.

Can you see the Richard Scarey and "Go, Dog! Go! influence? I knew you could.

Bobcat color

Here's the painted up Back Beat Betty.

This first version is straight watercolor and gouache.

This one was manipulated a bit with Photoshop.

I added two layers.

One filled with purple in the dark areas and set to multiply with a 70 percent opacity.

The other is a duplicate of the purple layer that I added noise to with the noise filter and then reduced the opacity to 50 percent.

It gives it a better feeling of her being in a spotlight up on stage.

I think I might have to go in and add her shadow that would be cast by the spotlight. Not sure about that though.

I also might go back in and add some more details to her to make her look more like a bobcat.

Notice she doesn't have any whiskers or any markings.

I have a good reference pick that I have been using for her so I'll go back to it and "plus" her up.

She's the first in a series that I want to do.

It's a series of Beatnic animals.

I have to get to the library and see if I can actually find any books on beatnics.

I'l also have to look up some musical phrases to be able to name the rest of the characters.

Some of the ideas for characters are a cat fish, yak, toucan, squirrel, mouse, sloth,...

Beatnic Bobat

This is the line art for my next painting exercise.

The circle will be a yellow spot light.

The areas around the circle will have a purple under painting.

She's a bobcat beatnic beatin' on the bongos.

White Bird

The White Bird likes to wear Wigs.

It's not easy to paint an all white picture.

I can't do it. I know because I really tried with this one.

I like color. Kids like color. You like color.

So, the white bird has hints of color in her, and she has a nice red/orange wig.

I'm not sure the background is finished.

I'm considering putting a pattern on the wall.

Like this...

That pattern was added via photoshop.

I am purposely avoiding digital methods for these paintings so that the painted art is the same as the printed art in the book. So is I do a pattern it would either be simpler or have bigger elements in it.

This is the 3rd go at doing the White Bird.

The first one was this...

White Bird watches TV.

To me it's funny. But because he's asleep like a lot of dads who watch too many sports shows on Sunday.

I got comments about the "wife beater" shirt and all that's missing is the beer. So I rethought it.

The second one was going to be "White Bird goes for a walk."

It didn't get finished because I felt it was too boring.

After thinking about it. I felt that there needed to be another girl bird in the book, and she should make eye contact with the reader. Open eyes make the character more likable.

Now all I have to do is figure out the cover art.

I also need to figure out the type treatment or find a graphic designer who wants to do the layout for fun or his/her portfolio. I'm not asking, I'm just saying.