Emily's twenty-second birthday card

Our daughter Emily had her twenty-second birthday this week, and unlike last year, when she turned twenty-one and we had the pleasure of her company here at home, this year she was celebrating with her friends and co-workers in California. I'm pretty sure she had a good time.

I have tried to make a birthday card for her every year, and I thought that this year I would continue the octopus theme which ran through our 2010 Christmas card and the Valentine's card I made for my wife this month. So I got out the sketchbook, and drew this:

It took a couple of days to finish -- I was at first not too certain that this was the way in which I wanted to go, so I left it lightly penciled and came back to it the following day, and decided that I liked it more. So I penciled some more on it, and decided that it was ready to ink.

Using my trusty number 06 Sakura Pgima Sensei marker pen, I got to work, and by the next day, had gotten it to this state:

I knew I wanted to watercolor it, so the next step was to make some copies to work on, which I did down at Mirage. The coloring went pretty quickly, and this was how it looked:

I wanted to put a background in -- something to do with the ocean -- and decided to use a similar technique as my last two cards, only this time I decided to use an actual photograph, albeit one lightly filtered in Photoshop. I went through some of my recent photos and picked out one from my trip with Jeannine to Cape Cod last year. I liked the light on the water and the clouds, and after running it through one of Photoshop's filters (I'm pretty sure it was "Rough Pastels"), this was the result:

I selected the background of the watercolored image, pasted the ocean scene into it, and voila! I had Em's card. -- PL

Happy Valentine's Day!

Over the years, I have made a few hand-drawn Valentine's Day cards for my beloved wife, one of which I posted here some time back. This year I decided to continue the theme of our last Christmas card, and when I made that decision I almost instantly got the vision of what it should look like. So I got out my sketchbook and drew this:

I was originally planning to ink it, and then to watercolor the inked version, but for some reason I decided to try something a little different -- I would apply the watercolors over the pencils instead.

Or to be completely accurate, I would watercolor a COPY of the pencils. So down to Mirage Studios I went, to use the color copier there (it does pretty well with heavier paper stocks), and after some trial and error, had managed to get a pretty decent copy of the pencil drawing on a sheet of heavy card stock.

I got out my little watercolor set and after a few hours ended up with this:

I was pretty happy with the result, and -- because I am still not brave enough to try doing a background in watercolor -- I decided to go for a computer-aided background, like the Christmas card, with one difference. This time, I thought I would do a quick wash of some colors on a separate sheet, using the watercolors, and then scan that, and use it for the background that I would insert via Photoshop. This was the result, and it came out a little funky due to the way the paper buckled during the application of the watercolors. But it was okay.

While I like the result, I decided to mess around with it a little bit in Photoshop, adding a few different filter effects. This is the one I decided to use.

It was the work of a few more minutes to select the background areas of the octopus image and paste the filtered ocean background into it, and this was the result:

I am happy to report that Jeannine liked her card. -- PL

"Hexapod" step two

When I began to ink the "Hexapod: drawing (with a #6 Sakura Pigma Sensei pen), it started to gel, to come together. Curiously, I think it was figuring out what I was going to do with its mouth that made it work for me. I was stuck on that -- should it have sharp, pointy teeth? Flat herbivore teeth? No teeth at all?

What I finally decided on was an odd sort of "baleen" type thing, similar to what some whales have -- more of a rough, bristly strainer than teeth per se. And when I drew that in, the creature suddenly became real for me (well, as REAL as something like this can get!). And the inking progressed from there.

Here's the inked version as it stands now. I was going to say "the final inked version", but I may play around with it a little more.

Next up -- the color version. -- PL

Finished!

I posted the unfinished version of this drawing back on November 29, 2010... and just five minutes ago I finished it... finished inking it, anyway. I may do a color version.

One of the reasons it had remained uncompleted for that long was that I had not penciled it fully enough when I'd started inking it. As I was explaining it to Jeannine this morning as we sat in the sunroom, she writing, me drawing, there are times when I can do a REALLY rough, loose sketch, and feel confident that even with those barest of bones to build on, I can grab an inking tool and go to work.

But then there are other times, like with the sketch that this started out as, where that confidence is not totally there, and the inking is hesitant and uncertain. It's usually because although the concept of the piece might be firm in my mind, the actual shapes and shades aren't. In all honesty, I'm still not sure this one came out as I originally wanted it to, but that being said, I do like it, and consider it done (at least for the black and white version). PL

Blast from the past #215: Fathers and sons

I've always liked this drawing. It was done sometime in the early 1980's, and I believe Kevin and I may have printed it in one of the first "Gobbledygooks". The drawing was inspired by a photograph of family friend Len carrying his (then) young son Jesse on his shoulders.



This is one of several drawings I inked with a "Flair" felt-tip pen -- never my favorite inking tool, but hey... they were cheap and convenient. -- PL