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 one

This is one of those drawings that came out of left field. I don't really know what inspired it -- just that as I sat staring at the next blank page in my sketchbook, I had this vision of some kind of multi-legged creature climbing through tangled branches… and looking up, as if seeing some sight unusual to its eyes.

I still don't know what the scale is -- the creature could be the size of a large beetle, or the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. I don't think it's necessary to know how large or small it is (or is supposed to be).

As I was penciling this, I kind of got stuck about halfway through. I'd drawn the basic shape of the creature, and roughed in the branches that it was climbing on… but then it just started to seem really silly and awkward, and I put my pencil down, disheartened.

It was probably a week or so later that I returned to it, determined not to let it be stalled at that point. There was something about it that made me want to finish it, even if it came out looking as goofy as I feared it might. So I kept at it, and got it to a point where I was pretty happy with it. And it was near the end of the pencilling that I added a small detail which turned out to be one of the things that made the whole piece work for me -- the thorns in the branches. Suddenly, the creature took on a life it hadn't possessed before, as I imagined that it would take some special climbing skills and toughness to be able to walk around on a plant or tree or whatever it is which was liberally studded with nasty, sharp spikes.

(Here's the penciled drawing as it looked just before I started to ink it.)

In "Hexapod: step two", I'll post the inked version. -- PL

Drawing

I've started drawing again, a little bit... I took one of the many empty sketchbooks I have accumulated over the years and have been carrying it around with me, even taking it to California on my recent trip there with Jeannine. I decided that I really needed to take her advice and just start doing something in it every day, even if it wasn't much good.

Most of it hasn't been, so far. And I don't know if I have really met the mark of drawing something every day. But it does feel good to see some stuff emerging from the void onto the page, which -- truth be told -- was always one of the best parts of drawing for me.

I kind of like this one -- I drew it the day after Jeannine and I watched "Robin and Marian", the "old Robin Hood" movie starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn. It's one of my favorite movies, and I'll admit it -- I always get teary at the ending. I've always had a love for the Robin Hood stories, especially the setting -- the mighty greenwood of Sherwood Forest. It's such a romantic notion -- living free in the deep, lush forest.




Of course, as I remember from the dim days of youth helping my brothers build little "camps" in the woods near our house, there was probably a lot of crude reality to intrude on the romance -- dirt, bugs and other vermin... and what did they do when it rained? And what about, you know, sanitary issues? Best not to think too hard on such things. -- PL

"Triceratops with pencil" sketch

A while back I posted an image of a Triceratops with a pencil which I'd created to use in self-promotion. Well, I just ran across this preliminary sketch for it...



... and I found it interesting to note the other designs I was toying with at the time. I think the one I ended up using was the best one. -- PL