Creature with a pet… I have been so excited about drawing lately. I love my projects and am passionate about creating a good product but it has been a while since I’ve felt drawn to drawing. I’m so thankful to have found a sketch group full of creative people who are passionate about getting better. I’ve given up TV time to draw! What is the world coming too ?

Back to real work !

Any artists out there who need a boost should check out Sketchoholic.com.  Bobby Chiu has really created a great resource that is just growing!  His team at Imaginism Studios are also amazing. Fun!

I’m loving these hour long sketch breaks so much I’ve been trying to do one a day.  It’s really been a great brain exercise and I can feel progress!  I love it.  Today I struggled with creating a unique interpretation of ‘Mustache’ so I decided to go with a familiar theme and just try to do it well.  While I like how my Walrus turned out, a bunch of other people went the same direction!  Oh well… better luck next time!

“Mustache”

“Flying Sea Creature”

Chris Sanders, creator of Lilo and Stitch, is being interviewed by Bobby Chiu tomorrow and I can’t wait! He, like other interviewers, is offering up a piece of art to the winner of a big art contest on the site. This time the topic is Nightmares!  I couldn’t shake the whole idea of horses being involved so I centered the piece around them and tried to make them really spooky. I wrestled with it quite a bit but I really like how it turned out.

PS I’m sorry , Lucy, for making a teddy bear look so nasty. I promise “Pinky” would never look like that… ever!

Here’s a few more 1 hour sketches for sketchoholic.com

Strong, Big, and Graceful

Fat Little Princess

Electric Elf

I took an art break in the middle of doing more art… I love one toothed alligators .

Sketchoholic contest entry.  One hour and the topic was “One tooth”

I’ve mentioned it before but I get to make flannelgraphs that are used in Sunday School rooms.  How cool is that?  Who knew that I’d have a hand in creating the very items I grew up learning from.  Here are a few that I liked from a recent assignment.  I love the bright colors!  And another secret…

These are all me!!

I have family members pose for some but in a crunch I’m usually my most cooperative model!

No, I haven’t been fishing in Alaska but after working on these drawings I think it sounds incredible!  I was contacted through referral by John A., who needed some artwork for an instructional e-booklet on fishing the Kenai river for Red Salmon.  It sounds different from any fishing a Michigander might be accustomed to!  John has put his passion for Red Salmon fishing into an e-book in a effort to aid the ‘out of towners’ in their quest for Red Salmon.  As soon as I have a link for purchasing I will put it up here but meanwhile, here are a few illustrations I made for him.

I have a lot of great things in a works and I can’t wait to get it up here.  In the mean time, these are a few images from a book that I worked on last winter.  It was a 4th grader reader filled with stories about kids from history.  I don’t get to work from history very often and I think the challenge here was finding costume reference to fit the time period!

There are a few more images below the fold (click for more)

Thanks for stopping by!

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Growing up my Dad used to enjoy the occasional monster movie.  I recall seeing Godzilla fight Gammorah on more than one occasion.  I think the thing that interested me most was that Godzilla had this strange relationship with the humans.  He always helped them out!  Crazy, water-sleeping, building smashing, man-in-a-monster-suit monster!  Anyway, I’m sure there were a couple where the monster had a strange connection with a small boy so here we have Godzilla playing catch with a little boy.

I’m not so thrilled with the way the color turned out on this one.  I may have to revisit this in the near future to see if I can improve the process a little. For now it’s time to move on!

Whoa!  Another round of Sketchoholic this afternoon.  What a rush!  A lot of great entries and I ended up coming in 2nd!  Woo hew!  One of these days I will claim the coveted Bobby Chui sketch .  These one hour sketch throw-downs are so intense and I actually learn alot about how to get ideas down quickly and how to make some quick decisions.  If you like to draw and like the encouragement that comes from sketching with a group of people be sure to check it out!