From bleached bones

So it’s been awhile since the last update– sorry. My old computer of 7 years bought the farm last month and I’ve been trying to get all my data back from it; some of that includes passwords and what not for the site. That’s it for excuses though– I’ve got a shiny new Macbook! Consider me back, swinging in the swing of things, with all of you!

I think I’m finally biting the bullet and cranking down on really experimenting with my process, after thinking and talking about doing so for awhile. I don’t know why, but I’ve been kind of scared to really experiment– part of that is because when you’re on a deadline, you want to have a process that you know (the end visual, the time it takes, the tools you need) and can depend on. Your client also expects a certain product in return. Right now, unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of free time to make some new stuff, but I feel like it’s probably the right call in regards to my work. I’ve learned a lot of about illustration over the last year and I’m eager to put that knowledge to practice.

I also want to apologize in advance to all the artists whose styles I am going to bite in the coming months.

Our hero is shipwrecked? Abandoned on a graveyard beach? You can see how loose my original sketch for the final was. I purposely didn’t keep the sketch (or even the final) that tight and went out of my way to throw the kitchen sink at the drawing, medium wise. There’s a lot of mistakes overall but I feel like the process demanded me to be more active every step of the way, instead of my more linear working method of: thumb-> sketch-> lines-> flats-> color-> post.
It was fun! Drawing (and painting) is fun. Lest we ever forget.

So I’m not sure if I’ve ever posted about these guys on here. You may have noticed (or not, since I never post) little sheep running rampant all over my sketchbook pages. I’ve been drawing them since elementary school, with a fervor forged by a high school Portfolio Day critique (”Forget the sheep. The sheep are nothing.”) How does that Mountain Goats song go? When you punish a person for dreaming their dream, don’t expect them to thank or forgive you? My dream, in this case, is homicidal, dough-headed cartoon sheep.

For Christmas this year, I made little gilded patron saint sheep caricatures of my family, replete with gold enamel– they were a big hit, so I think I’m going to start posting more of these guys on here and may attach a little separate comic section to the site.

Got some cool projects coming down the pipe pike, along with more experimental things and sketches, so hopefully my updates will be more frequent. I’m looking into redesigning the site and perhaps separating the blog section out, but that’s probably a ways off.