Illustration Friday: "Wings"

My art tools this week were black Sharpie pen and low-bleed paper.  I used Photoshop to clean things up a little and add/change the color.  I confess that I've been following my own advice, as illustrated above, WAY too much lately!

This art is available as an art print, pillow, t-shirt and more in my shop here.

Illustration Friday: "Ocean"

This week gave me a chance to draw from Greek mythology, which I love to do!  Here's Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, riding on a charging hippocamp.  The original drawing was pen and ink on smooth paper.  I was experimenting with different line weights to create different tones without using crosshatching.  Then I colorized it and added the background in Photoshop.

"Poseidon" is available as an art print and more in my shop here.

"Sometimes" is today!

The title of this illustration is "Sometimes", but this morning was so frustrating that I should rename it "Today"!  I was online trying to set up a new place to show my work.  Needless to say, it wasn't working.  So I scrapped the whole idea.  AARGH!

"Sometimes" is available as a print, pillow, t-shirt and more here.

Illustration Friday: "Whiskers"

I've been working on this just for fun over the last few days and was excited to see it would work for Illustration Friday's prompt this week!  It's dedicated to all those, including me, who are trying to get a little exercise over the holiday season.  Good luck to us all!! 

Available as an art print, cards, t-shirts and more here.

Illustration Friday: "Book"

Bunny's back, and this time all he wanted to do was relax with a good book.  Poor Bunny!

Illustration Friday: "Crooked"

Just in time with a last-minute post.  I drew this with graphite, scanned it, and then had fun with  textures and Photoshop filters.  The graphite I like best these days is cheap #2 pencils!  They're great and come with their own erasers!

This illustration is available as a print, an iPhone case and notecards here.

Bottled Romance

I was looking through some folders, posts and printouts and found a colored sketch that I had hurriedly posted for Illustration Friday and then never went back to.  So I did a finished version and here it is!  The old post is here. 

This illustration is available as a print, notecards and an iPhone case here.

A little mantra

This is a little mantra I say to myself when I'm stalled.  Or overwhelmed with my to-do list.  I figured it might be helpful to have it pinned to the wall so I can see it, so I illustrated it.  And it really works!  Yesterday my husband saw my sketchbook opened to the sketch for this and decided not to blow off his workout! 

It's a crow-quill pen and ink drawing that was colored and finished in Photoshop.

Available as a print here!

Romeo and Juliet (and process)

Hi everyone!  I wanted to share a new illustration.  And I'm happy to say I can actually post my process for this piece since I remembered to save the steps as I worked! 

I was dying to do some sort of interpretation of Romeo and Juliet.  You all know I'm hooked on romance!  So I grabbed my sketchbook to do some thumbnails and idea sketches.  One of the ideas kind of "stuck" with me so I scanned it, adjusted it and started working with and revising it.  I included a border design because I've been enjoying using decorative and graphic elements in my art lately.

Scan from my sketchbook

Rough redrawing

Final sketch

The final sketch doesn't have all the details drawn into it because I always get impatient doing too much with a final sketch.  I like deciding what the details will be and then just going for it in the final drawing!

I used a light table to trace the final sketch onto a piece of paper from my sketchbook.  I like the feel of the paper and the graphite drawing wasn't going to be final art anyway, so it didn't matter to me if the paper wasn't of great quality.

Graphite drawing

Then I scanned the graphite drawing into Photoshop, adjusted the lines for lightness/darkness and cleaned up the result.  But I didn't clean it up completely!  I wanted some of the qualities of sketchiness and graphite to remain.  I also transformed the angles and sizes of the heads and faces.

Digitally adjusted pencil drawing

From there I researched colorizing black and white photos in Photoshop.  I've never digitally colored a pencil drawing before and I figured the instructions for colorizing photos would translate as well as anything!  I played around with colors, which I think is the absolute best part of coloring digitally.  You can try whatever you want and not ruin your base art.

Color trials in Photoshop

One thing I tried that worked well for this piece was duplicating the line art layer in Photoshop and pasting it on top of the original one, set to "multiply" and at an opacity of 100%.  It really punched up the line art, which I thought was good since the colored graphite lines didn't look strong enough to me with only one line art layer.  The punched-up line drawing supported the color well too without losing any of the details I liked about the drawing. 

Final colors and details were worked out and rosy cheeks were added.  I also created and added a signature, something I hadn't bothered with earlier.

Final art

I'm really happy with how my "Romeo and Juliet" turned out.  It's about time I did a process post, eh?  I hope you enjoyed it.  As always, thanks for visiting!

Added June 6, 2013:  "Romeo and Juliet" is now available as an art print in my Society6 shop here.

Illustration Friday: "Lost"

Illustration Friday: "Refresh"

I hope everyone is having a good summer and staying refreshed any way you can!

Available as a print, notecards and an iPhone case/skin here.

Illustration Friday: "Secret"

For this week I did a quick, loose ballpoint pen drawing in my sketchbook, scanned it and tinted it in Photoshop.  It was time for a little romance!

Illustration Friday: "Shiny"

This piece was created digitally in Adobe Photoshop.  I think it took longer to draw it digitally than it would have if I'd used a traditional pen and ink but I did like being able to use color, instantly correct mistakes and experiment without ruining anything.  And there was no risk of spilling or blooping ink!

Illustration Friday: "Hurry!"

Illustration Friday: "Jump"

For this illustration the foals were drawn with pen and ink.  The background and colors were done in Adobe Photoshop.

Illustration Friday: "Fluid"

This one's for everyone who spends any time with little children and is constantly on "nose watch" at the first sign of a cold.  Kids' cold germs are the worst, aren't they?

Illustration Friday: "Suspense"

I was thinking about this idea all week but never had time to do an inked version!  This is my sketchbook rough, scanned and worked up in Photoshop.

Sorry that the card is late....

I'm quite late with our holiday cards this year so I drew this up today, made lots of prints, and put one in each card!  I hope everybody enjoys it.

Illustration Friday: "Separated"

Illustration Friday: "Round"

Hoopin'

This guy is my debut into "inking" digitally.  It kind of cracks me up to call it inking since there is no actual ink involved!  It did feel more like pen inking than I thought it would though.  And it was fun to play around with Photoshop CS5 with all its options for customizing brushes.  I colored the illustration with a brush I made myself from a sample of a traditional ink drawing.  A little art irony perhaps!  Just as a side note, I use an Intuos tablet, and an old one at that.  Still works great though.

Something occurred to me as I was coloring this.  As I'm "painting" (of course, without actual paint) and discovering how textures work in Photoshop, I'm thinking that visual interest generated by Photoshop could probably cover up for a lot of bad drawing!  I'm going to have to be mindful of that as I practice.