A Few Doodles

Hi everyone!  I've been busy with life things and haven't been working on anything I thought was worth posting, but I have been doing little drawings in my sketchbook.  I wanted to check in here and say "hello", so I'll go ahead and post a few sketches.  These are all drawn quickly in ballpoint. I'm liking ballpoint more and more!  No smudging, no sharpening, no stopping to dip a pen!

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.

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: "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: "Heights"

"Rapunzel, let down your golden hair!"

My idea for this week's prompt was to illustrate Rapunzel looking down at the prince from the heights of her tower.  Unfortunately I didn't get time to go any farther than this sketch!  I'll finish it though, and add it to the blog when it's done.  The weird circle at the top of the drawing was on the sketchbook page in ink so I couldn't get rid of it.  I figured nobody would ever see this sketch so it wouldn't matter! Anyway, please imagine that circle isn't there and I hope you like the drawing so far.  

First sketch of the prince

Illustration Friday: "Bicycle"

I sketched this in Photoshop to experiment with the idea for this week's Illustration Friday and then I ran out of time!  I decided to post it anyway in its very rough form because I really wanted to post this week and, honestly, I kind of like it rough and unfinished.  I hope you do, too!

Illustration Friday: "Bottled"

Another ballpoint sketch, scanned right out of the sketchbook and quickly colored.  It's all I have time for this week.  But I ended up liking it!

Illustration Friday: "Diary"

For this illustration I went back to my favorite pen and ink, this time with color! And inspired by Regency romance and Jane Austen.