#133 Calender

Some calender designs I helped create for a friend.

#132 IT'S COMING!

HERE'S WHAT I'M WAITING ON TO COME IN THE MAIL. GET YOURS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!

Justin Gerard Sketchbook 2011 (Get it Here)

#131 Inspiration Levels: LOW

As I'm sure any artist can tell you, sometimes inspiration is hard to come by. Really I suppose I mean motivation in my case, and today is a prime example. Lately I have been tinkering with a Lego Star Wars set, coming up with a bunch of spaceship ideas. Yes, I admit it I am, and always will be a Lego fanatic, and I can't help but fool around with them occasionally. So I'm trying to use the photos I took of the designs I made as a springboard into a Photoshop concept painting. But it's not going the smoothest. I think I'll probably scrap it, and move on to something else. And then rewatch my Ryan Church DVDs. Bleh.

#130 Gandalf Bookmark

Gandalf will guard the interior of your bound volumes.

Done entirely in black & white in Photoshop, in a bookmark format. Taking a lot of inspiration from the work of Chris Koelle lately (buy his stuff). Is there enough detail in this thing to even read well as an image? Let me know if you see any major problems here.
If I printed this, would you buy one? Would the Tolkien estate sue me? Would you buy one for everyone on your Christmas list? Does the idea of unique bookmarks even interest you? I hope so. It does me. I hope to have a whole bunch of them done up here in a couple of weeks.

#129 Illustration Friday: Stripes

Stripes - Pencil drawing w/Photoshop 8x7"

My first ever Illustration Friday submission! I had a lot of fun with this one - it took about 4 hours to finish. Did a couple of preliminary sketches to establish the pose and the construction of the car. A little Photoshop magic (well, a lot really), and there you go! 1960's race car action!
Looking forward to more of this Illustration Friday stuff!

#128 Captain Brown

If you're like me, you like period drama. So last night I watched Cranford a BBC show about this small English town. It's quite fascinating and compelling, and the characters are splendid.
I have unofficially declared November to be Drawing From Life Month for myself, so I began by working from stills of this show, which afforded me some very interesting faces to draw, and superb light and shadow (which is hard to find in photo reference).

The beauty of it is, however, that I don't have to show you the photo, because then you would see how off I really am. I felt a bit rusty on my drawing skills, but to tell you the truth it felt so good to get back into that mode of separating light and shadow and getting it onto paper.

#127 Inktober 2011 Sketchbook Flip-Through

Here's a little video flip-through featuring all 31 pen & ink drawings for INKtober 2011 in their unaltered, unedited state in my Moleskine sketchbook. I thought it would be fitting to collect them all into one video here on the 1st of November as a little thank-you for everyone who followed this mini-project and left feedback & suggestions. And a big thanks to you, Jake Parker for inspiring me to take the journey in the first place. It was certainly worth it!
I can't wait to do it again next year!
Happy November everyone!