Cage Your Rage

I sat down for a while, and wanted to get some practice on subjects I don't usually draw. A friend of mine had asked me to create a hockey logo, and not being all that familiar with the sport, I decided to draw some of its accouterments to get in the mood. Among them, helmets. The "Cage Your Rage" came to mind while finishing this one helmet (there may be other things to post). I also thought of putting the dentists seal of approval next to it, in obvious jest, of course. Anyway. Now I'm curious if any of my local sport-loving friends ever heard of a Puertorican Hockey League. That's not that impossible if there's a Jamaican Bobsled team, isn't it?

Wake Draw - Space Station Dream

Woke up this morning with part of a dream still fresh in my mind. This is another quick wake and draw sketch, drowsily trying to capture fleeting dream memory. I remember floating in space, on an I-beam like structure, drifting towards an awaiting space station air-lock, with Obama next to me (of all people... why? that's probably the strangest fact in the dream). Yes, I didn't try and sketch Obama as such. No inclination :) - Anyway, once inside, I found myself in a room, waiting on a dreadlock'd lady to give me a Tai massage (why again? I don't know. They say those Tai style massages are brutal too, so I wasn't looking forward to it). The lady was speaking cajun, and I sort of understood what she was saying, not that I remembered. She smiled when she noticed. Then I saw my grandfather sitting on a comfy chair behind me (didn't draw that part). I hugged him, and told him how much I missed him. That's when I woke up. Dreams may make sense sometimes, but they often have weird unexplainable elements. Oh well.

Wondla, D'Terlizzi, and Moebius

It has only been a few days since Jean Giraud "Moebius" passed away. An incredible artist that influenced almost every artist I know, he has been an inspiration for me since my college days, when I would sit listening to the university's radio station, and read Heavy Metal magazine from cover to cover, a long time ago. These days, in my artist's journey, I tinker with ideas in pencil and ink very often. One of the things I do is keep this little sketch blog called "Tuesday Sketch", where my friends and I post drawings and sketches following a weekly topic. This week's topic was Moebius, in his memory.
As I was looking for some image references, I tagged an image that I thought was his. When I looked closer, it turns out that the great artist, Tony D'Terlizzi, had posted a blog article remembering his meeting with Moebius, including the image of one of his works, called "Search for Wondla", which was influenced by Moebius' art. It really clicked with me. I had known of D'Terlizzi's "Spiderwick Chronicles", but I had no idea of all his body of work. Amazing.
I simply had to draw this the minute I saw it, and plan in checking out his other work as well. The impulse is always there, and it sometimes has great meaning. Thank you Tony. Thank you Moebius. You both inspire me greatly.

Tree Kids

I sketched a rough of my daughter and her friend playing in the park a couple of days ago, meaning to finish it off that same day, but work got the best of me. So I "nibbled" at it, doodling and rendering a few seconds at a time, between everyday work tasks, and home activities, and I got something rough looking, but good enough to capture the moment. The rough was just a light group of lines, done while I was doing one of my walking laps in the park's walking/jogging track. They looks so happy, just bouncing around, playing explorers, that I had to do something.
Hope you like it. I sure do. Thanks for dropping by.

Acrylics Play

We had us a good time with some acrylics yesterday. Our little one kept reminding me we needed to paint because she had to practice for her first "sale". A friend of my wife's liked one of my daughter's paintings so much that she offered to commission her. My daughter was actually calculating how much she would charge! Anyway, I figured it was a great opportunity for some father-daughter art time, so I got some cheap acrylics to play with. They weren't that bad after all! Good range of colors in the set, and it wasn't all that messy either. We grabbed a bunch of brushes, and a couple of neon colored poster sheets because this was a test. I spared you the shocking colors with some image processing here, but you can tell the poster material was bright. We picked a corner on each sheet to use as palette, and went at it with no specific aim. My daughter had a blast, and we finished pretty much at the same time (a first!). Beautiful flower, a dog, a butterfly, a rainbow, and an angel. All things she loves to draw and paint.

I had no idea where I was going, and you can tell by the inverse eyes, and the hand, that I wasn't planning much when I painted this frog-like creature holding a candle. I did have fun with the paint, checking how it behaved, its stickiness, and how much one could water it down. Glad it was easy to wash off too. In the end, my daughter wanted to take them to grandma, and expected them to be hung in her house. Grandma loved them, and we'll see where she puts them :).
Impulsive art is always fun, no matter what comes of it. Hope you liked these... I love my daughter's raw talent, and inspiration. Thanks for dropping by.

Alien Astral Projection

An alien astronaut caught in the act of astral projection. At least that's what I kept thinking it turned out to be. I call this one impulsive, but it was done bit by bit over a few days, during minute long breaks over  work activities. The impulse was to keep doodling something even though I was really busy. At first a pencil doodle with just that funky helmeted astronaut, I was in the "artsy" doodle mood. The left page done, I thought of those artists that use the page spread on their sketchbooks. This time it was my mini-moleskine, which has been getting plenty of use due to its portability. The right page followed, and the astral projection idea started. A this point, some 2 days ago, I decided to ink it, just to get some brushpen ink time in, and then it just evolved into this dark ink "party". Got some art time from it, picking at it during the busy day. And I tell you, I was really busy for this to take so long. At least the last inking session didn't take so much time, though I went over some of it because I had started with a fine point "Sharpie", and I don't like the ink from those. Brushpen and PITT pens were used in the end. Hope you like this spacey and impulsive idea. Not my usual style, all "designy" and "moleskine-doodley". Having fun with the adjectives. Oh well. Hope you liked it!

Walking Sketches 18FEB12

Today we had some of my daughter's cousins over, while their mothers visited. They were kind of restless, so we went to the park to vent some energy running around, and socializing. Of course, I brought my mini sketchbook with me, sensing a good opportunity to get some quick drawing done.
We didn't stay too long, but the fact that my daughter was entertained with her cousins freed my attention enough to get some exercise walking around, and to get some impressions down from the folks and things I saw while I was there. These on the left are rather quick shots. Clockwise from top left: A girl walking on the sidewalk, checking her cell phone (so many folks stuck looking at the little screens these days, but that's no surprise). In the middle, a little girl, towing her little brother on her toy wagon. Good old Radio Flyer, it was. Some basketball player stopping his game to text. A man and his bicycle riding toddler, looking to the side at some other activity. My daughter swinging happily on the swing set, and that same couple of kids with the wagon on their way out of the park.

I stopped my walking for a while, so I could stretch my legs on a tree stump along the walkway. The pattern in the tree trunk said "draw me", and I thought it was a good idea to try something more complicated, at least while I was stretching out. I started outlining it, and then said, the heck with it... lets go at it a bit painterly. Even with a little pencil stub (I couldn't find any decent ones in my bag) it was fun to go from outlining to just shading values out. The texture was so complicated, with mold, and bark in different stages of decomposition, that I had to look at it a bit more like a whole, thinking in terms of light and dark. This helped out a lot. At first, my drawing didn't look anything like a tree stump, but once the values were more or less in place, I could work on a bit of detail, and fill in the voids. It actually looks like a tree stump now.
Well, that's it for this one. Hope you liked it. Thanks for dropping by.