This will probably be the last work-in-progress post as I’ve come to what I think will be the last piece of the series. Now for the inking and adding of color…
The chapter ends with Alice and a number of birds swimming out of the pool of tears and onto dry land.
Filed under Alice 2012
Alice and the mouse pencils and wash done today… I’ll get to the inks Wednesday, I hope. I did two for this scene — the one I did first seemed too docile and the inks didn’t bleed the way I wanted, so I did a second (to the right)…
Filed under Alice 2012
pencils done on a desk that, believe it or not, I cleaned two days ago… It feels like in Macbeth where the woods are advancing on the castle.
This afternoon before work I finished the pencils and washes for the paragraphs in which Alice realizes it’s the White rabbit’s fan that’s causing her to shrink + her falling into the pool of tears.
Filed under Alice 2012
I started on this yesterday and abandoned it the washes phase.
Later, though, I went back at it with pen and ink for practice. I liked how the colors came out and how ink can almost capture the wetness of water on a page.
Also, this is my 150th post, so yay to that.
Filed under Alice 2012
For a couple of days I was toying around with the idea of drawing the White Rabbit and the Rat of chapter 2 as more human than animal. 
I did one sketch of the White Rabbit before going cold on the idea, but before bed I flushed it out a little in watercolors and ink wash.
I keep forgetting to mention these pieces are for a collaborative Alice project I’m involved in over the summer, and it’s blog can be found here:
Filed under Alice 2012
I got a couple more done tonight…
taking the pen and ink to these should be interesting…
Filed under Alice 2012
What do I do with my Saturday night?
a Bloody Mary and pen & ink & wash…
Washes down on these two, ready for the inks.
Filed under Alice 2012
I’ve been more of less away from the blog for a couple weeks. My family is in the process of moving to Poland (my wife’s home country)– my wife and daughter left last week, and my son and I will follow mid July. So, just a lot to wrap my head around.
I also, finally, deactivated my Facebook account. I just got tired of the constant politics that seem to be choking the site and the petty one-liner ‘debates’. The offhanded attitude people seem to be taking toward regularly degrading others for their politics or religion really just turned me off to the whole thing.
So, I got off of that and decided to throw myself into the blogging, which has been a great experience.
…retreat to my cave…
I have a few projects that I need to get done, so I’ll be posting about that as it comes along over the next week or so.
For now, I’ve been listening to a lot of Rusted Root, so here’s one of the tracks that’s been sticking in my head.
All the best and thanks for stopping by!
Filed under Life in Progress, Music to Make Art to
Well, it turns out I got a batch of crappy paper — living in a sub tropical country, un-damaged watercolor paper is real hard to come by… So, I changed course midway through to accommodate, did it all in B&W washes…
It’s still a lot closer composition wise to what I wanted with the first.
Now to go buy some more new paper…
branch and root (2nd)
pen and ink with washes
Filed under Pen and Ink, Watercolors
Once I got the new one scanned and up on the blog, I realized it wasn’t what I wanted for a couple reasons.
I got working on a sketch for a re-do…
Filed under Sketches
roots & branch
pen and ink and watercolors
The rain’s been unrelenting the past week, and it finally let up enough for me to go buy some new paper yesterday. I did the pencils for this last night and the inks and washes this morning. The paper turned out to be a bit oily, so I couldn’t do some of the stuff with the washes that I’d wanted, but that’s life.
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations, Watercolors
5/19 pen & ink
no. 3 round, no. 12 flat, nib pens and sumi ink
Drawing people with swords is more fun than drawing people with umbrellas… also playing around with the design for a tattoo to use later on… hexagonal shapes…
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
‘thicket’
pen & ink & watercolors
Getting back to things on a very wet and rainy day…
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations, Watercolors
The weather’s way too humid to get anything real done (the paper just won’t dry) so I’ve been doing more of the rough brush and pen & ink pieces to keep myself going.
Straight pen and ink, done with a no. 3 round (among others) and my nib pens.
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
Another rough ink & brush sketch that I did some pen & ink over to bring out a few details…
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
I’ve been insanely busy the last week, so I haven’t gotten much of anything done.
I finally sat down tonight and, with the aid of some vodka & tomato juice, did a little pen and ink work over a rough sketch I did with ink and brush a while ago. Nothing much, but it was good to feel the pen scratching across paper again…
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
A lot of Alice on my mind lately, so sooner or later it had to come down to this…
I do like to do a music post on Fridays, so why not? What a crescendo!
Also, it’s a part of one of my favorite bits from the cartoon series Futurama…
Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit… Have a great weekend!
Filed under Alice 2012, Music to Make Art to
Continuing with the sketches… Alice contemplating drowning in her own tears. Carroll wrote it, not me.
I hope to be getting to some more solid work next week.
But for now, messing around with pen and ink and lots of water…
Thanks for stopping by!
Filed under Alice 2012, Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations, Watercolors
Did another pen & ink and wash sketch of the White Rabbit after work the other day. This one’s less friendly than the last one… I’m currently in the midst of buying airline tickets, which is turning out to be pretty nerve racking. Maybe that’s why.
Filed under Alice 2012, Pen and Ink, Watercolors
no. 256 (2) I Am
Illustration numbers 254~257 of 300, 8 done today. A lot of the stanzas were quite long, so I split them up into two pages, giving me more space along the blank space at the page bottom for the illustration.
This brings me up to 281 pen & ink washes completed for this project… As I’m in the process of packing for my move to Poland, I weighed the physical pieces the other day and it came up to 8 pounds, yes, eight pounds of illustration… If nothing else, it’s a substantive project.
This section deals with the arrest, trial and crucifixion of Christ, most will be more “literal” than in some places along the way, and I’ll be adding small reference notes to each image.
Thanks for stopping by!
Filed under Ceol, Pen and Ink, Watercolors
The White rabbit makes a brief appearance in the chapter I’m covering, so I thought to do a pen & ink + wash sketch of him before sleep.
Kept with the black ink washes with tints of yellow ochre and Indian red…
Filed under Alice 2012, Pen and Ink, Watercolors
I had 101 things to get done today, so all I did after work was plunk down and do another pen & ink sketch for the Alice collaborative project I’m part of.
I built on yesterday’s basic idea, played more with the washes and bleeding inks today. The bottle was an afterthought yesterday, but I worked it in a bit more today…
I’ll have to sit down and chart out the list of images next…
Thanks for stopping by!
Filed under Alice 2012, Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations, Watercolors
So, I’m also involved in a collaborative art project centered around Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and related works (the project coordinators have set up a site here –> There’s Only Alice). A different artist tackles each chapter or poem. I’ve got Chapter 2: A Pool of Tears. Fun, but alas, no mushrooms…
I did a number of pencil sketches, but nothing was working for me, so I got out the pen & ink and did a sketch in that, then did some washes over it. I stuck to mainly bleeding black inks with tints of Indian red and yellow ochre. I added the text in by hand for reference…
Alice has been illustrated by so many wonderful artists in so many extraordinary ways that I admit it’s a bit intimidating… Since there’s a lot of water (tears) in the chapter, I’m going to be using the fan brush and a lot of actual water, I think…
Thanks for stopping by & just click on the image for a larger view.
on the drawing desk… brushes, nib pens, watercolors, inks, bottles and a nice cup of tomato juice & vodka…
Filed under Alice 2012, Pen and Ink, Sketches, Watercolors
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
no. 243
Illustration numbers 243~253 of 300, 11 done today.
This brings me up to 273 illustrations finished for this project.
Continuing & finishing today with the section that roughly covers the Last Supper. More of the sort of “bleeding inks” style with these.
Thanks for stopping by!
Filed under Ceol, Pen and Ink, Watercolors
no. 242
Illustration numbers 237~242 of 300, 6 done today.
Continuing with the section that roughly covers the Last Supper. More of the sort of “bleeding inks” style with these.
The only semi-literal illustration is 242, during which Christ promises the coming of the Spirit… so some pigeons. The rest all sort of follow along the alleyways. It also gave me a chance to work on my doorways & windows.
Thanks for stopping by!
Filed under Ceol, Pen and Ink, Watercolors
I like to doodle in pen & ink while watching the post-work tee-vee shows, and this i what I came up with last night…
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
Finished, with watercolors over the inks.
I’ve had a problem where I’ve been living with getting reliable paper. It’s a really humid area, and I have a feeling that a lot of the watercolor paper I purchase at art stores has been poorly stored… The result is paper that sucks up the watercolors in random areas. So, long story short, I wasn’t able to get done what I’d wanted, but that’s life and I tried to work around it…
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations, Watercolors
I wanted to work on my inks some more today, so this is what I came up with. I took a couple photos along the way…
I did the primary inks with a small sable brush, then went in with the steel nib for the details.
Filed under Pen and Ink, Random Illustrations
I inked this one almost entirely with a no. 0 round brush… I’m only now getting into inking with a brush, I’ve always used the steel nib pens. I’ve been practicing with a brush for a while, and I thought this would be a good piece to start out on. I did use the steel nib around the hair, their knives, details like that… I finished it off with my burnt-color watercolors. Sepias, umbers and Indian red. I laid down most of the watercolors with my Japanese brush, then laid down clean water for the colors to bleed through.
Filed under Random Illustrations, Watercolors
