Thursday, May 26, 2016

May '16 sketchbook

Oh man, this month has been insane! We closed on and moved into our new home last Friday and are in the midst of unpacking, arranging, and home renovation projects! Not surprisingly, my sketchbook is a bit of a jumble; fan art, comics, studies, random forest creature doodles, and even a few rough church sketches. I've also been posting more regularly on Instagram, which I'll talk more about next week! Till then, I hope you enjoy this hodge-podge and have a good weekend!













onward and upward,
Bethany

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Rink Rat

Here's the final digitally colored Inktober drawing! This has been a really neat little side project; it's always cool to see how color and value can really bring an ink drawing to life! 

Art aside, life has reached an all time high of chaos and craziness because Jon and I are preparing to move into our new house this Saturday!! :-D I'm really looking forward to unpacking and getting settled into our new space! ^_^ And don't worry, I'll still be showing up every Thursday with something to share here, despite the city of boxes that is my life right now (so many boxes...).


onward and upward,
Bethany

Thursday, May 12, 2016

"Waiting" illustration + process sketches

This illustration has kind of an involved backstory, so I thought it might be fun to show to talk about how it evolved. But first, the final painting.


This idea started out as this weird little doodle. I was thinking about waiting periods and what they feel like, which brought to mind the early stages of plant growth. What I ended up with was this sprout girl waiting inside her plant.


I liked the concept, but this sketch felt a little unrealized. I wanted to develop the idea further and make something a bit more cohesive. I did some rough, exploration doodles of the plant bulb and sprout girl. She ended up being a bit more "plantish", which I really liked.



My first attempt at this illustration was a dissatisfying, but useful learning experience (although I did initially think of scrapping the whole project!) In trying to make a robust image, I over complicated it and the initial simplicity and mood was lost. After a bit of analysis (and a break), I figured out how to flesh out my original idea without going overboard. 


Which brings us back to the final product. Over all, I pretty happy with it. It still feels like a weird, potentially confusing idea, but I like it anyway.



onward and upward,
Bethany


Thursday, May 5, 2016

Fancy Lizard Lady

Back to more colored Inktober drawings. Hopefully you guys aren't sick of them by now! I only have one more I was planning to do, then I'll move on to other things. Also, working with red as a dominate color is tough. It's so powerful that it's hard to find other colors to play off of it. But all in all, I think this one turned out ok.



onward and upward,
Bethany