Christmas Godzillas Illustration

As I mentioned earlier, I decided to do a Christmas themed illustration this year, and since December 25th is only 1 week away, I present to you Christmas Godzillas!!!

Back story time: A few weeks ago, my cousin Meredith mentioned wanting a sweater with lots of tiny godzillas working together to decorate a Christmas tree. I thought the idea was completely brilliant and, while I'm not ambitious enough to knit a sweater, I decided I could do an illustration. Getting the godzillas to look right took some practice, but once I had that down, everything else came together pretty quickly. I finished coloring it in Photoshop last week and now I finally get to post it! 

This will be my last post for 2014. I'm taking two weeks off for the holidays, but I'll be back again on the 8th of January. Hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas, New Years, and holiday season in general!

onward and upward,

Bethany

December '14 Sketchbook

Sketchbook time!! Also, does the red squirrel guy look familiar to anyone? I really like him, but I'm worried I'll discover that I accidentally ripped off someone else's design. :-/  If he is not, in fact, a blatant kidnapping of another character, expect to see him around more often. :-)

onward and upward,

Bethany

December'14 Skill Building: Body Language

For the month of December, I decided to change up the order of my posts and have the skill building and sketchbook entries come earlier in the month. I'm working on a Christmas themed illustration and I want to give myself as much time as possible to get it done. And then, of course, the last week is of December is Christmas and I'll be taking time off from the blog for that. So yeah, on to skill building.

In these drawings, I wanted to focus just on the body language, not anatomy. Some of them turned out ok; others, not so much. Getting the pose to read as its intended emotion was really hard some times, but having body language that clearly communicates an idea is really important in illustration.

onward and upward,

Bethany

November '14 Sketchbook

Since next week is Thanksgiving, I decided to post my sketches early and take the holiday off. This month's sketches are kind of...weird. It would have been nice to keep October's sketchbook success going, but I guess it was not meant to be. Mostly, this month was full of bizarre little doodles, some of which are pretty sloppy. I'd blame it entirely on the cold I've been fight off, but my lack of motivation is probably equally at fault. I have been getting a lot of writing done. Jon and I are writing a novel together and we've made fantastic progress over the last few weeks! Maybe that's were my motivation went...

onward and upward,

Beth

November '14 Skill Building: Lighting

Lighting is one of those things that always baffles me when it comes to art. I think it has something to do with being consistent about your light source and shadows. So, in order to debunk my light rendering fears, I did a few thumbnail studies of some photos with interesting lighting set ups. For tiny, fast paced studies, I think they turned out well and I'm already feeling less intimidated about rendering light. Goal achieved!!

onward and upward,

Beth

Simplified Portraits

Did a few simple portraits the week to try and capture a more stylized but realistic take on the human face. Honestly, I don't think these are all that great, (though part of that might be that I'm sick and nothing looks good), but it was still a useful exercise.

onward and upward (hopefully to better health),

Bethany

Inktober Creatures pt 2

October is only one day away from being over and I am only one day away from finishing my Inktober drawing challenge!! Which is good, because I used up the last page in my creature sketchbook today. (Tomorrow's drawing will have to be taped in.) Inktober has been a blast and I'll definitely participate next year! ^_^

You can see the first half of my creature drawings here.

The Hanging Garden Rabbit Sloth

The Turtle Bull

The Jellybean Bunny Frog

The Eastern Duck Deer

The Dog-eared Yeti

The Western Otterpus

The Axe-nosed Coral Turtle

The Elephant Squirrel

The Duck-billed Racoon

The Brush-tailed Uniferret

The Greater Bug Bat

The Toucan Goat

The Medusa Rat

The Beaver Parrot

onward and upward,

Beth

October '14 Sketchbook

You know how I usually say stuff like "I don't have many sketches from my sketchbook because..., blah, blah, excuses, ect" when it comes time for my monthly sketchbook post? Well, not this month, guys!!! I did so many different things in my sketchbook over the past few weeks; watercolors, pen and ink, life studies, illustrations, collage, confusing scribbles, I've got a little bit of everything!! 

Here's hoping next month is just as awesome!

onward and upward,

Beth