The Herbalist

I'm finally getting around to adding color to some of my Inktober characters from last year!! Woot, woot!! :-D I love how alive they become with a little bit of tone, lighting, and shadow. Hopefully there will be a few more of these in the near future!

Onward and upward,

Bethany

March '16 Sketchbook

I feel it's only fair to warn you that this month's sketches are suuuper scrappy. :-/ I've been drawing more poses out of my head, rather than looking at references, and the results are...less than polished. But hey, I am less intimidated at the thought of trying to draw from my head and my characters (in this case mermaids and fairies) look a tiny bit less stiff than they used to! 

As you might have noticed, there are a couple of Yeti sketches thrown in with the mermaids and fairies. This may have gotten you thinking "I haven't heard much about that picture book project Beth talked earlier this year. I wonder how that's going?" Well, the truth of the matter is that I'm am currently stuck on story problems. :-/ So, in order to give the project (and myself) a rest, I'm putting it on hiatus for a bit. However, I do plan to come back to it and you will be the first to know when I get it started up again!

onward and upward,

Bethany

100 in 10 challenge: Landscapes and Lighting

Over the past few weeks, I participated in a 100 in 10 challenge through one of the forums at the Oatley Academy. (I mentioned them last week, they're awesome!) The idea is to draw 100 of something over the course of 10 days in order to get better at it. I chose to do 50 landscapes and 50 lighting scenarios in small, medium, and large sizes. It was a pretty grueling challenge, even though I ended up taking the weekends off for a break. Last Friday was my final day, so I thought I'd share some of the less terrible studies here. 

My biggest area of growth in this project was becoming less afraid of tackling challenging landscape or lighting set ups. My confidence grew a little as I learned how to break down an image and "reassemble it" in a comprehensible way in my studies. I wouldn't say I'm the greatest at either landscapes or lighting, but I am a little less intimidated at the thought of drawing them.

onward and up ward,

Bethany

Animal Mash-ups

Today's post combines two of my favorite things; animals and puns! (Not sure if I should admit to liking puns, but what can I say, they crack me up!) I drew these a little while ago to post on a forum thread at the Oatley Academy and although some of you might have seen them already, I figured I'd show them here anyway. Enjoy!

A Bearracuda

A Billy Stoat

A Chipmonkey

onward and upward,

Bethany

Yeti Expressions

A few rough sketches I did this week to explore Yeti's emotional range. Since Yeti's a pretty laid-back, happy sort of guy, it was interesting to see what he would look like when he gets really angry or really sad. And I guess sleepiness isn't technically an emotional state, but I threw it in there just for kicks.

onward and upward,

Bethany