A little study in preparation for my Christmas cards this year. I’ve got some sketches too. Maybe I’ll post them at the end of the week.

As promised, here’s the rest of the sketches. See if you can identify the theme here.

Here’s my impression of micron pens trying to look like a brush:

Real color brush here.

The next three sketches here I did after studying cartoons by Maurico García Castro (also known as Fantasio) and George Ludway. One thing they are very good at is drawing female curves with subtetly. I tend to exaggerate the curves when I study their stuff.

You can find plenty of examples of their works at Shane Glines’s Cartoon Retro, along with a massive archive of other brilliant illustrators and cartoonists that you’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Certainly worth the $50/year membership fee.

I think I want to finish this one up:



I want to finish up the one below too. I think I’ll add a big cat in the background.

So there you go, a whole bunch of different girls, a whole bunch of different approaches. Let me know what works for you and what doesn’t.

Here’s the first of a two part sketch dump. You’ll notice some brush work here. Its all done with a Pentel Color Brush. I started using it after harassing Bill Pressing at Comi-con about what he uses. I’m finding I really like inking with this thing. My line work has a ways to go, but I’m having fun.

Sketched while watching some UFC:

Started as a stylized profile of my wife, and turned into a concept sketch for DUNE. One of my favorite features of my wife is her “beaked” upper lip. It comes to a point in the middle of the lip rather than at the top of the lip. There’s something very delicate about it.

A bunch of stuff drawn with mechanical pencil. Mechanical pencil is great to sketch with. If you get a nice soft lead, it erases easily and you can rework and build up your sketch as you go. The downside is it smears like a beast, and its not as sharp looking as drawing with a prismacolor or a polychromos pencil.

As a result I have to spend a lot of time on the computer cleaning up my sketches so they look ok.

Stay tune for part 2. It’ll be all cute girls!

This illlustration with color. Thanks to Blake Loosli for coloring it. He does a good job with color, but he’s famous in Europe for his caricatures.