An Elephant Artist

Farmers!

Farmers, like everything else come in all shapes and sizes. These are some farmer studies.

Squirrels

These are character illustrations and composition studies for a book I'm working on.

The Grass is Greener

Hurdles

The Grass is Greener Intro

Lead Character Development

This duck is a fun lead character for the story I am working on. The "hair" is indicative of the historical inspiration for the story, and the red rimmed eyes give a somewhat unstable feeling to the character. The eyes are fun in that they can express a wide range of emotion needed for this little unstable duck. :)

More Characters

Animals are so fun to illustrate. Their funny faces lend themselves to a wide range of personalities to draw. It is also particularly fun and challenging to abstract a real creature to the point that it is still recognizable, but something new altogether. A family farm served as some inspiration here.

Farmyard Characters

When I start a new character design, I almost always start with the face. The face is the most expressive with personality. I then move on to the body, giving it the same gestural feeling that the face expresses. All of these are done in my primary medium of watercolor and ink. I love the medium because it is so fluid and it keeps you loose and painterly.

Smug Chicken.

Composition Studies

I tend to spend a lot of time in the initial stages of developing a composition. I work up thumbnail sketches but very quickly get into full watercolor paintings, as I want to feel the way the characters and colors are going to interact in the final illustration. Here are some composition studies done in watercolor and ink.

Spring

Happy spring everyone.