December 29, 2011

Merry Christmas!

I go all of November, posting 30 new pieces of art, and all I can scrounge up for December is 1?  Love the holidays... really.   Anyways, one thing I DID do that was artistic this December was this little beauty here.  That's approx. 4 feet by 4 feet of Disney Christmas magic.

Let me backtrack a bit, last Christmas the girlfriend and I decided to check out the neighborhood nearby that is "known" for their Christmas displays.  Y'know the kind that goes all out?  So we check it out and walk around and I make the astute observation that most of the "characters" seen on people's houses and lawns are nothing more than painted things of wood (and some aren't drawn all that well, but I digress).  To which I say... "Hey, I could totally do that!"

She takes me up on the offer.  Lady and the Tramp is what we consider "our movie", so it became the natural choice for our balcony (cuz we live in an apartment, and can only go "all out" so much).   So we bought the wood, grabbed reference material and went to work.  I drew the characters out on pencil, we cut them out, painted them, glazed them and hung them up, and wah-la!

These took a lot longer to make than my cocky arrogance thought, so we only had time to finish the sign and the spaghetti eating dogs.  The chefs, Joe and Tony, remain pencil sketches on wood.  They will make their debut NEXT Christmas, joining these dogs.  It was quite fun to do, actually, and we easily have the best decorated apartment in the complex.  Yay!

December 1, 2011

30 Characters in 30 Days... MEGA POST! Part 3: The End


I successfully, completed the 30 Characters Challenge.  And a challenge it was.  But I'm glad I did, cuz it reinforced drawing whether I wanted to or not, and I grew a little bit artistically and learned a few new tricks and such in Photoshop. So all in all an excellent experience.  One thing I really tried to do during the challenge was to avoid humanoid characters.  I didn't want bi-peds with 2 eyes, 2 ears, a mouth and nose.  I wanted to... challenge myself.  So a lot of the characters (see previous 2 posts) were not humanoid.  It was fun.  As always, just the art will be here...  for the stories, go to my 30 Characters Author Page.

#26 - iKill

#27 - Deforester

#28 - Armah

#29 - Gloomy, the Skully Child

#30 - The Tired Artist... (Semi-Autobigographical)