Character Sketch: Navajo Warrior

I drew this as a birthday present for a friend of mine a few years ago. It's a portrait of him (with heroic proportions). I drew it with a Staedlter pencil and inked it with a crow quill pen and ink.

Happy New Year all!

Mother's Day Card

I like to make cards for special occasions by hand. I create an original illustration and an original poem for each. I've built up quite a collection.

This year for Mothers Day I created an original for my Mom, but I decided to share it with you too. Enjoy!

Mothers rarely get what they deserve
For the many sacrifices they make,
The time they give up,
And the worry they endure.

They may hear an occasional thank you
Or some other quick acknowledgement,
But like so many other important things
Their labor of love goes unrecognized.

But today, this mother will get what she deserves
As we not only tell her, but also show her
How much we love and appreciate her.

Happy Mothers Day!

Christmas Cards

Every year I make a Christmas card and send it to friends, family, and co-workers. I always create an original illustration and an original poem. I usually pic a Christmas Carol as the them.

This year I was listening to David Archuleta's version of Pat-a-Pan and really liked the "So be merry as you play" line. I used that as the theme.

I drew the card with a Stadler Pencil, inked it with my croquil pen and sumi ink, then colored it in Painter X. I was really happy with the results.

Something I find interesting is how few people say thank you for a Christmas card. I emailed out over four dozen cards and only heard back from 7 people. Is it because I emailed the card people don't value it and don't feel the need to say thank you, or has the world just lost their manners. Or maybe people just didn't like the card and don't want to say anything about it. They all make sense.

Cowboys and Indians

So a friend of mine asked me to create an illustration of him as a Navajo Warrior (he is Navajo so it's fitting). And this is the result. I was really happy with how it turned out.

The figure itself is done with a croquil pen & ink. The background was added digitally. I'm planning to digitally paint it, so be looking for that.

Watercolor Pencils

I discovered watercolor pencils sometime in high school. I started using them exclusively along with a crowquill pen and Koor-I-Nor ink.

What I love about them is how versatile they are and how beautiful the color is. Being in a pencil form, you Koor can use them like a colored pencil, then brush a little water over them for some cool effects. Or you can scribble on a separate piece of paper mixing the colors you want in the proportions you want them, then use a brush to color with them like watercolors. Being watercolors, they are translucent and capture light beautifully, reflecting absolutely gorgeous colors. If you spray fix them, then they brighten (and some colors darken) like pastels for even more effects.

My favorite brand of watercolor pencils is Crayola (and they are by far the cheapest). Crayola offers an 8-pack with a brush, or a twelve pack with no brush. The boxes open up like Prismacolor boxes with a slit in the middle so you can set them up at an angle at your desk. My second favorite are Design (now discontinued). Prismacolor comes in third. I've tried other brands, but they've been very disappointing. My favorite paper to use them on is bristol board, though sketch books work amazingly well. Sometimes I use waterproof ink, and sometimes I use water-soluble ink to give my drawings darker shadows. Again, watercolor pencils are so versatile, you can use them with anything!

This drawing is one of a series of three I did in college. I inked the drawing with a Pilot Precise V7. I was still trying to figure out my style and how I wanted to make lines. This series turned out really well, and I'm still proud of them today.

Thanksgiving

I've always enjoyed Thanksgiving. When I was young, it was because I liked watching the floats in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, then going up to my grandparents for dinner. As I got older, I started enjoying it for what it is: a time to give thanks.

I used this illustration for a birthday card for my mom. It was around Thanksgiving, and the message was gratitude related, so it seemed appropriate. The drawing was done with a calligraphy pen, one of my favorite ways of drawing. I colored it in Photoshop, then used a photograph as the background. I've been mixing my illustrations with photos ever since I started doing websites. It's a really nice technique.

Greeting Cards

When the world didn't end at Y2K, I created two Mother's Day cards, one for my mom, and the other for my grandma. I had recently discovered Windsor Newton inks and they 20+ colors they offered. I especially liked the nut brown. These cards were created with a crow-quill pen, nut brown ink, and gold ink, which is really hard to use with a crow-quill pen. I had scanned them and stored a copy on a zip disk while I was in college, then mailed the originals off.


Eight years later, I decided to pull my files off of the zip disk and see what was there. After college, I never needed to use a zip disk again, so it just sat in a drawer at my parents house collecting dust. I was happy to find these two images and a short story I had written for Creative Writing that I thought was lost. (I even found a paper copy of it around the same time.)

I love creating greeting cards. Every year I design a Christmas card with an original illustration and poem based on a Christmas Carol. I send it to family, friends, and co-workers. This year will mark the ninth year I've done it. I have the good ones on my website, SkyFitsJeff.com. Just click on More Illustrations, then Christmas Cards to see them.

German Expressionism

I love old German Expressionist films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis. (If you haven't seen these classics, run to the video store NOW!) The style, the use of tone, the wacky characters--it's all great!

I tried to apply a few of these design ideas to a comic book page. I really liked the penciled version, but I'm not sure if I dig the finished page.

What do you think?

And are you on your way to the video store?