Daily Animal Sketch - Itty Bitty Kitties and Little Foxes

Nanook

Crestfallen cub. An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 42.

How to Draw a Cheetah

With its sleek, streamlined body, and long, muscular limbs, the cheetah is built for speed. Capable of running at an incredible 70 mph, the cheetah is faster than the rest of the big cats, or any other land mammal. As you draw, try to bring out the power and grace of this beautiful feline.

 The key to drawing anything is to break it down into basic shapes. If you can draw circles and ovals, you can draw a cheetah.  Don't be discouraged if your first attempt doesn't turn out exactly like the picture. Practice makes perfect, so let's begin!

Click the image below to view the step-by-step cheetah drawing tutorial.

Don’t give up if your first drawings aren’t perfect. Art is not something that can be learned overnight. Drawing is a skill that must be practiced and supplemented through observation, so keep a sketchbook, and take it with you everywhere. Look around you, draw what you see.  Visit the zoo and sketch animals. Sketch people at the mall. The more you draw, the better you’ll get. Good luck!

Lessons from the Ice

Nanook encounters his first arctic hare. But...? An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 28.

Arctic Catch

Frostbite scores an arctic hare. An illuminated panel from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 27.

Light Outside

Illuminated panels from The Last of the Polar Bears pg 20 and 21. Read the comic here.

Furry Friday: Quiescent

With the release of my newest tutorial drawing book Draw More Furries right around the corner, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the talented artists who contributed illustrations. First up is Quiescent by Kristen “CentraDragon” Plescow, whose whimsical digital painting style and color palette are a joy to behold. This tranquil illustration of a kirin appreciating nature is featured as the double-page spread for Chapter 4: Mythical Creatures.

Here’s what she had to say about her artistic process:

“My process varies a bit from day to day, but overall I try to keep everything as simple as possible. For a large illustration like this, I start with lot of smaller doodles with ink and markers to get in the spirit of things, and to better envision the world around the character. Next, I make a sketch in Photoshop CS4, and move onto a quick under painting. Once I’m satisfied with the composition and color scheme, I’ll work on refining and detail from back to front. I don’t worry too much about layers, and like to merge them as I go. One thing I’ve learned—if you know there’s a part of your painting that’s going to be more difficult, always (ALWAYS) do it first. It’ll save you a lot of frustration and rage-quits later on.” -Kristen

Draw More Furries arrives in bookstores on November 23, 2012.
Signed copies are available through my online shop!

Great Ursa Mother

(Previously seen cropped in my Mother’s Day card)

Polar Bear Hugs

(Previously seen cropped in my Mother’s Day card)

Mother’s Day

Tell Mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day!

Would you like to give one of these snuggly polar bear designs to the Mom in your life? I’ve put together a printable e-card version in PDF format. Click to download your favorite design below, then simply print and fold.

Message: Thank you for giving me a life full of happiness and warmth. Happy Mother's Day.

Message: Thank you for a life full of happiness and warmth. Happy Mother's Day.

Artistic Polar Bear

Polar bear art created for Wildlife Warriors, for use in the "My Arctic Animal" competition and "Creating a Comic" tutorial in Bare Essentials magazine, Issue 25, pgs 37-41.

Original pencil drawing.

Percy the Vogue Ferret

 Here's a new ferret character I designed, done in my Peach Fuzz-style. It took a minute to return to the cute bubbly style of my Peach Fuzz series, but after some warm up sketching, it came back to me, and so fun to do! Cel style coloring is also a joy.

He's based on The Vogue Ferret's real life ferret, Percy, seen here napping in a hammock.

 A sable like Peach, she would probably like this charming fellow (look out, Edwin, there's competition)!

Here's the conceptual sketches for Percy's look and pose:

Fraggle Rock Cover - Coloring Step-by-Step

Recently, I did a cover illustration for the Fraggle Rock comic series. When I do large illustrations like this, I like to track my coloring progress through a series of iterative save files in Photoshop. This allows me to experiment without worry, knowing that I’ll be able to go back to an earlier version if I make a mistake. An additional benefit of doing iterative saves is that once the image is finished, I have the a step-by-step process that I can then share with you.

Here’s my coloring process on the Fraggle Rock cover from start to finish:

1) I start by scanning my clean pencil line art into Photoshop CS3 at 600 DPI. I use Brightness/Contrast, Replace Color, and the eraser tool to remove any stray lines or graininess. Sometimes I’ll leave some graininess for texture. Then it’s ready for coloring!

2) Once the line art is prepared, I reduce the file to the required output size for publication. (In this case it’s 10in.x10in. at 400dpi.) Then, using a “Hard Round” Brush (100% hardness, 100% roundess) in Photoshop CS3, I begin blocking in the basic colors and shadows, feeling out the mood and color scheme for the illustration. The cave sets in Fraggle Rock come in a rainbow of colors and lighting schemes, so my palette choices were pretty much unlimited. After some deliberation, I decided that a glowing blue interior chamber would be the perfect backdrop for the mystical and mysterious minstrel, Cantus. From there, I decided to play off the blue with yellow cave walls.

3) I continue building up the Fraggle characters, background, and foreground elements with additional shadows and highlights. At this point, I also start layering texture on the walls using a custom brush with grainy speckles. I’ll apply the textures a shade lighter or darker than the surface color, or sometime different colors altogether for extra “oomph”, and then soften the effect by lightly painting over them with the Hard Round brush. I frequently use this custom speckle brush  in The Last of the Polar Bears for the den walls and snow.

 4) Don’t be afraid to make changes midway through the process! (Do be sure to make backup saves, though!) I started to wonder if the red and brown shadows of the cave walls were too eye catching, and experimented with painting over them with a neutral blue. Experimentation can sometimes lead to fantastic, unexpected results, but in this case, it just helped me realize that the previous colors were fine, and that I needed to just keep going. I discarded this iteration and went back to the previous version.

5) I continued working up the shadows and highlights and refining colors. Once I get to this stage, I focus in on an area, and work my way up from background to foreground, finishing sections as I go. Here you can see Gobo is very close to complete, while work on Cantus hasn’t yet begun.

 6) And here’s the finished illustration!

Fraggle Rock Vol. 2, Issue 3 comes out later this year at comic book shops everywhere (visit comicshoplocator.com to find a local comic shop near you). In addition to the Cover B illustration, the issue also includes a short comic about Uncle Traveling Matt illustrated by me. Be sure to pick up a copy!

The Last of the Polar Bears pgs 24-25

I updated www.lastpolarbears.com with pgs 24-25. Stella is ready for adventure. Nanook isn't.

If you're relying on this blog for updates, pgs 22-23 will also be new to you. :)

Illustration Friday: "Double"

Double vision of Frostbite the arctic fox for Illustration Friday. <3 This is a set of panels from this week's update of my comic, The Last of the Polar Bears. See the full two-page spread here.

Last of the Polar Bears - pages 1-3

It's been a while since I last posted any tidbits about The Last of the Polar Bears graphic novel am working on, so here's a quick update. The proposal is currently making its rounds with agents. In the meantime, I'm continuing to work on more comic pages. I wanted to share the first few pages with all of you. A sweet little scene showing Nanook and Stella as itty-bitty baby polar bears!

Enjoy!

(Something fun to note is that all of the panel borders on these pages are "hand-drawn", that is, without the benefit of rulers. I wanted them to have a very organic, rough quality to them. That's why they have little squiggles and imperfections. Requiring a very steady hand, they take a lot longer to do, but I love the effect.)

The Last of the Polar Bears - promo poster

This is the promotional poster for The Last of the Polar Bears.

The Last of the Polar Bears is what will hopefully become my next graphic novel. I've spent the last year thinking about it and the last couple months writing and developing the groundwork for it. I just finished plotting out the story in detail from beginning to end, so now I'm ready to move forward with the creation of the comic itself!

This promo illustration, portraying an iconic scene from the first chapter of the story, had a pack a lot of punch with a minimalist execution. With so little detail, it wasn't difficult to draw, but every aspect of it needed to be just right.

I find it very helpful to create a number of tiny thumbnail sketches, to quickly try out different takes on an idea. Working with a general idea of a polar bear cub poking his head out of the den for the first time, finding himself surrounded by an unending sea of white snow, I created a couple of concept sketches:
In these examples, note how composition, placement, and size of the cub play a big role in mood and feel.

#1 is a strong close up on the cub's face, grinning as he takes a peek at the outside world - cute, but completely at odds with the title of the book.

#3 is closer in feel - the landscape is vast, the cub is small--there's a real sense of loneliness going on, but it's so far pulled out from the character that scene no longer feels intimate.

#2 is almost right on target. The cub is cute and awestruck without looking too giddy. But the centered figure is boring and predictable.

#4 takes the aspects of #2 that I liked, but moves the cub into the lower corner. The title is placed in the upper right corner to balance the piece.

Once I had the composition figured out, I set about drawing the character.

He went through several drafts (including some slight variations with him smiling, not shown here) before I finally hit upon a version that worked for the poster.
And here you have it, the finished line art of the cub seen in the poster (flipped in the illustration):

Stay tuned for lots more. I look forward to introducing you to this little guy and the rest of his family. :)

Speedpaint 29 - Angry Gorilla

Today's speedpaint is a stern looking gorilla from Disney's Animal Kingdom. I find the human similarities in apes and monkeys fascinating. Their facial expressions especially. Perhaps because of how expressive they can be, I couldn't help but feel bad for this guy. He was looking out at the people passing by with such a fierce and unhappy expression, like he couldn't put his guard down with everyone around. Or maybe gorillas are like this in the wild too? In any case, it makes me think about the implications of keeping animals in captivity. Not that I'm anti-zoo or anything. They allow people to view and appreciate animals that they wouldn't otherwise have an opportunity to see and I enjoy sketching zoo animals.

My clock crashed when I was working on this one, so I don't have an exact time but I think it took me about an hour and 20 minutes. Photoshop CS3.


Here's a bonus speedpaint. A sheet draped on the floor, 16 minutes.

Speedpaint 27 - Thanksgiving Tiki

This is a painting of my parent's cat, Tiki. Like the last picture I posted, this is also going to be a Christmas gift. I got caught up in the details and ended up spending about two and half hours on it (I broke my own speedpaint rule of "Work at 50% and never zoom in", so it's super detailed even at 200% zoom).

In case any one is wondering, I should clarify that these paintings are done primarily for practice. I haven't lost my mind or given up comics or completely overhauled my art style or anything like that. Just trying to challenge myself and pick up some new techniques to use in the future on actual work.

For the past couple months, I've been focusing very intensely on a new graphic novel pitch. I've put a great deal of work into it so far: research, detailed chapter-by-chapter synopsis, in-depth character descriptions and histories, mountains of sketches, and character designs. Thing is, that's all behind-the-scenes stuff that I can't share. I have one more chapter to go on the synopsis, and the ending has been set since almost the beginning, so it's just a matter of fleshing out the final part. Then I can move onto scripting and storyboarding the first chapter. This new story is something I've been thinking of since last year, so it's really exciting to see it all coming together. I should have a lot more to show in the upcoming months. :)

Speedpaint 23 - Komodo Dragon

Finding a method for quickly painting reptilian scales proved difficult, so this is yesterday and today's speed paint. I did the background and basic body structure on the Komodo dragon yesterday, and then some retouching and scale texture today. I believe in total it took about an hour and a half. I'm not quite satisfied with the results, but that's not the point of these exercises. It's to expose myself to new challenges.

I think I'm in a rut with the greens and browns. I'll try to work some different colors into the next one.