recent sketches

Just posting some recent quickies from my sketch book to keep this blog going.

currently working on…

….everything. I’ve got a lot of different projects that seem to be coming together right now, keeping me busy. Here’s a work in progress. It’s another fashion inspired illustration. Enjoy.

Tux

I’ve been drawing as always but unfortunately I don’t have any finished illustration work to post this week. I’ve been keeping myself busy with some graphic design work, along with promoting my illustrations and Graystone Design. This is part of a cover I’m working on for a booklet. Also I got some Graystone shirts made, just waiting on them to come back from the screen printer. There will be pics as soon as I get them.

Octopus

I’ve been working on doing more illustrations with animals lately, to put a little variety in my portfolio. I’ve drawn quite a few octopi in my sketchbooks but I never got around to doing a finished illustration with one. Now I can mark that off my list. This is another example of my experiments in color and technique. I chose to draw the lines with pencil instead of ink, because of the greater control it gives my over my line quality. It hard to get pencils to scan as bold and crisp as inked lines but I’m a control freak when it comes down to my lines. I need every single line to go exactly where I want it to be satisfied. The coloring is a combo of flat colors, gradients, textures and layer blending modes.

+Click the pic to see a larger size.

Process

I’ve been working on adding content to my new site lately (http://coreyleedraws.com) and other ways to promote my work. Today I added a short progression on how I made my forest illustration. It’s really short but you can see how I go from rough sketch to final. You can view it here: http://coreyleedraws.com/index.php?/ongoing/forest/

One more final…

…is the title to the final chapter of the End of Evangelion movie. This doesn’t really have anything to do with this illustration other than the fact that I’m a huge fan of the Evangelion series and this is also the final version of the ‘Futuristic Imagination’ girl illustration. I had ideas for a fully drawn out background, but in the end I just wanted to concentrate on the girl herself so I chose a simpler background to finish it off.

Pro tip: Click the pic for a larger version.

Futuristic Imagination…

…is a song by the band School Food Punishment. This picture has no connection at all to the song, sometimes I just like titling things according to what I’m listening to at the moment. This was originally a really small pencil sketch. I liked the expression on her face so I enlarged the sketch in Photoshop and redrew the lines in pen before coloring it. I hardly ever wear plaid, but when it comes to my characters I like to use it every chance that I get. This is currently on the first page of my website: http://coreyleedraws.com/
The website is still a work in progress, but I’m constantly adding content, so check back often. Click the image for a full size version as usual.

Samurai card

Here’s a work in progress. I wanted to redesign a playing card, so I decided to mix it up with a samurai for the king of clubs.

Rain

I’ve been working on this for a while. There’s a contest on Harvey James’ blog, so I figured I’d have a go at it. The contest involves creating a comic using at least two existing characters on his blog. All the characters have quirky designs, so I decided to contrast that by doing a simple, casual, one page comic. I was going to ink this but I really got into the pencils. I didn’t wanna loose any details by trying to ink of tight pencils. I’d be nice to do a full comic in just pencils, but I not sure how well it would reproduce if it was printed. I also screwed up the placement of the word balloons when I drew this, so I had to change the dialog to work. Here’s the simpled colored version and the original pencils.

++++Click on the image for a larger version.
Harvey James contest: http://harveyjames.livejournal.com/137261.html

Legs….

Here’s something a bit different. A fashion style sketch. I actually do these a lot, but most of the time I can’t be bothered to scan then from my sketchbook. This is just ball point pen[Fine Black Pentel R.S.V.P pen to be exact] and Photoshop for the coloring. Sometimes you just need to draw some long curvy legs. If you want to see more legs than you can handle, I suggest going to Tokyo in the summer…