Obsession Du Jour

I've been sick, bored and generally crawling up the walls in between coughing fits, at least at those times of the day when I was out of bed. At least in the evening, I found the energy to draw some more monsters in my sketchbook.

Gren and Bob from Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic. Unlike the other two, this one has had quite a lot of post-production done to it in GIMP. It's difficult to work with GIMP if you haven't done any serious work with it in such a long time as I have, but the bigger problem was that I don't have a tablet at home here - all I have here is an optical mouse with the habit of darting to the edges of the screen for no good reason at all. Luckily I found that feathering the selection tools allowed me to preserve the pencil texture while correcting this drawing.

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As Reinder already said we've been sketching @ Wielaert's. And...I didn't draw any naked ladies, I'm so proud of myself. Well to show some sketches:

Nothing to say about her actually, just a girl on a snowboard.

This one is an old friend of mine, I usually see him when I'm about to die in one of my dreams. He's my personal grim reaper I think. It's really a mystery who the puppeteer is or shall be.

These two kids are a sort of study for a children's book I'm working on at the moment

Well that's it for now...

I've been a bit sick this week, but I didn't let that stop me from going to the regular Gr'nn sketch meeting at Erik Wielaert's place.
Here's what I did:

First, I made some large sketches of panels I was going to draw this weekend, just to get a better feel for them. Normally, I only thumbnail them, so this was a new approach:

I used a 5B pencil throughout the session, by the way, which definitely encouraged me to work large.
Eventually I tired of doing work that was strictly for the comic, and started doing more random things:

... the more I see Calvin draw his emaciated, Manara-inspired nymphettes, the more I get the urge to draw big-arsed girls. Funny how that works. The Alpha and Omega signs on her cheeks were the result of some free-association process the memories of which have since evaporated in a haze of beer. Some minor corrections after scanning, because there were a bunch of confusing lines in the arm and face.

A quick study for a Gnomian physisist for a future weekend update.

Erik is an insanely accomplished artist whose skills I envy quite a lot. What I envy most, I think, is his ability to draw creatures so they are lively, individual and imaginative. Not to mention cute. He's worked hard to develop that ability, and so should I. Other people at the session suggested the horns that can be seen in a vague outline, but I think this cutie works fine without horns.

While I'm at it, let me plug 101 Projects for Artists and Illustrators, which I found via, er, someone.