A sketch that spiraled out of control. Inks with digital color slapped on it.

A warmup from this week. I've been looking through Jean Baptiste-Monge's work a lot, which contains a fair dose of fairies. Hence this fairy.

Blaaaaaaaaargh.

Here's a couple life-drawings from recently. The guy who runs the lifedrawing I frequent mixed it up this time, hiring a model (Van Medcalf) who's known for his wide array of costumes. The guys quite a character, and definitely a great model. I've never had a model who not only held poses well, but also gets into character and holds an expression the whole time as well!

The first one is just B lead with a little bit of sumi ink in a cheap pentel-color brush for blacks. The second is inked with the same pentel brush, and an array of col-erase pencils for colors. Col-erase is great for lifedrawing and sketching, because they're so easily blended with just a finger, or lifted with an eraser. They're not light-fast at all though, so they're no good for anything you want to last

Just outa reach

This is kinda how this week has gone. Now back to work!

Heyyyyooooo! here's a couple new things, first: A commission from last weekend at ECCC. Delirium from Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Second: A 20 minute watercolor sketch at Alki beach. It was the first sunny day we've had in a while, and it seems my watercolor sketching skills have gotten rusty.

Heres a painting I was working on for waaaay too long. It's too big to scan, so a photo with my mediocre camera/lighting setup will have to suffice. Eyowyn Versus The Nazgul King!

Alright one more post for today. I've been updating my main website-blog lately, but the spam filter plugins that I've found for Wordpress seem severely lacking in comparison to whatever Blogger uses. So I might just stick with this blog. I dunno. Anyway!

I did a series of drawings and paintings leading up to Halloween. Here's a couple of 'em.

This was a Birthday card for my wife, Julie. Featuring the gang of animals that do their best to distract me from my work all day long.

Hi Everybody,

I've got a new portfolio/blog site up at www.roehling-animation.com, so if you're inclined to click on strange links, give it a look. I'll probably be updating both this blog and that one simultaneously, if I can figure out all that Wordpress php mumbo jumbo.

Yup yup yup, another warmup. I got a sepia tone Pentel pocketbrush, and I'm playin' around with that. Goes great with brown paper, so it seems. This one's another shaman, I dunno why I get stuck on certain design/characters like this. It's like I've gotta flush it out of my system before my brain can move on.

I did kind of a short body cleansing thing this last week. You know, aside from showers. I realized how ridiculously hooked I was on caffeine, so I went a week without caffeine, alchohol, sugar, etc. Aside from the headaches the first couple days, it wasn't so bad. Today I had my first cup of coffee, and damn, it's crazy what a week can do to wipe out a built up tolerance. Halfway through one cup I had to stop, I'm jittery as all hell. Maybe I should do this cleansing stuff more often, given that I typically go through a bag of coffee beans in a week. Hmmm...

Here's some recent work for Wizards of the Coast's June issue of "Dragon Magazine." It's been published, so I think I'm safe putting it up here. The linework was done on bristol with brush and ink, and then all the colors and flashy bits are Photoshop.

Wizards of the Coast has been on my list of dream clients since I started freelancing, so that's awesome. I've always been a huge geek for fantasy art. The art director I worked with (Jon Schindehette) was great, and he even brought me in for a tour of their offices. Man, I though Video-game studios were nerdy, but I've never seen so many figurines, posters, and other knicknacks in one place. It looks like a pretty cool office to work in, as far as offices go.

I needed to practice drybrushing in a focused manner, so I decided to do a pinup image. The main cast of "DangerGirl" seemed to fit the bill.

It seems it's much easier to completely screw up rendering the female form than it is for the male form. I've read that the fewer ink lines on a female face the better, and I do find it true that very few artists have made pen and ink rendering on a drawing of a woman's face look... right. Too many lines on a female face, and she starts to look craggy and unappealing. Maybe it's just that we have the built in expectation that the female form should look softer than men. Or maybe we're unused to seeing heavy shadows on women in popular media. Or maybe, just maybe, I'm overthinking this and should just draw instead.

Anyway I don't know if the drybrushing is entirely successful, but I like how it turned out overall.

A couple more sketches in the toned paper sketchbook. These are sketches of fellow patrons of a local coffee shop.

I've been sketching on toned paper with some Col-erase pencils and a Pentel pocketbrush. Good times!