IF: Clutter

"Fashionable Clutter": Mixed Media: china marker, pencil, ink, collage, gouache, watercolor, acrylic.

IF: Routine (Flight), CD Cover Mockup

Routine Flight: Pen and ink on paper, scanned, digitally colored, layered on acrylic painting that was also scanned, type added digitally.

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday topic, Routine. The text got a little squishy when compressed since the original is 2200x2200 pixels.

Experiments in Style and Liner Pens

Just a quick entry to post a little experiment to see if the raw line + graphic style of the canned series would work with my figurative stuff. I think it works just fine. Now I'm thinking my girls should have some arms so they can hold cans, bottles, etc. Maybe they could even stock some shelves.


Also, the image above is a short demo of microns vs. prismacolor liners under the solvent based chartpak markers. As you can see the prismacolors hold up much better than the microns. I've done other tests as well with watercolor and acrylics and the prismas always come out on top.

Three Bees: A Re-make

I decided to play around with an old piece of line art that I scanned in a while ago. I think I dig it.

Details: hand drawn ink (can't remember the pens now but I'm betting on Microns) then scanned in and digitally colored.

IF: Garden, Chartpak Markers, Etc.

Here are a couple of Garden Girls for Illustration Friday's topic this week: Garden. I really like the color combos and line work. As always I love me some feedback and welcome your opinions. Read below for more info.




I went out and made an investment in some Chartpak AD markers. There is nothing else like them out there. The end results are really great - hardly any noticable strokes at all. Just be prepared to get a little high while using them. I can typically stand the smell for a little bit but lately I have noticed a distinct belly ache after using them for too long. That could be due to a recent battle with the flu though. Bottom line: If you're easily offended by smells then these are not the markers for you. Stick with Prismacolor and deal with the dried-out-marker-stroke-look. If you can tolerate something smelly for art's sake then Chartpaks are the way to go.

The line work is done with Prismacolor Fine Liners. I love them. They are waterproof - and really are waterproof - plus they hold up against the solvent base of the Chartpaks without running or smudging. Nice! They come in about half a dozen colors and all the standard fine line sizes. I prefer the tiny .005 over anything else. The illustrations above have some blue, green, and brown - all .005 line widths.

Oh, I tried the recommended marker paper as well - Beinfang Graphics 360 - and I'm not crazy about it. I have been using archival, bright white copy stock instead which these two pieces are done on.

Edit: Beinfang seems to be a great drawing paper. It takes ink without bleading and is transparent enough to trace with. I'm just not thrilled with how it handles the Chartpaks. They seem to make the paper more transparent then it already was - almost a glassy, vellum kind of thing happens to it.

Random Illustrations

These don't really apply to any of the Illustration Friday stuff lately so I thought I would just post them here for the simple sake of sharing them. As always, feedback is welcome and appriciated.

On the new art front... I've got an idea for a new series that I am really excited about. Yeah, I got a little bored with the angel thing. I may revisit it again but right now I am inspired to do something else. Oddly enough the inspiration came from a samsonite disply at Macy's. Sketches to come soon.