I’m losing my touch, everybody. I feel like I don’t even remember how to draw some of these characters anymore. I’m so out of touch. I want to do more with these guys, though right now I’m stinking it up big time. 

Trying to work on some new characters, but nothing was coming out the way I wanted. And then I slowed way the heck down, and look at it. I tend to draw and very fast, loose strokes and sometimes that can work well but much of the time it just produces art that looks very off. When I slow down I can have much more control over pressure and direction of the lines. I know that sounds very basic and obvious, but I just don’t draw that way normally so I tend to forget how much it can help. 

Slowly improving this piece. I’ll most likely condense all these WIP posts into one once I’m done with this, and we’re getting closer to that. I have it as finished as it’ll be by the end of the week. 

This is as far as I’ve got on this car advert WIP. I’m trying not to rush myself with this one, as I have a tendency to quit these kind of pieces before they’re really “done.” I’m gonna start on some of the other images I’m working on first before coming back to this one.

I’m working on an old-fashioned style of car advertisement, and I came up with 12 thumbnails and I’ve whittled it down to these 6. The one I ultimately choose I’ll still mess around with, but this is just about getting the shape down and starting

So, which one or two of these do you guys think is best?

Wanted to get some more color on this blog, so I did some color sketches/painting things. I’ll have something like this up here everyday, because these things are really helping me loosen up and, weirdly, relax a little bit more when I’m drawing other stuff. 

Drew some Nation of Eln people for a bit of a warm-up this evening. These are my ideas for different ethnic/cultural groups inside of Eln itself, divided up into three main groups; central, coastal and southern. The central and coastal groups mostly differ in build and skin tone, but they also mix fairly readily so there are a lot of people with features somewhere in between.

The third group, the southern, is the most different in that their ears typically have no lobes, they have a more wide and flattened nose, and their eyes are substantially larger than the other two types. They’re also consistently about a foot shorter and have a quite muscular build. Because of their more obvious differences and their more remote populations and independent nature, they’re frequently discriminated against and are viewed as being little better than wild animals. Most of the citizens of Eln know almost nothing about them and have no interest in changing that any time soon.  

More building design, this time something more realistic and modern. This is actually another attempt at a coffee shop, but very different from the previous one. Now a more boxy, early 20th-century structure with only two levels and nestled in the corner between two other buildings. This one’s more modest, but I think I like it more. 

Yeah, I…..kinda have a habit of filling every nook and cranny with doodles. In this case, it’s disembodied mouths and eyes and the like to fill in the gaps between Rene sketches. I’m attempting to work on faces as that’s something I’ve never been brilliant at. Though, if I finally started drawing a dang comic again, I’d probably improve faster…

Fiddlin’ around with more whimsical building designs, which is actually something I’m not very comfortable with at all. It’s inspired by old eastern european castles as well as coffeepots because it’s a coffee shop.  

Trying to doodle. In case you haven’t noticed (and I’m honest surprised if you haven’t) I tend to go through phases where I consistently draw a lot and then phases where I hardly make any art at all. I’m trying to rectify that because I always feel better and more confident when I’m using what little artistic skills I have on a regular basis. So, here we go again.

I have been preparing a television-style series pitch for this comic I’m working on, but I keep changing my mind about what it is and that kinda causes problems. Also trying to paint everything causes it to take forever. 

And I was really just doing this for myself, so I decided it was a better idea to just post what I’ve finished and move on to making actual comics instead. 

Not feeling super-hot about how I’m drawing lately, but I’m trying to overcome it. So, here’s a weird guy who seems to have some *product* that he’d like to sell you. 

Little illustration from an idea I had yesterday. Calling it “Coast to Coast.” Because, for some reason, I felt compelled to give it a name.