Rocket Rabbit
It’s been a while since I’ve done a painting. With several long-term ongoing projects I sometimes need to do something smaller that I can finish in a few days. I’m really happy with how this one turned out.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a painting. With several long-term ongoing projects I sometimes need to do something smaller that I can finish in a few days. I’m really happy with how this one turned out.
Ha! This month’s Character Design Challenge theme is Space Pirates. A bit of a busman’s holiday for me.
It may be 4/20, but this isn’t what it looks like. It’s a homemade airbrush cleaning chamber. I gorilla-glued the neck of an olive oil bottle to a Trader Joe’s sauerkraut jar. Inside are pencil shavings and wadded up napkins for absorbing whatever is sprayed in. Why pay $20 for something when you can spend 100 hours making it yourself?
A vector drawing of the Black Star. The maquette I made really helped to flesh out the details.
While working on Space Pirates, I came across a challenge trying to draw the main ship, the Black Star, from different angles, so I decided to build a quick maquette of it. I sculpted it from Super Scupley and cured it in the oven. Then I scribed panel lines, drilled rivet holes, and glued on some washers for portholes. I primed and shaded it, then did the final paint and weathering. It’s very rough but I like how it turned out.
Another Space Pirates character, the chief strategist of the Space Pirates crew. Conceptually, I want him to look like a highly-intelligent lizard alien. I haven’t settled on a name.
Refining my character design for Captain Greenbeard, the leader of the Space Pirates crew.
I tried a bit of a different style with this digital painting.
7” x 10” painted in gouache. I did an initial comp in Procreate on the iPad.
Color mixing can be challenging. A lot of times I make a digital color comp for a painting, print it out, and then use it as a guide for matching colors against.
My first painting using gouache. So far so good. Happy Valentine’s Day!
This is a character that’s been with me for quite a while now. I call him “Bindlebot”. He’s the first robot I painted after deciding to put more effort into illustration, and I’ve done a few versions of him since then. It makes me happy to know that he’s always out there on his adventure. He’s the logo for Robot Roundup as well as Rainbot for the letter R.
Robot Roundup is the name for my series of robot ABC characters. It’s nearing completion, I can’t wait to share them with you!
King Neptune is another character I’m developing for my Space Pirates story. He’s the stern but fair king of Neptune, and he won’t suffer pirates in his kingdom! He’s also inspired by John Roderick’s reign as King Neptune at last year’s Seattle Seafair.
A concept I’m working on for my Space Pirates picture book.
I found a doodle of this guy I did a few months ago, so I played around with rendering him in Procreate and gouache brushes from Tip Top Brushes.