Days 5 and 6

My 80's robot, complete with wrist bands, leg warmers, and scrunchie. He's dancing...doing "the robot" of course.



I don't know what this crazy old guy is pointing that gun at....maybe a dancing 80's robot.

Day Four

Day four of the 21 day creative exercise. A little back story on this one....my dog is a little too friendly at the dog park. So we started calling her our little pug slut :-)

Day 3 and Illustration Friday

Day 3 of the 21 day creative exercise. Also my submission for this week's Illustration Friday topic "enough."

Sadly, this little guy would never be tall enough.

Day 2

I haven't been able to get into any books lately....maybe this is why.

21 Day Creative Exercise

I've decided to start a 21 day creative exercise. It is best explained here. The rules I have set for myself are to spend between 15-30 minutes each day drawing anything I can think of, as long as I don't use any photo references. The reason for this is that sometimes I spend more time looking for the perfect picture of what I want to draw instead of actually drawing.

This is what I came up with for Day 1. I can't tell you what it is, but I think it is something I will revisit later. I think it could be really cool in color.

a few character sketches

Just a couple of quick sketches since it's been a while. I drew them after reading "How to draw comics the Marvel way."

The Marvel Way

Just picked up a copy of "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way." Here is a quick sketch of The Kingpin.

It's been a while

I haven't had much time to draw or paint, but here are a few random sketches I did over the Memorial Day weekend.

This is another ink drawing I did....I'm still not happy with it, but there are some things I like. I was trying a different technique that I read about, but I don't really think it worked well so I probably won't be doing it that way again.


This is just a quick sketch of an old SUV that I did with markers.


Another marker sketch. I think I went overboard with the circles at the top, but this has the potential to be something really cool one day.

Art is in my DNA

This is a preliminary sketch for my logo. Being the science dork that I am, I thought incorporating the DNA double helix into the logo would be cool. So I had the idea of using a pencil and paintbrush.

Ugly Fish

Random sketch using Pigma Micron in my moleskine.

Science in action

A lot of my job is sitting around and waiting for results. Today I had 15 minutes in the lab with nothing to do except wait. So I decided to covertly sketch a new employee who was busy doing her training. I managed to get the basic shapes down, but didn't have time to do much shading before I had to get back to work.

Fridays off!

I've started a new schedule where I work four 10-hour days with Fridays off every week. This means I don't have time to work on anything new during the week, but also that I will have an entire day to myself that I can spend drawing & painting. With nice weather fast approaching, I really want to spend those days off going out to different places around the city and just sketching for a few hours. Of course it rained all day on my first Friday off, so instead I spent the day finally putting pics from several trips into photo albums. I decided to sketch a few of the photos, so here is the first one. It is the California Lighthouse in Aruba. I went there several years ago....long before I ever thought of a travel sketchbook. The sketch is done using a Micron pen and my travel watercolor set in a moleskine watercolor book.

Hillary in pencil

I was working on this sketch for a couple of days, mostly trying to practice shading. I'm so used to drawing everything with outlines, that I really need to work on shading. There are some things I like about it (the earring, nose, hair, and mouth), but also some things that need improvement (the proportions of the face are off).

I chose Hillary because I thought the original picture was awesome.

pen & ink drawing

A quick sketch I did in my Moleskine sketchbook using a 35mm micron pen and a photo reference. I had a hard time shading the face, but for my 1st ink drawing it's not bad.

Random Watercolor Pencil

I've been playing around with ink & watercolor, and ink and watercolor pencils. Here are a couple of quick sketches I did using a crow quill pen and black ink. I really like this look so I am going to practice in this style more. Today I bought a Moleskine watercolor notebook and a field watercolor set to keep a travel sketchbook. Hopefully I'll have lots to post later.

Hook, line, and sinker

There's a possibility I may be doing a logo for someone who is starting a fishing lure business. Since I heard about it I've been brainstorming some ideas. Here are just a couple preliminary sketches.

Graphic novel

In preparation to possibly illustrate a graphic novel that a friend may or may not ever write, I am trying to learn how to draw in that style. I've read a few Frank Miller books and have started looking through others. What I've realized is that there is not just one style, but many. So I guess I will just have to figure out what style I am good at. My first goal is to draw realistic looking heads/faces. Here is one of my first attempts:





Once I get these down using pencil, I'm going to try my hand at ink.

Moleskine book

I finally got around to buying myself a Moleskine sketchbook. I used a small one when working on the Sketchbook Project, but that never really felt like it was mine. Now I have one to call my own. It's impossible to not feel inspired when you own one of these...I mean this is the same book that Picasso and Hemingway used! I feel like I want to draw, paint, write...anything...I just have to do SOMETHING!

I sketched a stone wall I had seen in a book using watercolor pencils....which is how I realized the Moleskine sketchbooks do not handle water well. I guess now I have an excuse to go buy the Moleskine watercolor book.

More Logo Work

This is a rough sketch of another idea I had for my friend's website logo (see post below).  His initial's are actually ME, and that is how he usually signs his posts, emails, etc, so I think this design works as a play on both letters.  The initial sketch was done in pencil (on the back of an old xerox copy....gotta love drawing at work!), and then colored with a black sharpie.  Later, when I'm not on company time, I'll see what I can do in Illustrator. 

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