Red Crow Studio sketchblog

Gaijin Studios Figure Drawing Session

Last night I went over to Gaijin Studios to participate in their now weekly figure drawing class. The Gaijin guys are an amazingly talented bunch, and I figured they would know what they were doing in finding a good model and setting up some good lights, and I was not disappointed. The model was a real pro who could hold a pose like he was frozen in time. The lighting was great, and provided some good form and definition to work with. Here are the sketches I did, starting with some quick pose drawings and ending with a few 20-minute poses. All of these were done with black prismacolor pencil on light newsprint paper, except for the last two, when I got out the charcoal pencil and blending stump.

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School Again

Last week, I went back for another session of Dr. Sketchy's at the East Side Lounge here in Atlanta. The model was the beautiful Vesperi.

Here are some drawings from the set of quick 2-minute poses that the session began with:

next were some longer poses:

graphite on kraft paper

I was drawing on a dark toned brown kraft paper, and unfortunately was seated so I was having to draw in the shadow of my own hand due to the light setup. It was a struggle to see the lines I was putting down in pencil, so I switched over to my brush pen and did some loose drawings. I lost the proportions on this one (tiny head!):

pentel pocketbrush on kraft paper

Labels: life drawing

Tater Tot fueled drawings

Some sketches from last Tuesday's Boozer Doodle and Tater Tot Extravaganza at the Laughing Skull Lounge (inside The Vortex in Midtown Atlanta).

Medium: white and black charcoal pencil on kraft paper

The theme for the night was donuts (thats a Krispy Kreme hat on her head). I won some Vortex dollars in the Zombies vs. Donuts drawing challenge - results to be posted on the Boozer Doodle site at some point. Yay me!
"Donuts...Is there anything they can't do?" -- Homer J. Simpson.

Moleskine sketches

Here's few sketches and studies for illustrations from my moleskine sketchbook (the 5.25" x 8.25" one). I like to sketch with a blue Col-erase pencil (an erasable color pencil). I like the smooth texture of it, and since it just doesn't look as permanent as a graphite line, it lets me stay free and loose with the drawing.

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

Here's a few figure drawings from last nights Dr. Sketchy's life drawing session in Atlanta. The lighting was a little dodgy, with me drawing under the heavy shadow of my hand sometimes (being a lefty would have paid off last night), but it was a fun way to spend a few hours. I'm looking forward to the next one.

These next two were an interesting experiment: we had two minutes to study the model, without putting pencil to paper, and then had five minutes to draw that pose from memory.

and then I decided to take the Pentel Pocket Brush for a spin:

Whats new

Given the length of time since my last post here, it looks like I've abandoned this blog. Not so! I hope to post some sketches, scrawls and what not when I can. Its just that 99.9% of my recent output has been under some form of NDA or other, especially including my current full-time gig as a concept artist at CCP NA | White Wolf.

Still, I want to make more time for some sketchin' on the side, even if its just coffee house doodles. Let see if I can make it happen...

how about one more werewolf?

More werewolves

Ghostwolf

From some work I did for White Wolf a few months back.

Pendragon sketches 4

Overall, I did fifty five of these portraits for The Great Pendragon Campaign, along with a few half-page illustrations, and there's no way I can post them all here. If you want to see them all, you'll just have to buy the book! I will, however, give you a look at how the final art looks. Each piece begins as a rough blue pencil drawing on grey toned paper (in this case Rives BFK), and then is refined and tightened up with graphite pencil. White highlights are added with a white prismacolor pencil and then the drawing is scanned and brought into photoshop. I adjust it and tweak it if necessary, and then add one of the ornamental border designs I developed for each of the Arthurian periods. After that, the character's heraldic device is incorporated, and then he/she is ready to go.

Here's Sir Palomides, the Saracen knight, who you can see in raw form in the second Pendragon post below:

Pendragon sketches 3

Of course, I have to include the two lovers, Lancelot and Guenever:

Younger Lancelot:

and the older Lancelot of the twilight of Camelot:

Young Queen Guenever:

The older Queen of Camelot's prime:

and the aging Guenever after taking up the cloth:

Pendragon sketches 2

Here are a few more Arthurian characters:
Prince Madoc (bastard son of Uther Pendragon):

Brastias:

Sir Palomides:

Ninaeve:

Pendragon sketches

So, I started this sketchblog a long time ago, and then never posted to it! Its about time I changed that, so here are some sketches I did for a book called The Great Pendragon Campaign, a sourcebook for the classic King Arthur roleplaying game Pendragon. These are portraits of some of the characters that appear throughout the Arthurian age, some of them well-known, some of them not. The game divides the age into periods, and I had to draw some of the characters at the different stages of their lives throughout, so you can see Arthur go from boy king to the old king of Camelot's twilight:

More to come soon.