Subsonic Tortoise

I started to doodle and this is what came out.

. . .Before they’re hatched

I realized I hadn’t posted this week so I thought I’d knock out a quick Photoshop illustration based on a well-known figure of speech.

KFC-The Sargeant’s Own

I had this idea almost a year ago. It seemed like a good time to rev up illustrator and “flesh” out the concept. The crispness of vector art is attractive to me, probably because my sketches tend to be very rough. I usually use the pen tool exclusively when I do this type of illustration. However, if I’m able to accept the looseness of the pencil tool, it can really speed up the process and add a spontaneity not inherent in the pen tool. I really like J. Otto Siebold’s work because in addition to being extremely complex (his Alice in Wonderland pop-up book is mind boggling), but he balances clarity, precision, and spontaneity.

Tree Swallow

Wanting time to sketch birds and time to sketch digitally I decided to combine my tasks and divide my efforts. This image was sketched from a reference photo in Illustrator using pencil tool and basic brushes for the bird and watercolor brushes for the background.