Summer is Here!

 Celebrating summer with this week's Saturday Morning Doodle!

Now that it's after Memorial Day, the summer is upon us. Vacations, having fun at the beach, riding a bike through a canyon, sipping some iced tea by the pool.

Enjoy!

Addiction to tech

 Now that many of us are back from a long holiday weekend, today's WRAP (Wednesday Random Art Post) I've selected this drawing from one of my old sketchbooks. The fact that it is an old drawing at this point and we still have to deal with people looking down at their phones while doing something very public, says a lot about our addiction to this device.

I drew this with a dark green polychromos pencil on sketch paper.

Saturday morning

 This week's Saturday Morning Doodle.

I noticed a lot of birders this last week.

Cruise Ship Season

 A little late in posting an appropriate piece of art for the start of Cruise Season in Seattle. Better late than never.

I used to ride my bicycle past those big ships when they were in port, north of downtown Seattle. Haven't done that in a while. Maybe this summer.

These concept ink drawings were done a few years ago, with possibly making paintings from some of them.

Enatai Beach, all 12 chapters!

 Start your summer reading today, with the first chapter. 12 weeks of summer wrapped up in 12 chapters.

Start that journey today on my Amazon page.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZT44GDF?binding=paperback&searchxofy=true&ref_=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tpbk&qid=1715364218&sr=8-5

Pages from an old sketch book

 Concepting art for games or animation studios is one of my all time favorite parts of what I do for a living. I can come up a at least 10 viable ideas in an afternoon and have most of them roughly drawn out.

I usually don't hesitate, but I do make time in the beginning for looking around for inspiration to spark some ideas. This usually doesn't take too long.
It's a lot of fun getting those ideas in some sort of form that is easily understood, visually.
Then there are the drawings I do in my sketchbooks. Those don't have a motivating factor that I'm trying to appease. It's just my mind wandering through various thoughts.
Here are a few pages from an old sketchbook. The unifying idea for these: "Contraptions".

Character concepting

 Concepting characters can be so much fun, especially at the beginning of a project and before the style is reigned in. Exploration is finding the visual depth of characters and so much of the time when the style gets reigned in it gets sanitized to the point where the characters look like they were stamped out in factory. Not every character design needs to look like a Pixar marshmallow. And bravo for some animation studios for taking a different tact with character design. Same for game studios.

So when you are given a chance to explore your own ideas about what a character should look like, let your mind find your best ideas that aren't obvious and start drawing!

Here are some quick character drawings early on for a project, that went from mild to wild rather quickly. I'll post others another time.

Another Saturday, Another Doodle

 This weekend's Saturday morning Doodle.

HATS!

 Concept Doodles help to release stress and have some fun in between all the stuff you have to do for your job.

This set of Doodles is basically about HATS! From the time I was a kid, I've always loved wearing hats. So for this session of Doodles I made different hats on some humans and hats on some basic creatures.

What do you do to release stress on a daily basis?

Peach Blossom

 Some years ago I worked on a picture book concept called "Peach Blossom's Birthday Party" and did a ton of drawings for it. Here are a couple of those drawings with the color versions.

Happy Earth Day!

 Let's do better.

Get your ticket to INK TOWN!

 My NEW Art Book, available on Amazon now. 

As an artist I tend to draw everywhere I go. Buses, cars, trains, planes, coffee houses, restaurants, etc. Annoying everyone that I have a relationship with. But it did help me constantly to work out ideas for working in the game biz, picture book biz and to amuse friends and strangers. I love drawing and can draw all day.

This book is filled with a simpler style then I do when I'm doodling or working on concepts for work. Many of them are funny and some are sad. (but not many)

I think you'll get a lot of fun from this book for years and years. With some of these drawings that may become actual stories. Or you can make up your own stories based on one or more of these drawings. Either way it's a great book for you, your family or your friends. And maybe a few strangers. Get your copy today!

Quirky Ink Drawings

 A few years ago I decided to use a thick ink brush pen (Tombow ABT N15) to do some striped down, simple and quirky ink drawings. This was so much fun. Need to do more soon.

I only have names for three of them. Middle Left: "Guitar with Puppets"

Bottom Left: "Coffee Well of Souls" and the Bottom Right: "Planet of Robots at Sunset"

Newbies

 For so much of what we do as artists in the game biz, we concentrate on so many tiny details and making sure we get all the items in that a game needs to attract eyes. A simpler approach is just as appealing and can be done faster and at a lower cost. And there are plenty of examples out there.

Here is just one example of a concept that I pitched but sadly, didn't go anywhere. I'm not a game play designer so my thoughts about how to play the game was about as simple as the art for the game. I still think it could have worked.
"Newbies"

New drawing from this last week...

I call this one "The iPad Generation"... look up every once in a while will ya'!

Paired down Robots...

I simplified the robots I did a few weeks ago... 

The "BEE STING"...

Visually, this is how I think it felt to get a bee sting on my forehead just over a week ago!

I had to draw it right away to get that feeling onto paper...

My art in a show in San Francisco Aug 8th!

I just got confirmation that they got my art that I shipped off on Monday for the "The Murray Affair: A Bill Murray Art Tribute in San Francisco on Friday! Woo-hoo!!!
Wish I could be there in person! Here's the art that I sent to the show:

I did this art back in the late 80s... before the internet. I had an art studio in Los Angeles on Wilshire Blvd (the 5455 building, which used to be a turquise and is now jet black) several blocks east of the LACMA and LaBrea Tar Pits. I had just done some work for Paramount on "Coming to America"... the director took me on the stage of Star Trek the next generation, so I got to see the sets and what they were made of, which came as a bit of a shock to me, even though I had been on sound stages and knew how they put together movies. The director asked me to do a Star Trek illustration for lunch boxes and also to do a Bill Murray painting. He didn't say what he wanted to do with the Bill Murray painting (color pencil on top of wash.) but I got to keep the original.

Title: "Venkman"

ROBOTS!!!

I sat on my porch drawing Robots last week. These are just the heads but I thought I'd share.

New Drawing!: "Lunar Patrol"

I haven't been doing much in the way of painting this summer. It's hard to stay indoors when it's so nice outside. So I end up taking my sketchbook somewhere and draw for several hours instead. Painting to commence once the summer time is over.