Speaker Sketches: Oregon SCBWI Conference

Attended the Oregon SCBWI Conference this weekend. Had a splendid time chatting with everyone and of course doing quick sketches of some of the speakers. I'm looking forward to seeing how the chapter continues to move forward and evolve!

Characters: People Who Sat Still

A collection of sketches made while waiting. These people were kind enough to sit still long enough for me to grab a likeness. (Bless 'em!)

Recent Sketch

These are some sketches done with my left hand (I've always been envious of those who are ambidextrous -- just seems like you'd get twice as much done) Anyway, it was weird and cool at the same time; the way I wasn't quite sure what mark my hand was about to make.

Recent Sketch: Allen Say

Illustrator and author Allen Say was doing a talk / book signing at A Children's Place bookstore this weekend to promote his recent book  "The Boy in the Garden". I headed down to listen and check out all the new titles and couldn't resist doing a drawing while the talk was going on.

Recent Sketch

Recent observations on paper. The location I did this page in was so dark these almost qualify as blind contour drawings. I would like to note that the faux-hawk girl and the guitar guy are rendered from careful observation -- you can't make this stuff up.

Recent Sketches

9.15.09 Various Sketches

I participate in an illustrator blog where the challenge is to do at least a page of sketching a day. This is oddly more challenging than it sounds but incredibly helpful. I find it easy to fall into the trap of "this is what I do -- this is how I draw". When you've got to do that every day I find that it gets old eventually. One can't help but start branching out to try other things. I've noticed that I no longer draw edges (or at least edges aren't the focus of my drawing) but rather shapes of light and dark and let the edges sort themselves out.

Author Portraits: Twain

In continuing the "Who's more fun than . . ." theme, here's Mark Twain.
I'm noticing an early trend -- this might actually turn out to be all about authors with exaggerated facial hair.

Author Portraits: Tolstoy

Thought that I'd create a series of portraits of fun, interesting, thought-provoking authors.
Who better to start with than Tolstoy?

PIXEL SHOW

This last weekend was PIXEL: Artists who use the computer
The show featured artwork, demos, and discussions by illustrators from all over the country who use digital mediums.

The invited artists include:
J. Otto Seibold
LeUyen Pham
David Hohn
Tadahiro Uesugi
Darrel Anderson
Martin French
Echo Chernik
Brian Despain
Greg Epkes
Jon Foster
Jason Felix
Lee Moyer
Tyson Mangelsdorf

There were a number of moderated discussions and demos by invited artists but I particularly enjoyed J. Otto Seibold's talk about his work. Here's a picture of J. Otto as he was talking:




I'm looking forward to participating similar illustrator-oriented events here in Portland.