Daily Doodle - Tiger Tiger

I'm returning to a somewhat normal schedule after an unexpected trip out of town and a busy weekend with very little sleep. Daily Doodles has been a way for me to warm up, experiment, and improve a little bit at a time. Here I was able to add a lot of dimension to the character with the airbrush and gradients to compliment the bolder graphic lines of the piece. I couldn't help but think of the Shirt Tales when I was working on this one. For those curious that is a Smile t-shirt the character is wearing. Not sure is there actually are Smile t-shirts but there should be. Raina Telgemeier's book is a great read.

Daily Doodle - Wolf & Rider Sketch

At the conclusion of this past weekend's Pauper Game Day one of the participants had an excellent idea of incorporating the winner's portrait into the next token. I thought it was a really interesting idea and it gave me the inspiration to produce this sketch just to try it out. Traditionally Elves don't have facial hair so maybe this is a half-elf. Or maybe I'll just change the ears to make him human. Either way its a nice start.

Pauper Game Day

This weekend I hosted a Magic the Gathering Pauper event at the local gaming store and everyone who came out had a blast! For the previous Pauper Magic event I hosted, I created an exclusive token card as a give away for each participant. This time I expanded on the idea and created four separate tokens within an interlocking panorama as seen above.

They were well received and I was very happy with the results. The last few days have been so busy. Having just returned from a funeral out of town on Wednesday, I only had a few days to finalize the tokens. There were several long nights and I am still bleary-eyed from the experience but I loved it. My wife was very supportive of my efforts even though she knew it meant time away from her and the kids. The "kids" (our cats) were a little confused by my efforts burning the midnight oil. Patches probably thought daddy was in trouble for some reason.

Daily Doodle - Monster Inks

Inked this while listening to the Escape From Illustration Island podcast with Kevin Cross earlier today. They had a good discussion about changing their styles. One thing that stood out to me was Kevin's comment on how challenging a simpler cartoon style is to achieve. That's one of the things I have struggled with in my own work; just how cartoony or quasi-realistic to make it. How much detail to include. Every piece is a single step in a never ending journey. I created a second version as well and after staring at them all day I'm not sure which one I like more. Or less. One seems heavy handed and the other seems littered with unnecessary details.

//DOUBLE EDIT:

Here's a completely different version I sketched and inked. Not sure if its better or worse than the others or simply different.
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In other news, this weekend I took a day trip up to Charlotte for Heroes Con and had a blast. I got an opportunity to reconnect with some friends from college as well as meet some others I know online. It was a great experience and really got me excited about my work and the comics industry at large.

Daily Doodle - Pauper Monsters!

Here are a few sketches I'm working on for a token card. They will be giveaways as part of my next Pauper Magic event coming up later this month. I hope to top the Goblin I did in January in complexity if nothing else.