I’ve Got The Itch Again
I’ve been very busy this past week. A friend of mind Brad (no relation), twists my arm every once in a while to get involved in shows or contests… nine times out of ten I bail. This time I thought it could be an opportunity to see what I could do with my sketches I’ve been making of cartoon characters. I approached it much like I was doing back in 2006 with my Music Royalty series.
Charlie Brown, Milhouse & SpongeBob SquarePants
I started on some Masters of the Universe sketches: Man at Arms
& Sorceress
I also got going on roughing out the fox for my forest painting.
I also learned gesso doesn’t last 10 years. Mine was rock hard, I guess I need to use it more often;)
Thats it
Later
Cleaning Up
I realized I didn’t share my last sketches of 2014:
Bert Raccoon
Harvey Dent aka Two Face
Beaster
The main Characters of Regular Show – Pops, Rigby, Mordecai, High Five Ghost, Muscle Man, Benson, and Skips
Last week I finally cleaned up my sidebar and background. My sidebar was taking up too much vertical space, and it was missing a link to my commercial portfolio. Even though I will miss my Leitch Selected Portfolio image I’m very happy with the new buttons. I shrank my gravatar and moved my info up beside it, as well as shrank my links to my other pages and added a title. All of this allowed me to add a widget that pulls data to show my most popular posts.
As you might see I have doubles of my links….they’re just placeholder until I finish my other buttons within the next week or two.
That’s it for now, Later.
Getting Inspired
I’ve been a bit all over the place lately, but I’ve recommitted myself to my forest stencil that I bagan at the beginning of 2014. It’s a beast, and with all of the detail it takes forever.
I’m really starting to make ground on it and you can begin to see the trees forming.
To get myself inspired again, I hit up a few art shows in only a couple of days. I checked out Hanna Hur‘s Get Well Soon Slow Editions Book Launch at Art Metropole which was different than most shows I attend. The art book was comprised of flower drawings created while in the hospital, of arrangements visitors had left for the artist. It was pretty rad and the shop as well.
The second show I attended that night was Jon Todd‘s Outsiders at Hermann & Audrey which showcased his brand of portraiture and story telling through mixed media painting and collage. It’s alway great to see his work in person (like any artist for that matter) because you don’t get to experience the scale and depth of the materials used from a computer screen.
Then only a day later I hit up the AGO. I went to finally see the Michelangelo: Quest for Genius and Alex Colville Shows.
To be honest I walked right through Michelangelo: Quest for Genius. I’m not sure if it’s just where I’m at with my own art, but I just found it completely boring. The Alex Colville show in my opinion was amazing. Room upon room of countless works and sketches spanning his career. I found his water colours of the war really cool and thought they would inspire many concept artists with his execution.
Now that I’ve seen that Alex Colville inspired so much of The Shining I should finally watch it… this week would be perfect.
Happy Halloween
Busy End To Summer
I’ve been super busy the last couple of months working on new projects, and finishing some old. I realized I had missed sharing some sketches I had done before I got going on my new commercial portfolio.
Here they are…Lydia_Deetz, Dumb Donald, Jerry, Evil-Lyn, Slimer, and Peter Griffin
Bugs Bunny, and Hank Hill
Also at the end of August I tried my first couple of attempts at plein air . The first is of a neighboring farmers field, and the second, a marina off Lake Huron.
The next time I take a go at these, I want to try using gesso first. The boards were really drinking up the paint, and at times I found it difficult to move my brush across the surface smoothly.
Finally, the last two weeks I’ve been working on a new piece that I had been planning to do for quite a while now. It’s a wolf painting 40″x40″ in spray paint and oil. I’ll share it next post… until then here’s a preview (wasp not included).
later.
Back to Watercolour
Time flies when you’re having fun. Another week of sketches completed. This past week I did Charlie Brown, LSP, Porky Pig, Betty Rubble, and Mordecai.
I also painted a watercolour painting for Wildly Fit, a healthy living company based out of Toronto. It was inspired by my last post “Time for change”. Over the course of the next little while I’ll make a few of these, all with positive messages for their social media channels, and it might build into a larger project.
That’s it for now…Th-Th-Th-Th-Th-That’s all, folks!
Up To Date
When I pulished my last post I realized I had not shared a sketch I had done after the pigeons but before the freelancing gig.
It’s Rick and Morty…
I’ve been hooked on this show from the get go. It’s created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland and it is funny. It’s adult humour with the two main characters inspired by Back to the Future‘s Emmett Brown and Marty McFly.
My first sketch back last week I did Captain Caveman.
And in honour of Canada’s birthday I did the The Log Driver’s Waltz.
I’m starting to gain momentum so hopefully I can share as I go.
Later
Goodfeathers
In past weeks I’ve had a theme for my sketches for the week: dogs, cats, etc. Last week I decided to sketch some characters from the same show with the thought of using Photoshop to piece them together into one image. I chose the The Goodfeathers from Animaniacs. The Goodfeathers was a spoof on characters that were in the Goodfellas and The Godfather movies.
PESTO
BOBBY
SQUIT
Initially I didn’t like the face I had given Squit. It came out way too wacky. He looked more like a Rodney Dangerfield than a Ray Liotta. So for the first time in theses sketches, I erased it and drew a new one that was less wacky, but still keeping in the look of the cartoon character. 
I didn’t like it even more, so instead of wearing a whole in the page (and knowing I was piecing it together in the end anyway) I drew one to the side. I tried less making it look like the cartoon character and more like RayLiotta himself.
Finished off with GODPIGEON
I’m very happy with the result, and the decision to change up Squit’s face.
Think I might get it heat transferred to a shirt.
Later
Jeff The Chef
I ran out of time last week to put up a post, so I have a pile of sketches for this post. I tried some old characters as usual, but I also tried some current stuff.
It always means a lot when my friends and family dig what I’m doing, but it can also be awesome to have a complete stranger like what you up to. Someone on Instagram named “Jeffthechef” left the sweetest message yesterday.
Thanks Jeff #inspiredtokeepsketching
Dog Week
Another week of sketching…
now Stimpy has a Ren,
and Garfield has an Odie (who looks like he’s been sniffing glue).
I’ve gone and scanned each one in now, so if I ever make a print run or a poster, or even decide to photoshop the groups of characters together I can. This week I’m back to random characters…Mickey Mouse and Astro Boy so far…will share next week.
Later
Cat Week
So as I said last week I had to shoot a wedding over the weekend. It was mad hectic for me. The wedding was great, the couple getting married was great (family wedding) ….no complaints what so ever. It was the stress of making sure I got decent shots. Turned out, I got some really great pics. For the next couple weeks I’ll be spending my time sorting through them all, so cutting my stencil will stay on the back burner. Once the couple sees them maybe I’ll share them here too.
Last week was cat week with my sketches
This week I’ve been doing dogs – snoopy, underdog, maybe an odie, and I think I’m going to ditch the themes after that and go back to a bunch of randoms again.
