the very gross princess

Next illustration course assignment: children's book. We chose between three short children's stories from a competition, and were tasked with making a storyboard, character studies and a sample picture for the book. Obviously I chose the gross one. A rather crappy one actually (pun!).

It's about a princess who's so fine she won't go to the loo when she's awake. So she goes in the night, in her sleep, until a paparazzi snaps a shot of her sleep...ehm...walking. The king locks the toilet, the princess gets all fat(?!) and constipated. Until a maiden offers her a juicy plum, and bada-boom!

Click for a bigger version.


One thing's for sure, this book isn't helping children understand the difference between stomach and intestines.
Pencil, watercolour, silver and gold pens (yes!). Took about 6 hours.

like cats and dogs

Well, so much for the weekly updates!
During the past month and a half I attended the last few lessons of the illustration course, and only recently got around to completing (most of) the assignments that we started working on there. I have a full time job, and time is scarce...
This is the first of the last three assignments. We got tasked with making a storyboard and then a comic based on a few words that we unwittingly picked at random. They were: dog, cat, sun chair, Christmas tree, heat and ache (from training). This is what I came up with (click for a bigger version).



Yeah, not much dialogue. I wanted to go for a sort of black and white slapstick comedy feel. I even thought I'd draw it like an old '30s Mickey Mouse cartoon, but my hands got the best of me.
Pencil and china ink, took about 7 hours.

the geek toolbelt

I just submitted a design for the "Threadless loves Geeks" competition, sponsored by Microsoft.



It seems like the design is also open for regular scoring, which means that if I get a good enough average it will become part of their catalogue! So please, click the banner on left and vote!
EDIT: Well, my submission was declined :(
I guess it shows it was made in a hurry... I'll try to be a good sport and take this constructively, so expect a revamped version in the coming weeks, because I still like the idea!

the old olympus

The second task we were given at the illustration course was to draw an object of our choice. We were told to bring something metallic and with some detail, so I thought: what better than my stepfather's old Olympus OM-1?! I kind of underestimated just how much detail it had...



I'll admit I cut some corners, it was too much! But most of it is there.
Pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache. Took about 3 hours.

greeting card

This is the first product of the illustration course I just started attending.



We were tasked with creating two greeting cards, a serious one and a silly one, and I came up with 4 sketches. This was meant to be the serious one at first, but quickly turned into this... it was the one that the others found most entertaining (mostly due to the mimicry of the characters) and was also the one that looked nicest. So I finished inking it, and when I got home I cleaned it up in Photoshop and added shadows and some shades of gray. In total it took about 1 hour.

late post and some changes

No post this week yet, unfortunately.
It's been a bit messy since both me and my brother-in-law had our birthday this week. Mine was yesterday and it was the feared nr 30... It did bring with it some good though, since my lovely partner gave me a great present: a course in illustration held by Johanna Rehn, a young swedish artist (check out her homepage). You'll see its fruits in the coming weeks.
In other news, my design for the GWJ T-shirt didn't win, which is a bit sad. It doesn't really matter though, it was fun and I learnt a few things. I got the T-shirt bug now, so there will be more of that in the future!
Whatever time I had left over was wasted trying to learn a bit of CSS to fix the Blogger template, without much success so far... but expect some changes soon! Hopefully I'll have the next piece up before the end of the week, and then I'll try to stick to a weekly schedule.
Stay tuned!

gwj t-shirt contest entry

So this is it! First post!
Here's my submission for a contest issued by Gamers With Jobs, a great community site for videogames. They wanted a proposal for a new T-Shirt design, so I put this together. They'll publish the results soonish, fingers crossed! Not that I stand to win any money, mind you, but it would be awesome to see my design printed!
Go take a look if you like videogames, it's a very friendly and mature community, and they have a fantastic weekly podcast. I lurk in their forums under the screen name il dottore.



Please comment! Otherwise I'll never learn :)