Here's just a quick sketch I did this morning. My African rose-ringed parakeet (Psittacula krameri krameri), Griffin, was falling asleep and I thought it was cute so I decided to sketch him:
Monday, November 2, 2020
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Inktober 2020
With all the extra time at home I thought it was a good year to try participating in Inktober, where you create and share an ink drawing based on a list of prompts for each day during the month of October.
I successfully completed all the prompts, although there were a few days where I got behind and had to do multiple drawing to catch up, especially once we started raising a new dog. This was a great experience to force me to just push stuff out. Any artist goes through the mental games of not wanting to release something to the world unless they're extremely happy with it it, especially when there are so many better artists in one's social network.
With this challenge I tried to embrace the idea that it doesn't matter if a single drawing didn't turn out great because there's a new one tomorrow. It was nice to get back to sketching and not obsessing over details and erasing and redrawing every line over and over again (which is easy to get stuck doing when working digitally). I tried my best to embrace the medium - smudges, imperfections, and all.
I also didn't want to spend too much time on any individual drawing, and was forcing myself to commit to ideas. I didn't do any pencil under-drawings... so you can see all my mistakes on the page. For some drawings I thumbnailed a bit to plan compositions or character designs, and for a few drawings I screwed up at the end in a way that I couldn't let go and completely redrew them. There are plenty of issues I've noticed after the fact and if I was working digitally would more easily be able to refine things like cluttered compositions, messy silhouettes, or bad perspective, but I was trying to let go of all that and just enjoy the process of drawing. Some definitely turned out better than others. Also of note, there's no fancy techniques or tools here. Just a normal ballpoint pen on a sketchpad.
Anyway, I wanted to post them all in one spot for ease of access, so here you are. It was a good experience and I think I'll try to do it again next year. (Click any image to enlarge it)
Prompt 1: Fish
Prompt 2: Wisp
Prompt 3: Bulky
Prompt 4: Radio
Prompt 5: Blade
Prompt 6: Rodent
Prompt 7: Fancy
Prompt 8: Teeth
Prompt 9: Throw
Prompt 10: Hope
Prompt 11: Disgusting
Prompt 12: Slippery
Prompt 13: Dune
Prompt 14: Armor
Prompt 15: Outpost
Prompt 16: Rocket
Prompt 17: Storm
Prompt 18: Trap
Prompt 19: Dizzy
Prompt 20: Coral
Prompt 21: Sleep
Prompt 22: Chef
Prompt 23: Rip
Prompt 24: Dig
Prompt 25: Buddy
Prompt 26: Hide
Prompt 27: Music
Prompt 28: Float
Prompt 29: Shoes
Prompt 30: Ominous
Prompt 31: Crawl
Jack-O-Lanterns: IRL 2020
Happy Halloween Everyone! That means it's time for a "Jack-O-Lanterns In Real Life" post! This year COVID didn't stop people from carving Jack-O-Lanterns - in fact, we had more people submit carvings of my designs than ever before this year!
First up my friend and Giraffe-Keeper Extraordinaire, Mike Bona decided to go with my rhino design from 2018:
Then we had Nicole DiGiambattista's carving from a design from 2015:
Another incredible job! Here's the original design:
And last but not least, we have Bonnie Garcia's carving of a design from the first ever lineup from 2010:
Aaaaaand here's the original:
For Previous Jack-O-Lanterns IRL, see:
2019
2012
2013
2015
2017 - (I forgot to post them that year but they are at the bottom of the 2018 design post)
-Evan
2012
2013
2015
2017 - (I forgot to post them that year but they are at the bottom of the 2018 design post)
-Evan
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Jack-O-Lantern Designs: Moods of 2020
Yep. I'm still doing these. Seems to be all that makes it onto this old blog these days. Here are this year's designs...I know they may not be as fun as years past, but neither has this year been, and with Halloween being about celebrating spooky things and leaning into our fears of the unknown, it felt appropriate. Enjoy.
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| Click to Enlarge |
And, as always, the same deal goes as every year: if anybody actually decides to attempt to carve any of these (like Stephanie, Nicole, Josh, Megan, and I, Laura, or Nikki did) please send me photos at evan.m.boucher@gmail.com and I'll post them up here. You are not limited to this year's contact sheet - I'm happy to see carvings of any designs from the last eleven years. You have until the end of the month. I will post all physical Jack-O-Lantern carvings together on Halloween.
Previous Designs can be found here:
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