Jun 21 2011

Portrait Night 6/21 (Dennis Wilson)

Tonight’s #PortraitNight subject is The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. This is the second–and only slightly less terrible–of two finished sketches I did of him. I could probably get a decent likeness with another iteration or two, but there’s a point at which I’ve got to just draw the line time-wise for these sketchbook exercises.  My apologies, folks!

Anyway… Dennis didn’t write or sing many Beach Boys songs and none of his songs were big hits for the group. Two of my absolute favorite Beach Boys songs, though, were sung and co-written by Dennis: “Little Bird” from the 1968 album Friends, and “Forever” from the 1970 LP Sunflower. Dennis doesn’t have a “good” voice in the classical sense, but his vocals have an amazing emotional frailty that reminds me a little bit of Chet Baker’s voice.

Dennis is also clearly the coolest Beach Boy: (1) He’s the only one that actually surfed, (2) He’s the only one that’s not kinda goofy-looking, and (3) He was in one of the greatest road movies of all time, Two-Lane Blacktop (along with James Taylor and Harry Dean Stanton!).

If you’d like to suggest a #PortraitNight subject, you can do so either via the comments section here, or via my Twitter.

Jun 20 2011

Animal Alphabet: L is for Long-Tailed Weasel

You can follow the other “L” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AnimalAlphabet hashtag. To see all the entries so far, check out the Animal Alphabet Tumblr: http://animalalphabet.tumblr.com.

L is for Long-Tailed Weasel


The original art for this is for sale here.

Jun 14 2011

Portrait Night 6/14 (Morrissey)

Tonight’s #PortraitNight subject is mopey 90s alt-rocker Morrissey. I changed the color of the light-colored shirt in the reference photo. Everyone knows that Morrissey wears black on the outside because black is how he feels on the inside.

If you’d like to suggest a #PortraitNight subject, you can do so either via the comments section here, or via my Twitter.

Jun 13 2011

Animal Alphabet: K is for Kingfisher

When folks hear “kingfisher,” they’re usually going to think of the belted kingfisher, but  there are many different varieties of kingfishers. This one is a common kingfisher (also called a river kingfisher).

You can follow the other “K” entries as people post them to Twitter this morning by following the #AnimalAlphabet hashtag. To see all the entries so far, check out the Animal Alphabet Tumblr: http://animalalphabet.tumblr.com.

K is for Kingfisher

The original art for this is for sale here.

Jun 12 2011

Sketchbook 6/12

I haven’t posted anything from my sketchbook in ages! It’s not that I haven’t been working in it, but a lot of my current sketchbook stuff winds up being for Animal Alphabet or for my Portrait Night project. I’m posting this as “Sketchbook 6/12,” but I did this one a few weeks back. It’s one of my grid exercises. In this particular one, I gave myself a nine-panel grid, did a quick “blind squiggle” in each panel, and then did a little ink drawing in each panel based on the squiggle. I remember taking a pic with my phone of the original squiggles, but I guess it didn’t turn out. Maybe that’s why I didn’t post this earlier. Anyway, here’s the page: