Biking

Sketchbook girl, riding her bike in the rain.

-Anna

The Court of Owls

I've been making my way through a bunch of DC Comics New 52 titles (if you can't tell by all the superhero fan art lately), and I finally got to Batman. Hoooly crap, it's great. Greg Capullo's art is mind-blowing, and there was some particularly great stuff in the scene I doodled below-- in which Bruce Wayne is attacked by assassins in his home and has to fight them in his PJs. The way Capullo draws hands and feet gives me art chills. You can tell that he is influenced by animation (he says that Chuck Jones is one of his biggest influences)... his figures have such a great sense of weight, movement, and expression. I've noticed that sometimes in superhero comics the figures can feel a bit stiff, most likely because they've been overworked, but Capullo's art is fluid and loose. Anyway. I've been super busy with a couple freelance projects, and have had barely any time to draw for myself. Mostly I start sketching for fun around 7pm and stay up way too late to finish it. As is the case with this.

-Anna

Babs

The past few weeks have been busy with clients wanting stuff finished before Christmas. But in that time I've managed to doodle some fun stuff too, because it keeps me motivated and excited about drawing. I drew Barbara Gordon a while ago and have slowly been coloring her over the past week or so. Gail Simone's writing on Batgirl is great... it gives me some serious Buffy vibes, which obviously makes me super happy.

-Anna

Babes

This is what happens when my love of children's books meets my love of fandom.

-Anna

Wonder Woman

Fan art Friday! Wonder Woman seems to be the cool thing to draw right now. She's going to be in the upcoming Superman/Batman movie, and the actress who's going to play her was just announced.

-Anna

Slave Leia

Return of the Jedi was on TV last night, and I ended up doodling Leia while watching. Colored it off and on today while waiting to hear back on some emails.

And here's a quick sketch from this morning of Barry Allen (The Flash)... like I said in a previous post, I'm trying to make my digital work look more like my traditional work. So that's what I was attempting here.

-Anna

Sketch 11.26

Warm-up sketch from this morning. Trying to make my digital sketches look more like my pencil ones.

-Anna

Elsa

A doodle from this evening. Elsa from the new Disney movie Frozen.

Here's the initial sketch, which I instragrammed earlier.

-Anna

GL Genderswap

Sundays are the best... I put aside all freelance and whatnot and let myself draw whatever happens to pop into my head. This started as a doodle of a random girl in my sketchbook, who I decided to turn into a female Green Lantern. And then everything just went downhill from there.

Oh, have to change their names of course. Haley Jordan? Joan Stewart? Gail Gardner, Kayla Rayner, Samira Baz? Haha... too fun. I am a small child inside.

-Anna

Batgirl

Fan art Friday!

-Anna

Rainy London Day

 The journey continues! Where are they off to next?

-Anna

Iris and Patty

Iris West and Patty Spivot from The Flash (The New 52). Because I'm a neeeeerd.

-Anna

Sneak Peak

Here's a little sample of the next portfolio illustration I'm working on.

-Anna

Flash Goat

Warm-up doodle from this morning. I think it's better without an explanation.

Also, a little Loki I drew last night. 'Cause Thor: The Dark World.

-Anna

Bird Studies

There actually is a reason why I'm drawing so many birds lately. There's an internship I'm hoping to apply for in the Spring that involves drawing lots and lots of birds. We shall see...

-Anna

Happy Halloween!

This has gotta be the most frantically drawn thing I've ever done. I started drawing it at 9pm and had to scramble to finish it before Halloween was over!

-Anna

Scheherazade Doodles

Sometimes I listen to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and imagine that there's an animated movie that goes along with it, sort of Fantasia style.

-Anna

Kinglet Sketches

I haven't updated in a little while, so here are some Golden-crowned Kinglet doodles I did today.

-Anna

Pileated Woodpecker

Another illustration for the birding children's book story I'm doing for my portfolio. The pileated woodpecker is one of my favorite birds, mostly because it looks (and kind of sounds) like a dinosaur. In fact, right after finishing this piece I went outside and as soon as I stepped out the door I heard one calling. I grabbed my camera, but only got there in time to watch him fly away. Still pretty stunning!

Here's the first one in that series from a few weeks ago, the Common Yellowthroat.

Also, here's the first in a new series I'm doing for Young Adult Magazine. This series is called Dinner Parties, and it combines characters from various pop culture sources. This one features characters from three young adult novels. You can see it on the YAMag website here.

-Anna

Magnolia Warbler

Bird! I used a photo of a juvenile Magnolia Warbler that my brother took as reference. The wing was by far the hardest part...

-Anna

Chemistry

"Chemistry... I prefer to see it as the study of change. Well that's... that's all of life, right? I mean, it's just the constant, it's the cycle... It is growth, then decay, then transformation."

Prints

Breaking Bad is ending this Sunday. I know that the show is ready to be over, but I'm going to miss it. 

-Anna

Sketches 9.24.13

I just realized I haven't updated my blog for almost 2 weeks! I've been working on some freelance stuff and a few new portfolio illustrations, but nothing I can post just yet. Here are a couple of doodles from the past week or so. I downloaded a new brush set so the first one is me playing around with that. The second is just a sketchbook doodle that I colored as a warmup today.

-Anna

Cab Ride

A while ago I did a series of illustrations with a girl and her dragon traveling around London. Since then I've wanted to do a children's book series where in each book they explore a different city. I decided to replace the girl and dragon with a pair I did a painting of my sophomore year of college, because they were much more fun. So yeah. I want to call it Bo & Lewis Take (insert city here). I've got a London one sketched out already.

This illustration was definitely one of the most challenging I've ever done. I always feel like I've struggled with color, and this was ALL THE COLORS plus crazy lighting. I'm happy with how it turned out. Below are my black and white study and a color study.

 

-Anna

Night Vale Characters

I've been working on this slowly over the past week or so... it's been a fun break in between freelance and portfolio stuff. Welcome to Night Vale is only audio and doesn't have many character descriptions, which is great because it allows everyone to design the world in their head. This is how I see some of the characters.

 Cecil and Carlos

 Old Woman Josie and one of her 'Angels', plus Khoshekh the cat

The Apache Tracker and Mayor Pamela Winchell

-Anna

Birding Book

I was thinking of stuff I could add to my children's book portfolio, and my mind went to birds because I've gotten sorta into birding lately and I'm a massive nerd. I thought it would be fun to do a simple reference book that also tells a story. My idea was to follow a little girl and her father as they walk in the forest and spot a bunch of bird species. So this is sorta my test run for that!

Also, last night I was watching some Buffy and I ended up doodling the 'yellow crayon' scene because of feelings... so many feelings.

-Anna

Deer animation

I spent a few hours today playing around with the animation feature on Photoshop. Did this little deer walk cycle. I didn't use any reference so I was really just making stuff up. I definitely started rushing towards the end though... I wanted to be done and needed the deer out of the frame so I made him start to trot to get out faster.

-Anna

Sketchbook Characters

Today I colored some drawings from my sketchbook. The first is Illyria from the Buffy spin-off Angel. I drew it a while ago (after seeing Much Ado About Nothing) because Amy Acker is adorable.

The next two are characters from one of the (many) stories floating around in my head. They are siblings. I'm a big fan of Western-inspired science fiction (Star Wars, Firefly) so there's definitely some influence here.

-Anna