I’ve dealt with death before, but always felt rather detached. Or, I’ve been aware of the role that death plays from a very young age and accept it as a natural part, or extension, of life. I guess this is the closes it’s ever hit though, and the effect it’s had on me is much different. Not much more to say than that for now.

Here’s a little dragon, not un-like my previous post, that I think she’d enjoy. A little sketch of a gentle hearted lizard that smells something delicious on the breeze. Rock on little fellow, and I hope you find what you’re looking for.

-j

I’ve been doing some sketching here and there, but I haven’t done nearly as much art as I’d like. Yesterday was the first time in months where I had a sustained session. I ended up doodling and just getting comfortable with painting again. It felt awesome to be painting again.

I haven’t decided if it’s done yet, but I’m going to let it rest a bit and see what I think in another couple days. Areas that I’m considering working on: overall texture pass (on skin and clothing). Storytelling elements (other characters? Perhaps silhouetted in the bg and fg).

Here’s the updated drawing where I tried to get more specific with both his anatomy and clothing/outfit.

And the painted version. I learned a lot here, but there are definitely some elements that need work. One area is that of the clothing, I don’t quite like how the light falls on it. It doesn’t feel enough like cloth, and instead I think had a bit too much shine to it. I should do some cloth/clothing studies to tackle that.

I did a quick backup of my laptop and restored it to factory defaults. Of course during the re-install, I realized I had missed a file (to backup). When my computers are running smoothly I think about the need to backup all my files, but I make plans to do so later. Everything’s okay now, I have time to wait! Well, later is when your computer isn’t working. So my cautionary tale suggests that you backup sooner than later!

Well I have all my computers back and running. They replaced the video card on my iMac leaving everything else intact. Time to follow my own advice and backup the rest of my files.

I didn’t want to wait to photograph and post these later, so I’m dealing with less than ideal images. On the second sketch I ended up doing a few paint-overs to help figure out where I might want to take the sketch.

I was just working on canvas paper again and used a limited palette, pretty much just used white, black, and burnt sienna, plus a bit of blue for the background (greyed down).