Sketch Of The Week: Parakeet Man

The other day I was thinking about how we, as humans, empathize with animals. We seem to see physical human traits in our pets even when there are very little. For example, I often comment on how my pet parakeet seems to have a dumb or content expression on her face. But, What expression is there? She just has a beak and two eyes that she can close and squint. So I decided to go about visually interpreting the human characteristics I saw in the bird and the Parakeet Man was born.

I wonder if birds see bird like characteristics in us. Do we just look like weird shaped birds to them?

Sketch Of Week: Lady With High Pants

About a year or so ago I was getting really sick of my drawings. I yearned to make my cartooning more lively and creative. So I set out to find a wealth of different influences and to learn some new techniques. This led to me filling my sketchbook with a whole assortment of doodles with the purpose of learning from them and becoming a better cartoonist. If I remember correctly, this was sort of an exercise in drawing the female anatomy and breaking away from the generic attractive female formula. I love how the gesture and facial expression came out and how dorky she looks with her pants hiked up so high.

Sketch Of The Week: YellowJackets

When I was a wee lad, In the fifth grade, I created a superhero that I called The Yellowjacket. Yellowjacket was pretty much a copy of Batman with a little elements of Spider-Man thrown into the mix. I drew quite a number of Yellowjacket comics all the way up until my Sophomore year of High school; each issue full of highly derivative characters and stories.

Despite the fact That Yellowjacket wasn't very original, I still hold the character near and dear to my heart. For fun, I like to imagine that the character has still been having comic book adventures all these years and I'll re-imagine his look and status quo.

The first Yellowjacket in this sketch, ( going from left to right) is actually the second version. I imagined that he had become obsessed with fighting crime and it destroyed his normal life. He became homeless and lived in a clock tower in the city. Of course he had no money to repair his costume when it got damaged so it became a shredded up mess.

Number two was the original. This is the one that was featured in all those comics I drew. When I first designed him back in fifth grade, I remember showing him to my friends and they made fun of the fact that Yellowjacket's bee shaped belt buckle looked like a penis.

The third was more of a daredevil style character. It was after his homeless phase. He sported a modified costume without a cape.

Number four is a concept I came up with a couple years ago. For Fun, I actually drew a sloppy comic that took place after the last one I drew in high school. The comic was kind of a parody of the old ones and was quite comical. In the comic a scientist gives Yellowjacket a Yellow Jacket ( it's more of a wind breaker really) which gives him the ability to fly.

Realistic Mario Brothers

This photo manipulation was born out of my ridiculous obsession with realisitic Mario stuff. I always thought that the ultimate realistic Super Mario Bros. Would be a live action movie that was more faithful to the games than the 1993 flick, which had very little resemblance to the game. In fact, I originally planned on doing this as a fake movie poster but after finding the images I needed online, I decided it would be cooler to show more of the surrounding mushroom kingdom. My approach to the subject matter was still to treat it as if I was the director of a Super Mario movie and re-imagine certain elements so that they were more feasible in a realistic setting; for example, Mario and Luigi don't have their initials printed on their hats.

Below are the 13 photos used in the construction of this image. I've grabbed them from various sources all over the web. I don't have the names of all the photographers/creators of each, but I've credited the ones that I do know.

Except the dude with the hat on the bottom, the bodies and heads of Mario and Luigi are stock photos that I purchased from Istockphoto.
Luigi's head by Brian Dixon
Mario's head byKevin Russ
Mario's body by Mike Sonnenberg
Luigi's body by Tommaso Altamura

This fantastic Pirahna Plant Sculpture was created by Jaime Margary. I recommend checking out his work. He does a whole host of other creepy looking video game related sculptures.

This castle is brought to you by LilyStox on DeviantArt

This background looks to be compiled from both photographs and some digital art. I don't know who the artist is but I found it at fantasy-backgrounds.com.

If you enjoy this be sure to check out my Shy Guy picture too.

Sketch Of The Week: New Years Baby

So, the idea behind this sketch was to depict a baby celebrating the new year in the same manner as irresponsible adults, by drinking tons of booze and firing guns into the air. After drawing it I realized there's not much about it that seems like New Years. Instead it's a slightly troubling image of a cute little baby with a revolver and a bottle of hooch. It seems more like some kind of a social commentary about our youth.

So, you might notice that this and my previous Christmas related sketch were done using colored pencil. I'm not sure what it is about sketching with colored pencil, but in my opinion my sketches turn out better and I seem to learn more from them. I haven't quite figured out what it is. It might be the softness of the pencil and the ability to vary the shades more. Also colored pencils don't have that reflective nature like graphite pencils do. Well whatever it may be, I know I'll be doing more sketches with colored pencils. Plus, It's really fun to draw in different colors.