I keep a couple of stacks of post-its sitting on my desk, just for when I get the urge to draw I can quickly get my fix. This sketch was from a photoshoot I did with Julia Hafstrom years ago. She is such a sweet and beautiful person inside and out. I have also thought she would be a good reference to base one of our book characters, Sarah Finn, on. This sketch, though really simple, I feel captures the vibe of Sarah Finn. I’m excited to work more on her character design. I will get on with designing the book characters after I finish the Manga characters. I’ve been learning a lot doing all this character design.

I’ve been loving going back through my old drawings and re-drawing them. It’s been very interesting to see the changes in my style and approach. This piece I originally drew back in 2009, you can see it here. It felt like it needed a reboot. What do you think of this version? I learned a lot making it.

I was taking an exploration of charcoal & chalk on different color tone paper, and this piece happened. For some reason, something just clicked when I was drawing it, and the textures and tone came out exactly the way I wanted. I’d like to pretend like that happens to me a lot, but it really doesn’t happen as often as I would like. I like the vibe of the finished sketch. It reminds me of a mix between Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. I plan on taking more excursions into tone paperland in the near future. Let me know what you think. I hope you are having a great day. This piece is for sale, so let me know if you are interested :)

I’m currently taking the Schoolism class “Story-Driven Illustrations” by Djamila Knopf. One of the first assignments is to produce an influence map. I’ve never heard of an influence map before doing this, but it’s a cool idea. I’m planning on making one every year or two because it’s a healthy thing to re-evaluate those things that are driving you. The way an influence map works is you start out with a template covered by 30 squares. Each square gets filled with an image that represents a category, theme, idea, etc. that is currently influencing your work. The size of the image represents the amount of influence those concepts have on me. It’s a really fascinating task, particularly because if I would have made one of these right when I started my career, my map would have looked completely different.
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