This whole SORROW theme is affecting me! :(

My new Wacom tablet arrived. I thought I'd play with painting like strokes... I'm totally experimenting so please don't be too tough on me critique-wise. Of course, I welcome your helpful instruction! I just kept painting on layers of colors and using the airbrush and smudging areas. I hate the hair, but that's another lesson to be learned...
My apologies for the sadness of the topic... I'm on a bit of a downer right now and the Illustration Friday theme kind of intensified them. No... I'm not a battered woman, but it has come close to home.

Loss and Sorrow - 2nd submission

Click for larger image. Not as emotionally heavy as my first submission... I didn't mean to upset anyone with that image but I went with my first reaction to the theme. Anyway, I wanted to try another medium/technique - here we go with the basic digital program again, but after all, this is what IF is all about! Inspired by a memory of my son losing his first hamster to time...

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." - Kahlil Gibran

A Mother's Sorrow - Pencil drawing for Illustration Friday

Click on image for full view
Wow... what a switch from all those light images of "flight"... but I have been flooded with lots of images for this topic as well. (Time to cut down on those triple-shot lattés...)

The first and most acute image of sorrow for me is the loss of a child... a parent having to release their offspring, regardless of age, to death is agonizing. The tragedies in the Middle East - carbombings and wars, the tsunami in SE Asia - so many innocents drowned and battered, swept away from their families, the horrors of Africa's civil wars and genocide in Sudan and Rwanda, the predators in our own society who would snatch our children from their innocence and harm them in so many awful ways, diseases that we haven't found the cure for cutting short promise and joy... these all conjured up images of parents finding their children murdered or killed by the catastrophes that they are powerless to control. I have 3 children and the thought of losing any of them prematurely or violently makes me cry at the thought...

Bug Girls...

(Click on images for larger view) I was playing around with a simple graphics program - I think it's an old Microsoft program that came bundled with Frontpage 98 eons ago. Anyway, since I still don't have my pen tablet, I decided to keep playing with anchor points and shapes to create these images. There are no layers, so you kind of just create pieces like a puzzle and then order them on the "canvas". Anyway, I have to play some more with the butterfly... I wish I knew how to add highlights to her... I may tweak the image later when I figure out how to make her look more dimensional.

Flight 2 - Illustration Friday

I was watching my youngest son skateboard yesterday - he was flying! I didn't sketch the landing because honestly, it wasn't pretty.
I messed up the mouth on this big time but I don't have time to redo it - and the perspective was difficult... Just a ballpoint sketch for this.

For Illustration Friday - variations on the theme of FLIGHT

Okay - I just love this week's theme because I've been told I'm kinda flighty... nyuk nyuk. Obviously this was a chance to play with different ideas and techniques. I didn't scan in EVERYTHING I did - all those sketches from my doodle book. But who knows, maybe I'll get the urge to do it later - after all, who hasn't wished they could fly?

(click on the images for a larger view...)

Kiwi Bird takes flight...
This was the second image I did... again with just a simple graphics program - learning to use skew and distortion tools (to make the steps) and layering the feathers onto the kiwi. He looked a lot cuter when I drew him with a pen, but I wanted to try the computer effects. Poor little flightless kiwi bird - has to take a flight of stairs... keep scrolling down for more on FLIGHT.

This next variation on the theme started off as a quick sketch - inspired by the dreams of all those flightless birds.
Showoffs - initial quick sketch and then using computer program, layers, shapes and effects

And finally (for now anyway)... Click on this for larger image and for even larger, wait for a second and click on the lower right corner when the little symbol appears.
Transformed Flight

Haven't we all wished we could fly?
This was initially done on black construction paper with colored pencils. I added the glow and the gradient "land" using Photoshop. I created layers to accentuate the little girl and the final bird, getting the transformation steps to be more transparent.

Thanks for visiting! Please let me know what you think! I'm constantly learning and any constructive criticism or techniques you wish to impart on my beginner brain will be greatly appreciated. There are some awesome artists and illustrators at Illustration Friday.

Illustration Friday - YEAR OF THE ROOSTER

You have to click on the image for a larger view... A bit of silliness from me.

Caption reads: "The Colonel didn't stand a chance. The Avenger struck with lightning fury. And so began a dark era for man... a time that will go down in the annals of history as...
THE YEAR OF THE ROOSTER!"

Sketch from a B&W photo of Clark Gable.

Click for larger view - I did this one of a young Clark Gable... pre-Gone With the Wind. I suppose I should learn to fill in backgrounds. This was done with a regular HB pencil on a sketch pad. I guess I need to learn more about mediums, paper, which pencils to use, charcoal... Like I said, self-taught artist-in-the-making.

Sketch 2

Please click for larger view. Pencil on paper. I did this one a while back. I think her nose is funny and she has Audrey Hepburn eyebrows. In fact, it started out from a photo I saw of Ms Hepburn - that woman was GORGEOUS.

Sketch 3

Click for larger view. An image I sketched - pencil on paper.

Illustration Friday - Jan 31/05 - I couldn't make up my mind.

The colored pics were drawn with a Papermate ballpoint pen on plain white bond and with whatever crayons and semi-dried up markers I could find in my son's junk box. I haven't bought my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet yet so I don't dare color with Photoshop. I did manage to put in the grey gradient and the solid grey as well as all the text in the photos using an old copy of Paint Shop Pro. My shading needs work.


This one was a quick sketch w/ pen and again the crayons - I was not going to use it because someone else already did a rhino and bird symbiotic thing but then I thought "Oh what the heck..."


Papermate ballpoint on white bond... I also sketched a pencil version of this and I really want to color it so I might post it here later if I like how it turns out... as I said, my shading needs work...


I guess I could use this for Friendship too (overkill!!!) because my mom and I have a friendship. This is a pencil sketch I did of my mother a couple of years ago. I'm still trying to teach myself how to shade and since this one was done, I've discovered what a blending stomp is! I wish I could go back to fix the pic but I gave it to my mother for her birthday. She put it in a very nice frame and it hangs in her bedroom.

Illustration Friday - Gluttony

This is my very very first entry into the Illustration Friday weekly theme. There are some awesome artists on the site and I feel somewhat juvenile and simplistic. However, this is what I am doing it for: to improve myself and to learn from others... By the way, folks: I'm a self-taught artist. I was going to color this with something, but I think I'll just keep it simple for the first few tries.

Medium: pencil... (don't reprimand me - I used an HB pencil out of my kid's pencilbox...)

~Elle~