Logger town, Ketchikan, Alaska. Colored pencil on Bristol vellum.

Completed 6/3/2007. I didn’t think to do scans for a progression.

I believe the photo was taken here.

Source image

My nephew, wearing his grandfather’s reading glasses.

Colored pencil on Bristol vellum. Background is pastel.

Source image

2/8/06 – Base skin layer put down, started facial modeling. I wish I could take credit for those perfectly rendered eyes, but I can’t. The instructor drew them, as a demonstration for the class on how to draw realistic eyes. Skin layers: cream, deco pink, light peach, pink, peach, white. Modeling layer is goldenrod.

2/12/06 – Further facial modeling done. Modeling is goldenrod covered with pink.

2/18/06 – Layer of peach to lighten and blend skin. Some edge blending in pink. Lips: peach, pink and highlighting in poppy red, then tuscan red edging. Interior of mouth: pink and tuscan red, and indigo blue at right side. The initial hair layer was laid down in jasmine.

2/24/06 – Hair completed: jasmine highlights, sienna brown and dark umber. Glasses filled in: raw umber, tuscan red, indigo blue. Base skin layer on hand begun: cream, deco pink, light peach, pink, peach. Shadow of glasses darked in tuscan red.

3/10/06 – Hand completed: modeling with goldenrod and pink; blending in blush pink and light peach; touches of tuscan red. Some shading under chin, on neck and next to ear done in sanguine. Lengthened hair over left eye: jasmine, sienna brown, dark umber. Defined inside of ear with tuscan red.

3/18/06 – Working on shirt. Red area is deco yellow covered with several layers of crimson red, then blended with a colorless blending pencil. Blue area is true blue with an overlay of indigo blue for texturing and darkening. The shirt is partially complete here: the left sleeve is only yellow, no red, and the right forearm has partial red layers. The blue part of the shirt is done over the sleeve cuff, but the rest of the shirt has only the underlying true blue layer without the indigo blue texturing. I stopped at this point and decided to scan it to show the pieces only partly finished.

3/20/06 – Complete. Background is a light blue pastel stick, smeared with tissue and q-tips.

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Flavor.”

Things are busy lately; I only had time for a quick sketch this week.

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Small.”

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Free.”

Strength is relative; the strongest chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

In the software security world, there’s the concept of strength having duality. Something can be strong and durable (like a hefty, thick fiber rope) or it can be strong but brittle. A diamond is the hardest substance in the world, but if you know just the right way to tap a hammer and chisel on it, you can shatter it like glass.

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Strength.”

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Night.”

Few things aggravate me more than visiting a web site only to be greeted by a bunch of “broken image” icons. Argh!

If this looks a little rushed, it’s because the date and time in the illustration are about when I started working on this. It’s been a busy week.

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Broken.”

You know at least one person who makes you wish you had a remote control like this one. Admit it!

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Remote.”

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic “Cold.”

Based on a figurine I have in my office. 4B graphite pencil. Jack Skellington is a central character in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.