From my sketchbook #17

My sketches keep on appearing in an enormous amount. Here are some selected pages from my January sketchbook with the cat character.

 First sketch of him. Looks pretty neat but is quite boring too. So I've decided to make more reference sketches (of wildcats and lynxes).

 Now I was ready to go further. Firstly, I've decided what is attitude and character is like. Then I've tried to show it in those simple sketches on the left. I've chosen a pugnacious and "glamorous" pose - I think it shows his vanity the best ;)

Yes, that's totally him!

Enough of the cat for now. Next week I will show you sketches of the cat's girl companion (which you might have already glimpsed in my Daily Sketch post).

A.

Disguise - Illustration Friday

A new character I've created - a bird girl (no name for her yet, sorry!). You have already seen her in my 23rd daily sketch, that was the first time I drew her.

A.

2013 in photos - Personal Thursday #10

I've done this sort of posts in the past and I thought it's good time to bring them back :) I have not blogged too much this past year, even though lots of things happened in my life. I've been busy all year long and here's a glimpse of that:

January

 My bosses' dog (Tina) is my working companion. She's spoiled like a little brat!

February

 National Forests in Poland has got online cams which show birds' feeders during day and European bisons' (and other forest animals') haystack during night. My cats got quite frantic while watching the birds. They constantly checked if they can catch them from behind the screen ;) 

Forest cams website

April

 A super neat embroidery I've designed, prepared and supervised (aka I was standing next to a machine when it made it and I was sticking felt shapes in the right places and the right time). It's inspired by Polish folklore art.

May

 My love for corgis continues as I went to see a dog show just to stare at them :)

 I went on an illustration course to Kraków held by Fundacja Sztuki Nowej ZNACZY SIĘ and taught by Joanna Olech (a well known Polish children book writer and illustrator). It was great and I learned a lot :)

June

 This is IK (Idaliński Kot), a cat that often accompanies me to and from work/bus stop. She's super friendly and quite stinky ;) When I took this photo it was just after rain and she was totally wet. Which of course didn't stop her from jumping on my knees and trying to head bump me!

 It's someone's lost key/phone charm that looks absolutely as if I've done it. It was so weird to see it.

Painted new cat sneakers for myself to wear on a music festival.

July

 Music festival + beach = loveliness

(oh that background photobombing)

 You shouldn't see this photo because we were forbidden to take photos. Anyway - here's a human body from The Human Body exhibition (and there's me in the middle!).

In August I was working tirelessly on book illustrations. They were incredibly cute so it was a pure pleasure.

August

 Well, if you find this position comfortable then I'm not complaining...

 Preparing my cornflower tattoo design. I still haven't got it ready but I'm not in any type of hurry.

 I went on an art camp with my sister's art school. We went to Bieszczady Mountains and I went swimming every day (look at THIS and you'll understand). That's my youngest sister next to me in the photo :)

October

 The book I've been illustrating in June-August is ready! It looks fabulous. I will post a review + some WIP pictures for you to see soon!

November

 My silkscreen designs got into the next level. That's how I feel about them anyway :)

 Since some time (July 2013?) my Love and I have been a lot into craft beer. We decided to make a small "beer night" for my family. You cannot only drink popular European lagers all the time, can you?

 December

 Here's a size chart of all illustrations to one of the books I was illustrating in December. Illustrations were made traditionally - I would trace the shapes (and numbers!) onto watercolour paper and then paint.

I started Daily Sketches (3rd edition!) on the 1st of December. Right now I'm on my 54th sketch and it's as much fun as I've remembered it to be :)

Hope your 2013 was great but your 2014 will be awesome!

A.

Daily Sketch III - Day #41-50

This time my sketches has been completely taken over by a Cat and a Girl with long hair. Hope you don't mind - they are a rather cute couple :) I will make something different for the next 10 days, I promise.

 First design of the Cat. Based on photos of my old cat.

 

 Drawing from photo reference - it's a wildcat. My cat (see: picture above) was a half wildcat.

 First design of the Girl. Long hair, long tail, small horns and cute arms + legs.

 Designing the outfit of the Girl. First comes the cape/hood.

 And then the underneath part. A simple dress looks much better than puffy shorts she had at the beginning.

 This sketch captures her personality the best.

 Though I find this one super cute :)

 My mum's cat.

 Back to designing the Cat. I've changed his proportions a bit so he's more recognizable. I'm not sure if this is the final design... However, the "feeling" of him is just right.

"Oh, hey there. You come here often?"

That's it for this time. Now on to the next batch (I will post them on 30th or 31st January).

A.

From my sketchbook #16

I needed to invent a fox family (or rather - one small fox girl + her family). As usual, I started with sketching foxes from photo references to get used to their "structure". That way it's easier to make them more characteristic but still looking like foxes.

Here you can see a scale of their sizes. I've checked how big they can get on wikipedia so my cat character (the fat fluffy one in the upper right corner) is also properly sized in comparison.

That's a fox teenage brother :) The cat will be shown next time.

Next time - my cat character.

A.

From my sketchbook #15

As I've mentioned before I am taking part in Sketchbook Challenge 2014 - Victoria Ying's and Mike Yamada's idea for boosting artistic growth. And fighting free time - effectively! :)
It's all about filling an entire notebook with sketches in one month time. The notebook has to be A5 and 100 sheets of paper (200 single pages). I'm cheating a bit in that part - when I found out about the challenge on 6th January I went straight to my local art supply store but haven't found a proper notebook. It would take next couple of days to get one from some web store so I went with what I had - Moleskine sketchbook, which is A5 but has got only 103 single pages. But, well, better 103 pages of sketches than none, am I right? :)

(Anyway - I am right in the middle of illustrating a set of 6 books for kids so there's not that much time left actually!)

Here comes the first part of sketches. They were made for the 2nd children book I've just finished illustrating. It was about a pony so I had to practice drawing horses. No... sorry... I had to LEARN drawing horses. I have never ever drew them before, to be honest.

Next time - a fox family :)

A.

Daily Sketch III - Day #31-40

A month of daily sketches! Yay! Now on to the next one :)

Here are next 10 sketches I did + a bit of description if needed (beware, this post is picture heavy!).

I started with splash art (I've described the process in my previous post) and more cat character and his companion. Here you can see all of the before and after splash daily sketches. Colour schemes were randomly chosen via ColorSchemeDesigner.

Day #31

 Day #32

 Day #33

 No natural light photo this time, sorry :(

 Day #34

 Day #35

 Day #36

Here, on the 6th of January, I joined Sketchbook Challenge 2014 - Victoria Ying's and Mike Yamada's idea of pushing one's art further by massive daily sketching. The idea is to fill up a whole sketchbook (A5, 200 pages) in one month. And since I was already sketching everyday I've decided to join :) Why not. It's a win-win challenge, because even if you won't finish your sketchbook, you still make plenty of drawings.

For now on my daily sketches will come from my Moleskine sketchbook but I think I can still pull off some splash art there :) We'll see.

 Day #37

 Day #38 - Sketch of my idea of the topic "time" for Illustration Friday

 Day #39 - That's all I could master for IF this week - too little time! But it looks fine :)

Day #40 - Grandma cat. I need her for my secret project ^^

As previously, I post all my daily sketches + more on my Instagram, twitter and tumblr so don't forget to check up those to see and read more :)

Because of the massive amount of sketches I'm making lately, due to the Sketchbook Challenge 2014, I have decided to share some, or most, or all, with you, here :) They will be posted under "from my sketchbook" tag.

See you next time!

A.