May 29, 2007

One, Two, Tree

Two sketches today--both for the all new Practice Makes Perfect Art Jam, a new blog started by Ric Nicholls, which I am now a contributor to. Ric is one of the moderators of the He-Man.org fan-art forum that I mention so frequently, and he also happens to be an uber-talented artist. Check out his blog--it's linked on the sidebar!

Anyways, the first challenge was to come up with a "Living Tree of Woe," with an emphasis on working out the facial expression. After doing a couple of pages of fast pen sketches, I picked out the one that I liked the most, did a tight pencil version of it, then scanned and colored it:

click above for larger view

To be honest, I think I got carried away with trying to get the tree part right, and failed to really nail the facial expression. I'm lame!

Anyways, while sketching, I also drew a tree of woe with no face at all, emphasizing body language instead. I quickly tightened some pencils over it, scanned it, and slapped some colors on:

click above for larger view

I realize this in no way makes up for my failure to get the face right on the first one, but I just figured I'd share it since it was a by-product of my first attempt.

Comments and critiques?

Check out the Practice Makes Perfect Blog for everyone else's entries!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i dont like the placement of the text on either one of these. it's all too distracting. maybe if u allowed it to recede into the BG? behind the trees?

the trees are great. great way to practice ur characterization. they're actually quite human, which is the key to any great illustrator's design. project the audience onto the subject for them!


buy books and read!

annie said...

the second tree made me sad (in a good way). but not as sad as when i realize that i said "Spill the beans" twice on my previous comment. i never even say that in real life.

J.Ho said...

charles-- thx, i'm glad these trees worked for you. as for the text, sorry, you know i'm all about the unpleasantly obtrusive DRM.

annie-- you say "spill the beans" all the time. in fact, i don't ever recall hearing you not say it. sorry to make you sad... in a good way?