Grim Raven (Mark 2)

I didn't like some aspects of my first Grim Raven attempt, so I decided to give it another attempt. I fixed the angle on the head, and added some more texture to the wings, which I quite like.

This piece, as well as a lot of other cut-outs and prints, are for sale in my wife and I's Etsy store - ChuckleTree.

Grim Raven

Pastel on cardstock.

I have hereby started my yearly barrage of Halloween art.

For this one I was trying to do something different with my cut-out style, using pastels to shade the individual parts, and give it more of a traditional feel.

I attempted this using a few different media, including soft pencils and India ink. The ink was a miserable failure, and I threw away the pieces after only putting together one of the wings. I was relatively pleased with how the pencils turned out though. It didn't have quite enough contrast, but I thought it still looked interesting. I will definitely be trying something else with pencil in the future.

What do you all think?

Rough draft. Pencil on watercolor paper.

Digital Sketches

Lately I’ve been playing with doing sketches in Photoshop without drawing them out on paper first.  It’s actually a bit freeing for me because I’m not so precious with the drawings as I am when they are on paper.  Yes – I am so cheap that I don’t even like wasting sketchbook paper on bad sketches (hopefully these aren’t that bad though).

I started out doing a few figure drawings of women because, frankly, I’m not very good at drawing women-

 

                 

Then I did a couple of animal sketches – because they are fun-

               

A Rodin sculpture and Dirty Harry (strangely, these seem somewhat related)-

                        

(Click on any of the images for larger versions)