While I pluck away at this graphic novel, making slow but steady progress despite the all encompassing battle I am having with the invading rats that have taken up residence amongst my neighbor's urban chicken flock (this is a post for another day), I am still making time to sketch and pick away at commissions.
Whilst I was doodling goblin heads one night, my son harangued me (and by harangued, I mean asked in that endearingly enthusiastic kid-way that is hard to deny) to draw his characters called Sprunkies: detailed character heads on generic triangle bodies. I'm not sure what he intends to do with these eventually, but they were fun to draw.
These were done in a cheapo watercolor book that I bought a while back but haven't had the chance to get to filling. The pages are heavily textured cold press, which makes them good fodder for the combo of watercolor and colored pencil. I like the texture, but color correcting out the texture is nigh impossible, so you can still see the weave of the paper despite my best efforts to get rid of it.
I knocked out another commission last week. This one was open ended and I had a lot of fun realizing a little mushroom person in their little mushroom world.
And yesterday I spent my lunch hour with this page of doodley serendipity. Sometimes, I like to smoosh paint around, let it dry, and then do a drawing on top with what I see in the paint splotches.
I like it as a way to come up with creatures or image concepts or stylizations or color combinations that I might not think to conjure otherwise. It's good sketchbook business when you want to do a thing that feels like practice but can't settle on a thing to do. Sometimes the best way out of a brain block is to go on and do some drawing/painting anyway, even if it isn't good in a particular way except that it is off-road from your usual route.