First, a cover drawing for a forthcoming ebook:
The e-book version of Guðrún will be launched real soon now. Headsmen (link goes directly to downloadable file) was downloaded more than 900 times, so there are clearly plenty of people who want Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan ebooks. As with Headsmen, the e-book will be a stepping-stone towards a print book, but some raising of funds will also be involved in its publication.
I spent yesterday evening at the monthly sketching party at Erik Wielaart's. Most of the sketches came out fairly raw and low-contrast, so I've had to adjust them to the hilt and keep most of them small. Pictures below may or may not enlarge if you click on them.
This is one that I'd done earlier, in part. Jelena had drawn a cute but somehow creepy self-portrait in manga style that I thought I could improve upon, so I did two variants of the same pose. By the time I was at Wielaart's drawing backgrounds on this version, I had already torn another out of my sketchbook and developed that on bristol board. You'll see that one on my DeviantArt site soon.
Early in the evening, squirrels were mentioned. There's something about Wielaart's place that makes people want to draw furry animals and small monsters. Calvin mentioned that we had a lot of squirrels around the studio, dwelling in the tree fringes and on the graveyard along the road. This caused someone else to mention scavenging squirrels, scurrying into the trees with fingers in their mouths. I decided that that was worth jotting down as a note to myself. Squirrels' adorable habit of holding food in both front paws can also easily be twisted into something more sinister...
I'd been to Katie Rice's blog Funny Cute earlier that day, and this drawing was inspired by what I saw. I like that style a lot, because it's so exuberant. It's ...learnable, but looking at mine and her drawings side by side, mine are still more genteel and conventional.
A dude with a nose.
This squirrel is a squirrel of science. It has a little vest with a pen pocket, and little glasses. Did it create the monster it's looking at? Or did they just happen to be on the same sheet of paper?
One of the creepy cutie's pets. It goes "mew".
Obadiah Jebulon Sciurius, gentleman walnut-farmer.
