The King and his Advisor.

Well so far, I would say this one is finished. Perhaps someday, I'll take a look at this one and decide to add colour, but for now I'm going to enjoy the simple tones caused by the dodge and burn tool from Photoshop!

BTW: the background was a creative commons image found here at Creative Closeup.

Happy St.Valentine's Day to all my ShadowBird Fans!

Doodles, Pencil Work and a Wee Test

Being in-between gigs can give me great opportunities to push the boundaries of my skills. Some of you may already know that I go bonkers over beautiful artwork where colour comes secondary to drawing's elegance. However, if the colour looks poorly planned, it can upstage line and ruin the whole message.

I apply this philosophy to my own work and doing so keeps me on my toes with constant improvement.

Right now I'm intrigued by combining coloured pencil with odorless mineral spirits and using that technique with limited watercolour. I have already worked up a wee test doodle using coloured pencil, odorless mineral spirits and felt tip pen(the little bird above), but I want to try it with pencil under a light watercolour wash. So I doodled up the two below for a second and a third test and if this works, I'll use this technique with the finished drawing at the bottom!

So wish me luck!!!!

~p~

New Look, New Attitude!!!!!

For the last couple of years, I have been navigating the world wide web without control. I see something online that I think I should be apart of (or a something suggested by someone), I jump aboard without plans! I have this thought that whatever site or blog that I create or join, doing so will help me network the ShadowBird/Sagawood idea. Not to mention my commercial art career.

Well, all this has done, is keep me from the things I love to do such as visual story writing, painting and just being plain creative! I was spending too much time mucking about online and not accomplishing much in reality. Thinking that spreading oneself all over the online artworld is a good idea is certainly........ Not a good idea!

So I'm cutting back! Keeping this blog up to date will be my focus for the time being. Once that has become a habit, I'll head on over to some of the other sites that I have signed with and un-sign myself. Not all of them but the ones that really don't relate to what I do or to the people who are interested.

Now here are some sketchbook and work in progress drawings fresh from the scanner!

Ciao Bellas and Bellos!

Oh yeah! I changed the look of my blog! It's more me! Flowery and faded (only in a vintage sort of way).