Close to the Wind!

It's hard to deny, autumn is here. Or to be more precisely the windy, unpleasant and undeniably wet part of autumn. And the fact that it's already dark at tea-time doesn't make it any better. Well, at least you can't see the bad weather ...

This picture is a little bit older. (I did it in 2007 when a storm called Kyrill rolled over Germany and left quite some devastation behind!) I though it would make a good editorial illustration or maybe a book cover. So I added the nonsense typo.

By the way, the landscape looks exactly like in Ostfriesland where I come from!

Scary Girl!

Yesterday I was looking through a stack of folders with older sketches and rediscovered this scary little girl. Well, 2008 is not that long ago, but I had almost forgotten it.

Back from the Dephts!

I've been scuba diving in the Mediterranean!

Cyclops Pt.2: The Epic Colour!

Here it is: Last week's post in full epic colour. The chap's name is Polyphemus by the way.



This is the first inked Version. I wasn't quite satisfied with it and I didn't think adding all the chest and arm hair would make it easier to colourize it. So I inked it again and decided to skip the hairy stuff and add it later digitally.

This is the second clean-shaven try. For anyone who's interested, if I'm not sure about the inking, I usually scan the sketch and print it out in very light blue so I can do several versions. I like that much more than using a light table.

This is half way through the colouring process and still clean-shaven.

Cyclops Pt.1: The Sketch

Is it already a month since my last post?! Oh boy, time flies. Okay, here is something more sophisticated: a cyclops. And since it's Greek mythology it's almost bound to be art.

Of course it's before that damn Ulysses thing happended. Everything was topnotch. You know, hanging around with your goats and sheep, pulling out some trees every once in a while and having a good time being grumpy and unkind. And then that bloke Ulysses comes around the corner to gouge your eye out just because you told that nasty creep to bug off! Dreadful.

I will post the coloured version very soon!

The Girl in the Yellow Dress Pt.2!

The summer has been quite nice so far but also very busy. And though I fear it's slowly coming to an end this day was another sunshiny one. I hope you had a nice day too!

Pirate N°1!

A pirate to keep things going.

Froggy the Burglar!

Nothing special, just a portrait of a little criminal.

Moongazers!

Okay, this is a follow-up to the honeymoon post. The good thing about doing an illustration in individual parts - apart from taking much more time, making everything more complicated and amazingly blowing up your Photoshop document - is that you can easily do a new arrangement. Took me about twenty minutes. And it's a completely different picture.

PS: Thanks a lot for your nice comments on the last post, folks! I really appreciate it, it was alot of hard work ...

Canadian Honeymoon

Last Saturday I was at the wedding of my good old friend Detlef, whom I know since ever. A couple of other good old friends were invited as well. But when it came to make a greeting card or some kind of gift everybody suddenly turned out to have two left hands - as always. So the task came to me - as always. But that's the burden you have to carry if you are the guy who draws the funny pictures I suppose. I'm quite busy at work at he moment, not to mention the other job I had to finish last week. But damn it was his wedding! So I spent the the nights doing this picture. Well, I could have done it earlier - as always - but sometimes I need the pressure I guess. Detlef and his wonderful wife loved it, so I think it was worth the long hours. And the wedding was great, which weddings are not necessarily are! We had loads of fun. Well, I think you have already guessed, where their honeymoon trip takes them to ...

These are some of the inked sketches I did. I decided to do them seperately to be able to move them around later on. For some unknown reason I skipped the moose.

After I had the idea I did this colour key.

A close up.

Need For Speed!

A horse on a kickboard.

Matthias!

A quick portrait of my pal and fellow blogger Matthias. He likes big sketchbooks, Greek mythology, great amounts of black ink and white wine a lot. Cheers!

Animation Talk!

Last Friday I went to Hamburg and attended the Animtion Talk. This year's guest was Michael Thurmeier from Blue Sky Studios, co-directer of ICE AGE 3 - Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It was sort of a live making-of. He showed a lot sequences in various stages of production from storyboard to finished film and explained and commented everything. He also showed a lot of beautiful color keys and some of the marvelous character designs of Peter de Seve. Beside that he talked about the challenges of doing the whole thing in 3D. Very interesting stuff indeed. (I wonder if they are doing an "Art Of" book?!) Following the presentation was a Q&A. After the show was over I had the opportunity to have chat with him and he turned out to be quite a nice guy!

Dragon Dog & Sloth!

Two crazy animals I drew recently.

Off to work!

A typical German workman on his way to work. Done completely analogue with brush pen and copic marker. Cheers!

Cannonball Curly!

Every two weeks we are celebrating the Official Bilderwumme Drawing Night, a nice evening with colleagues and friends dedicated to art of drawing funny pictures. Most of the contestants are posting on our group blog The Bilderwumme, by the way. Usually we pick a theme that sometimes dramatically changes into something completely different. A couple of weeks ago the theme was seafaring. That was much fun! This is one of the sketches I did.

At first I used a brush pen for inking but I wasn't satisfied with the result. It didn't feel appropriate for the style. So I drew another version and used a felt pen instead. (Is felt pen the right word? Or is fineliner better?) I added some shading for now, but I will defiantely colorize it when I find the time.

Angler!

I've got a lot of marvelous things in the pipeline, but nothing ready to post yet. So just a little portrait of someone who likes to go fishing. Tight lines!

Space Age Pop Cartoon Guy!

"And now for something completely different."

I've been trying out a lot of things recently. This is one of the efforts. Sophisticated 60s space age pop cartoon style in stereovision. Cheers!

Señor Gomez!

Señor Gomez is a nutria and chief editor of a little newspaper.

Planet of the Apes!

Classic literature for the spohisticated ape.

Can you spot the mistake? ... Right. The title is on the back of the book. I didn't even notice it. Mr. Schwarz had to call my attention to this big blunder. But everything else is abolutely authentic.