October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 28 - House Ghost

Day 28 - House Ghost.

And the house guest that you can't get rid of, the House Ghost!

Artist Notes - This one was a mix of mediums. First the background of the room/house was done in CorelDraw X5 on a Dell Laptop running Windows 7, as well as the picture frame. In Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom I created the man in the portrait and the man in the top hat. The portrait was merely exported as a png and imported into CorelDraw. The man in the top hat was exported as a psd file, which retains the transparency around the edges, then imported into CorelDraw X5. I inserted the man in the portrait into the frame then placed the man in the top hat in front of the scene and made him transparent. I converted it to a bmp and used the image adjustment lab to lower the saturation and made the temperature warmer. This gave the image more of an aged look. And then I exported the whole piece as a png.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 27 - Werewolf

Day 27 - Werewolf.

This is an image that I thought of yesterday and last night hammered it out fairly quickly. The thought of a werewolf howling in silhouette in front of a full moon was appealing.

Artist Notes - Sketched using Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom tablet. The nice thing about Sketchbook Mobile Pro is that you can create things in layers and then if desired merge those layers together. I originally had the werewolf higher but since it was on a different layer than the moon or night sky, I was able to lower him (and the hilltop) to a point that I thought was more visually pleasing.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 23 - Big Bad Wolf

Day 23 - Big Bad Wolf.

Off of the old song, "Lil' Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs comes the Big Bad Wolf. "I'm gonna keep my sheep suit on, til I'm sure that you've been shown, that I can be trusted, walking with you alone." That ol' wolf has been menacing Red and the Three Little Pigs for far too long!

Artist Notes - Done in Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom tablet.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 22 - Alien

Day 22 - Alien.

Here's a quick alien reminiscent of one of the alien races from Star Trek.

Artist Notes - Done in Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 21 - Slither

Day 21 - Slither.

Here's an eel that you wouldn't want to come across, no matter how colorful it is.

Artist Notes - Sketched completely on my Motorola Xoom in Sketchbook Mobile Pro.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 18 - Dragon

Day 18 - Dragon.

Here's a little dragon that came to my mind yesterday. Sometimes I forget the original image in my mind. So to attempt to retain the image, I took out some paper and sketched a quick image closing my eyes and drawing some of him, so I could remember the first image in my head.

Artist Notes - Original sketch on paper with a 2B Derwent Graphic Pencil. Then captured it onto my Motorola Xoom and used Sketchbook Mobile Pro to trace the image and color it.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 15 - Skeleton

Day 15 - Skeleton. What monster round up would be complete without some kind of skeletal frightful imagery? So, here he is scaring some poor guy out of his wits!

Artist Notes - This sketch was done completely in Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Android Honeycomb enabled Motorola Xoom. I did a quick sketch of the guy and the skeleton on one layer then traced them in other layers. At the end I deleted the layer with the quick sketch. Also, important tip is to save a bunch! I usually save each sketch as a copy several times during my progress. Then uploaded to dropbox for cloud access.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 14 - Big Foot

Day 14 - Big Foot. He's one of my favorite monsters, which makes it even more peculiar that I hadn't done one yet.

Artist Notes - Created using Sketchbook Mobile Pro on a Android Honeycomb enabled Motorola Xoom tablet.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 10 - Cyclops

Monster 10 is a Cyclops.

Artist Notes - I started this with a BW pencil sketch. Then I captured it onto my Motorola Xoom. Then I used Sketchbook Mobile Pro to trace it and color it.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 04 - Old Drac

And day four brings an aging classic monster, Dracula.

Artist notes - This was a pencil sketch then captured onto my Xoom tablet and inked and colored in Sketchbook Mobile Pro.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 03 - Hairy

Here's the monster for day three.

Artist notes - done completely on my Xoom tablet with Sketchbook Mobile Pro.

October Monster Madness 2011 - Day 01 - Jack the Pumpkinhead

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but in 2008 I took on a personal challenge that for the month of October I would draw a different monster sketch every day and upload it. I've decided to do that again this year. Last time I used mainly one method, which was sketch it, scan it, covert it in CorelDraw, color it and finish it. This year, I hope to utilize a variety of methods - tablet sketch, black and white pencil sketch, CorelDraw, painted, maybe clay - we'll see what I end up with.

To kick things off, here is my first one for October. He's the main character of a children's book I wrote and illustrated called Jack the Pumpkinhead and you can get it at www.lulu.com/mcrosser.

Artist Notes - Done as a pencil sketch in a Dentist Office waiting room - maybe a dentist could be one of my monsters, hmm. Then I scanned it onto my Xoom tablet and traced it and colored it in Sketchbook Mobile Pro.

A Study of New Orleans

I read recently, where Disney artists like Glen Keane, draw hundreds of drawings before they land on the character or design they want. I'm preparing some layout designs for an article on mission work in New Orleans and here are some of what I intend to be dozens, if not hundreds, of drawings in prep for that.

It's a simple figure blowing Jazz on a trumpet done in different styles.

The first one is the original pencil sketch --

The next one is just a simple silhouette --

Taking the silhouette to the next level, I placed it on a blue background --

Then I took the original sketch and imported onto my Xoom tablet where I colorized it using Sketchbook Mobile Pro --

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Artist Notes - Original sketch done with  Derwent Graphic 2B pencil on Hammermill Color Copy Digital paper that is 28lb weight and 100 brightness. The silhouettes were done in CorelDraw X5 on a Windows 7 laptop. The colorized version was done on a Honeycomb enabled Motorola Xoom tablet.

Inspired by Rango

So, I finally got around to watching the animated western movie called Rango. Rango is populated with possums, squirrels, rabbits, etc. The main character is a lizard! So, while hanging around the hospital with my brother I drew a western snake.

Artist notes - This sketch was done in Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom tablet running Android Honeycomb 3.2. I used a stylus and my finger, but mainly the stylus.

Happy Fourth of July Firecracker sketch

In the spirit of the Fourth of July, I made this firecracker getting ready to go off. Since, I love the Fourth so much, I think I may do some more sketches.

Artist Notes - done in Sketchbook Mobile Pro on an Android powered Motorola Xoom with version 3.1 of Honeycomb.

Little Girl Outside sketch

Here's a tablet sketch I did over several days recently. Using Sketchbook Mobile Pro I made everything in layers. For this sketch I discovered that you could merge layers in this really cool app for the Xoom Android Tablet. So now, I can go in and export out just the wall for instance and use it somewhere else, since I made it a different layer. I am hoping to do more ministry projects with it as I learn more. I used it for several illustrations that I did for the Jump VBS curriculum I developed.



Healthy Lungs

These are your lungs are clean air.

Artist Notes - Created using Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom Tablet running Android Honeycomb 3.1.

Quackers the Duck

This duck doesn't go for logic, he's Quackers!

Artist Notes - This was created using Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom Tablet running Android Honeycomb 3.1.

Roger Roys and His Trusty Steed Pistol

Here's a new character I created called Roger Roys. He's a singin, yodelin, grass chewin, son of the ol West. And don't forget his trusty steed, Pistol!

Artist Notes - Created using Sketchbook Mobile Pro on my Motorola Xoom Tablet running Android Honeycomb 3.1.

Duck in Cave - Sketchbook Mobile Pro

I think that this illustration is the best attempt at doing something with my tablet that looks closest to my naturally preferential artstyle. It gives me great excitement about what I will be able to do with it in the future. I have some drawing assignments coming up and I am tempted to to go solely on the tablet. 

I think one of the things that I like about drawing on the tablet is that it is so forgiving. I mean it looks like ink, but if I draw a mistake and I can simply undo it and try again. And I can easily color and shade my drawings. There are some drawbacks and differences to drawing digitally, but I think I am ok with most of the trade-offs.