You will be a tiger, I will be a manatee

If you have means, you should check out "Super Animal Brothers III" by EAR PWR. It is a song (and an album), and they are a band, and their song sounds like this.

It sounds like video games felt when I was six.

Two Thieves and a Princess

Two more quick pastel sketches. Both from unfinished stories that won't die.

Pipe Dreams

Coming back to my pastels after two months away has been NICE. I don't know of a faster or more intuitive way for me to think in color. These are li'l variations for my current project. Neither of these adequately hits the vibe I want, but they were FUN TO DO!!!  

And here's a pastel confession. I started using pastels only after playing Super Mario Galaxy. There are these really simple faux-pastel illustrations in the game that have the most magical vibe- they make me feel all of six years old. So my foray into pastels is inspired by the Wii, not French Impressionism. Long live Miyamoto.

I'll post some more Italy sketchbook stuff when I feel like spending an hour with my scanner again.

Roman Holiday with bonus bus material.

Tricky thing about travel for me- it's hard to find a balance between the seeing and doing and the drawing and whatnot. I was only in rome for thee days. Or was it four? Anyway, it was not long enough, and I sacrificed a lot of 'finished' drawing for a lot of seeing. 

These sketches are all on the road from Rome to Florence. We did Pompeii and Herculaneum on the way over. We also stopped in Paestum for a bit, where a few temples were still standing from the Greek colonies back in the day. So I drew one. Then I kind of jammed from head on the bus. 

The Road to Rome

I've been back from Europeville for almost a week now, and I figure it's about time to start with the postin'. These first sketches catalogue the journey from Provo to Rome. At least, they catalogue the existence of the stuff around me as I went from Provo to Rome. Like my sleeping wife. Or my almost sleeping wife. Or my wife in her pajamas.

Pastaland

I'm still alive, y'all.

Just kinda busy.

A photographer friend of mine is on the trip and wanted to snap a photo of this sketch. I thought I'd post it since it's all nice and digitized for me.

Not Painting

So for about a year I've been struggling to find a finished look for a children's book project I had an editor looking at. I'm pretty sure she's fed up with me (a YEAR, people) so I doubt it'll go anywhere, but I think I finally found my look. I'd been trying to PAINT this stupid thing, 'cause that's what you do, right? We paint things, right? Even if we're WAAAY more comfortable with drawing, it's just what's done.

No.

It isn't.