Seasons Greetings!

Merry Christmas!! Here are some recent holiday sketches to cheer you up. Maybe I should go into the greeting card business. Happy Holidays and all that Jazz!

Extra! Extra!

Creating background figures for an illustration can be like hiring extras for a film. They need to be appropriate to the current setting while being both generic and diverse. It's easy to get caught up creating cool characters and spending way too much time on them than is actually needed.

Here are a few out of context for a current project.

Insta-Gramification

Like most of the cool kids, I'm on Instagram. For those interested in seeing more of my work, I go by @duckduckgorilla. Same as I do here and on Twitter. I post more frequently there as well, but I'll always come back to my blog. As always, thanks for checking out my work.

100th Post!

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to check out my blog, especially my small smattering of followers. Duck-Duck-Gorilla has given me a way to share everything from loose sketches to finished illustrations in a very free form, non-sequitur kind of way that I adore.

Duck-Duck-Gorilla is as much a playground for me as it is a safe haven…a place to play to my strengths or work on areas I feel I need the most practice without anyone looking over my shoulder or needing to meet anyone's expectations but my own.

For lots of silly reasons I've been unable to show any of my professional work here.  I'm hopeful that will change in the coming months so my blog will begin to reflect a more comprehensive picture of my work.

Until then, I promise to continue my usual random, intermittent postings of incomplete and half-started projects that fall heavily on the side of silly, playful goofiness with a dash of comic book nerd obscurity and a healthy dose of my inexplicable love of all things Roller Derby.

So Thank You Again…And Please Stay Tuned!!  I feel like I'm just getting started.

Your Pal,
Duck-Duck-Gorilla

Go Figure

Here are a few random background figures for a current project. Wish I could share more.

Penguin Shuffle

Like the song says, I'm still learning to put one foot in front of the other. Keep drawing, keep sketching…keep moving forward.

All Dolled Up

New character design for an old project I recently dusted off. I always enjoy creating artwork in Adobe Illustrator as a break from rendering in Photoshop. Utilizing hard cuts for shadows and highlights gives characters an instant animated appeal.

Wanted: Decaf or Regular

The Dreaded Double-Shot Espresso!! This Coffee Slinging Barista Bandit is wanted for being over caffeinated…and Delicious!!

Chicks, Man

Which did I draw first…the chicken or the egg?  I'll never tell.

Making Friends

There are some fun drawing challenges on Twitter. This was a quick sketch and ink wash I created for @PinchPuchPost, which chooses a new animal every first of the month for artists to interpret.
 

Dino-Mite!

Open the door. Get on the floor…Everybody walk the dinosaur.

Down Time

Even super heroes need a little down time. During mine I usually focus on figure drawing. Hopefully creating interesting poses and action shots in the process. For backgrounds I sometimes use a visual shorthand to create the illusion of a much larger world. Such as with this piece of Wonder Woman on a rare day off.

Morning Sketch

I used to carry a small sketchbook everywhere I went and I think it's high time I started up that old habit again. In that spirit, here's a character sketch for an ongoing personal project.