A simple drawing of the character River, from the television series, Firefly. River is quite a complex character; she’s crazy, she’s kind, but mostly, she’s fragile.

Oh, and she has superpowers.

The drawing’s composition is fairly straightforward, but the design it was used in ended up a little bit more interesting.

6″x10″ Pencil on my not-so-new sketchbook with Strathmore paper (Shiny!)

In America is a movie about a family’s immigration to America, as told from the pov of their 11-year-old daughter. There’s one beautifully framed shot, in which the daughter gazes out the car window in awe at the wonders of the New World. Sarah Bolger plays the daughter, Christy.

As it turns out, drawing kids is hard. I kept on changing and erasing features, eyes and cheeks didn’t line up and made her look a little cross-eyed, chubbier and skinnier at different times. It also didn’t help that this was a front view, vs a profile or 3/4.

This drawing comes from my new sketchbook (it says Caslon paper, oooh, fancy). It’s a little bigger, which makes it easier to plan space, but I still have to get used to the texture, it’s not as easy to erase.

In following from my previous art piece, this piece depicts a scene from the Buffy episode, “The Body”. Tara comforts Willow as she copes with the death of Buffy’s mother. The title comes from the idea that Willow is growing up as she faces the death of someone dear to her, as well as discovering a new love (first kiss) with Tara.

If you haven’t seen the episode (or the series), I highly recommend it.

The pencil drawing itself was done in my 7 x 5″ notepad. I took some liberties in coloring it with Photoshop, though I’m mixed on whether it looks better in sepia or in color. Ah well, I may change it later.

ttfn

Most people don’t know that I’m an avid Buffy fan. This drawing is from one of the first episodes I ever saw, Tabula Rasa. The Willow character has been suffering from an addiction to magic, so much that it drives her lover, Tara, away. I gave Willow a more neutral expression than in the episode, to suggest her dulled senses caused by her addiction.

Willow’s framed much smaller in the actual episode, which I prefer, but unfortunately my sketchbook was not large enough to capture both Willow and the surrounding frame. You can get a similar frame when viewing this as desktop wallpaper, where the white borders extend to the edge.

This pencil study is from my trusty sketchbook (now getting quite full actually), 5″ x 5″. My pencil isn’t very dark, so Photoshop was used to darken and accent a few highlights.

Welcome to New Tokyo International Airport, Narita.

Viewing the trailer for Lost In Translation brought back so many memories of my trip to Tokyo two and three years ago. This movie captures the mixed-up dazed, confused feelings I had while lost in Tokyo, without knowing anyone, or the language. And at the same time, experiencing the exhilaration and thrill of exploring and adventuring through the neverending depths of Tokyo.

Anyway, it moved me enought to draw this portrait of Scarlett Johansson. Pencil on sketchpad, color correction in Photoshop.

For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

Not wanting to leave things unfinished, I took some time this weekend to fix up the hair and other bits from this drawing. I filled some of the darker regions, too, to give good contrast. The version posted here isn’t filtered, as to not hide the detail.

And here is the final drawing, titled “Jessica” after the photographer (who is also the subject). You can see her other stuff here. I also joined DeviantART as well, but there isn’t much there yet.

Latest drawing. Pencil on 5″ x 7″ sketchpad. I also have a colored version, which I’ll put up sometime.

I was messing around with my digital tablet and decided to color one of my old drawings of Utada Hikaru. Of all of my online stuff, this pic is copied the most… a pretty big number of people have linked or used it in their web pages. This one came out with an interesting color configuration, I’m not sure how I got the tint that I did, but it’s pretty modern, and indicative of the style of photography that represents Hikki’s brand.

Here’s another of my latest sketches, that will become the basis for my satine dot org web site. Satine is one of the characters in Moulin Rouge, and the site is going to have some of my artsy / hobby stuff on there. Lately, I’ve also seen some rampant copying of my Utada Hikaru sketch, so I unfortunately had to put a copyright on this one, at least until I get a digital watermark setup.