The Sketchblog

Having a whale of a time.



This was a really quick drawing, I wanted to play around with my brushpen and watercolors.

Another in my installment of presidential candidate, sand todays caricature is none other than Hillary Clinton.

Hillary has the most wonderful cheeks I've ever seen. How the heck did they get so round?

I've been sketching almost exclusively with watercolors lately, and loving it. It's that fastest way I know of to detail a drawing and, with the discovery of water brushes, I don't have to worry about carrying water around. I'd like to do some plein air stuff when I get the chance.


This little guy might be familiar. I've also discovered a new sketchbook. I used to use Moleskines exclusively, but got my hands on the elusive hand•book and I don't think I'll be switching back. If there are any Moleskine addicts reading this, you should definitely
try these out.

This is where we went camping over memorial day.


These are called Khrushchiovii, named after the former soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. They are little 5-story apartment buildings that dot theUral mountains. I have an odd love for desolate urban areas and miss seeing the sprawl of siberia.


Gone fishin'.


An aristocratic dinosaur.

The man, the myth, the forehead: Rudy Giuliani.

Todays closeup is of that fantastic mop of hair. I swear it must come from a mold, it's just too perfect.


Stormin' Mormon Mitt Romney

Geeze! Once I get started it's hard to stop. Here's a caricature of Barack Obama. I'm not sure who to do next, Hillary or Cheney. Probably Cheney because he is so ogre-ish.

And the close-up.

I had so much fun doing Jay Leno the other day I decided to do a caricature of George Bush too. Our Pres has great mannerisms and a face that just begs to be drawn.

Here's a closeup of his face. His lips always make me think of Woody Woodpecker.

On an average day I have at least two hour long meetings at work. More often than not I try to be too busy to have to go, but sometimes I need to know what is going on. When that happens, I try to sketch at least one of my coworkers. I won't post their names to protect them from public humiliation, but I'm sure they know who they are.
I was in a blue pencil mood that day. We'll call it my blue period.

A real quick watercolor sketch. It took me about 15 minutes and then I had to stop to watch the season finale of Heroes, which could have been better by the way. It's a cathedral in St. Petersburg but the name escapes me right now.

Here are a few of my son (pulling faces, holding the baseball bat. People from church, random faces and even Jimmy Corrigan.

It's been a while since I did any celebrity caricatures so I think I might have had a little too much fun with this one of Jay Leno. I've been working on a more 'painterly' look and have had fun getting away from inked lines. This was done entirely in photoshop (a little freehand) for a story about headliners coming to the area, Leno being one of them.

Really, though, Jay Leno is probably one of the easiest people in the world to caricature. He's just eyebrows and chin.

Click on the picture above for a cheeky closeup.

I just finished my new portfolio/blog for my illustrations. I'll keep my sketches here and put more of the illustration work at joshferrin.com. This familiar fellow is from that site and I thought I would post a larger version of him here. I've always wanted a rocket pack but I doubt the phonograph jets are anything but practical.

My marathon illustration run is almost over and it couldn't come too soon. I am so tired. Here's another one. Enjoy!



Too tired to type more, must sleep.

I'm sure it doesn't make much sense right now, but I just started coloring so it's not supposed to. It's been too many consecutive late nights so I will leave this one undone until tomorrow night.

I had to take break from the other story for a day so I did this one last night. It goes with a poem about a guy who was in the shower too long and came out looking like a raisin, obviously. I had been working on it for about an hour when I realized that it looked more scary than funny, which isn’t such a good idea for a children’s book. I had to change course and am pleased with the final image.





Here’s what he looked like before I realized how hideous it was. Eek!

I change my mid halfway through illustrations all the time, I guess I’m just not the kind of person who sees the final product in my mind and I’m always surprised at what I end up with.

This is the screenshot I did right as I finished it. And I even had three minutes to spare before midnight, just enough time for a celebratory burrito!




I had to do a closeup of the little kid because I thought he looked cute. I actually really, really like this page. Hopefully that will limit the amount of tweaking I do, besides, it is a huge file. I have one page left to do for this story, the preceding page actually, that I hope to post tomorrow, or more likely, Thursday. Hope you enjoyed it!

So, I timed myself and it took longer than I thought! Five hours just to do the coloring for this page. That doesn't include the time I spend sketching up the idea and at least an hour to ink it. I would guess I would have to add two hours on top of that. That's seven hours before I start tinkering endlessly. Yup, I already changed the one I finished last night. I went back in to add some freckles. After I finished the next page I had to go back to yesterdays to add some more highlights to his hair. This is the last time I will post this page, I promise!



Okay, I'm done with this one. Really!



Next page. This one went quickly, and I'm really pleased with the way the water turned out. My initial sketch for this page was done a while ago and now I think the layout could be stronger but, well, one can only tweak so much.

Woo-hoo! Only two more pages to go!

I do these screencaps from time to time because everyone seems to love them.



Here's the inked drawing after I have scanned it in, bumped up the contrast to get rid of any stray pencil marks and fixed anything that I goofed up earlier.




Next I start laying down the base colors. I always get nervous during this part because it makes the drawing look terrible with all those flat colors. I choose mid-range tones so that I can add layers of color, both darker and lighter, to give it a lot of depth. That's why his hair looks so pink but, trust me, it will get better.




I create the painterly look with a by adding light 'washes' of color in photoshop. I am still expanding my palette to get a more realistic tone to my characters but I guess that is a never-ending process. Here you can see what it looks like after painting for a couple of hours. I erase endlessly and undo even more until I get it to where I like it.




Done! I tweak endlessly, making his eyelids smaller, etc. I use a lot of different techniques to get the textures for the road, clouds, trees, hair, etc, but most of it is done with custom photoshop brushes I have made over time. I try to do less detail work in the background to make sure it doesn't draw you away from the focus of the picture. I might go back and lighten the background a little more, but I'll let it rest for now.

I have had so much time on my hands that I have been sawing through the illustrations for my childrens book. I reworked most of the first few pages, (I need to get this thing done so I will stop tweaking with it) and finished two more, quite a feat considering how much dang time it takes to do one of these. Now I'm curious, I'll try to time myself on the next one.

Here's a big image dump to show you what has crossed my desk in the past few days.



You've seen this one before, I just reworked it a bit- namely I added a pattern to the wallpaper.



Again, just reworked a few details and layout.



Reworked the bug and the bear.



New asteroid and added the dreamy border. This one looks a little sparse to me but that should be fixed when I add the text.



New border and added some more trees.



This one was fun! I worked it up from a sketch and did the color a couple of days ago.



I just finished this one last night. I'll post a few screenshots to show how it progressed.



This is a brand new one, done for a different story.

Sorry for the delay, I was out of town for a few days. We're always so busy whenever we go on vacation I feel like I need a rest when I get back home. The rest of the crew are still in Utah so I am being forced into bachelorhood for another week. But, at least I will have some extra time to get some of my backlogged illustrations done. Here's a sketch of something I am doing for my children's book. I haven't inked it yet so it's basically just a sketch but I added a little bit of a background last night for fun. I'll post the finished version tonight hopefully.

I found a few more sketches in some old Moleskines that I never posted. I started scanning them in larger so you can see more detail when you click on the thumbnail. Some are downright huge.

I'm not sure who this is but, judging by his wardrobe I saw him in Reno.

Old guy at church. I think I had the Bangles song stuck in my head that day.

Random sketches and one memory sketch from work. Our new Editor has the most amazing hair, and I tried to capture his image from memory. He's the little one with the tie.

Assorted church sketches. I think everyone was falling asleep that day.

The color ones are from work. The two pencil sketches are from church.

This is an old one I did while my son was drawing all over the bathtub.

Some goofy-looking kid. Not mine, I think I saw him at the park.