Monday, December 31, 2012

Have A Doctor Who Year!

With the year drawing to a close, a lot of people are thinking about time. Thinking about time inevitably leads me to thinking about the Doctor. Doctor Who, you ask? Exactly! Ha-ha-ha!  One of the great things about being a freelance artist and crafter, is that sometimes people ask you to make really cool things. Towards the end of this year, I had the opportunity to make several cool Doctor Who Items, and now that Christmas is over I can finally share them with you!

My friend Carter was looking for something to give to his wife for Christmas other than the usual Jewelry, so he asked for the Tenth Doctor (Played by David Tennant) in an illustration acting as Hamlet giving the speech to the skull of Yorick.  I was familiar with the fact that Tennant had performed Hamlet before, but hadn't actually seen it before. So I looked it up on YouTube. I'm not sure whether the whole thing is available there or not, but I was able to watch several scenes, and it was a very good update on the classic play. This illustration was a lot of fun to do, and I look forward to doing some more like it in the new year.

I think, looking at my work, that it must be obvious that I'm a child of the eighties. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) will always be my doctor, when I think about the series. He's the one that I watched with my brother on Sunday afternoons, hanging over the side of my mom's bed. Over the summer, I'd made a few Doctor Who Peg People as I was trying out some new things for new products. In the fall, one of my friends bought the four that I'd made (Ten, a Cyberman, the Empty Child, and Rose Tyler) and asked me to make 9 more and three play houses to go with them. Her only stipulation was that they all had to be Doctor Who characters and buildings. WOW! It was a lot of fun picking the characters that I wanted to make into peg people, and an interesting challenge translating them and the buildings to this simplified play format. It also allowed me to come up with certain "rules" for the construction of the houses and the details of them, which I may not have ever done with just working from my head.
  
Amy's House
  
Martha Jones, Amy Pond, Eleven, and Rory Williams
The Tardis
 
 The Silence, Vashta Nerada, and a Weeping Angel
Dalek

We hope you all had a wonderful 2012, and that the worst day of the New Year is better than the best day of the last one. Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The 30 Day Post-It Challenge

So, what to people who draw (or do any creative thing) for a living do in their free time? They create more stuff. Just like athletes have to constantly train to play harder and better, artists constantly create to sharpen their minds, try out new ideas, or just get rid of bad ones. During the month of November, I participated in the 30 day Post-It Sketch challenge. It was a lot of fun, I think I grew some over the month, and it was great getting daily feedback from friends and family on instagram and facebook. As you can see, I didn't quite make it to 30, that's because I got a little behind and a new daily project needed my attention for the month of December. More on that in a minute though, for now, here's my 30...er 25 Post-It sketches.
 
 December is busy with the holidays, commissions, and more work...and the girls. To re-start the Daily Life series as Life With Girls, I'm doing some journal-style comics in a small, 30(ish) page sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project. The girls are really excited about Christmas, making things and seeing people, and we'd like to record some of that and share it with our friends.
Until next time, take care and be good.
Your friend,
Jeffrey