Bubble Girl

I love blowing and watching bubbles, and I’ve been trying to come up with an image involving bubbles for a while. I eventually settled on a girl running with a large bubble wand and her dog chasing along behind her. Here is my pencil sketch:

I used a brush pen and a light table to ink directly on my cold press paper, rather than penciling on the paper and inking over it:

I think this piece turned out pretty well, though I feel like the dog’s jumping-while-running pose could feel a little more natural, but I’m not sure what I need to change in order to do that. I may revisit this idea in a couple of years, but until then I feel I’ve done the best job I can with it. Thanks for reading!

Bubble bath

bubble bath fb
I wanted to do an illustration involving a young person in a bath. Initially I thought it would be funny for the scene to take place in a kitchen sink, because I’d recently seen several facebook pictures of parents washing their young children in the sink, but I couldn’t make that idea work. It did give me the idea, however, to show a little guy who had dropped his bath toy and couldn’t reach it. I had some trouble coming up with the right mix of objects to show that this was a bathroom while not cluttering the composition. I settled on a towel rack and a bath mat. I then had to decide whether I should draw the whole tub, or just part. I decided to just show the relevant part of the tub, as the focus of the illustration is on the little boy, and not the tub. This is my sketch:
I had recently noticed a fellow illustrator using blue colored inks for soap bubbles, and decided that I would would give that a try. As it happens, I have a bottle of blue ink that I’ve had for about 6-7 years, and I finally got to use it in this illustration. I feel like the blue helps the bubbles feel lighter than rest of the objects that are outlined in black. I also used a little bit of dry brush technique on the towel to help give it a little bit of texture. I’m really pleased with the overall result.