As I build my portfolio, I create my own projects to do. One of the ways is to take a piece of narrative or fiction and illustrate it. For this one, there was a series of Star Wars comics set during the Clone Wars. I decided to do the cover of one chapter of one of the stories, "Graveyard Moon". The downside to doing this particular project was that there was already a cover illustration for it. Typically, it's a good idea to pick a narrative that is less familiar and not popularized already (like Wizard of Oz or Jungle Book). That way, you run less risk of creative obstacles those stories may pose, because they already have some ingrained cultural history. The beauty of Star Wars is that its characters aren't literary - they are based on the actor's likenesses in the film. My drawback was the actual cover composition. I decided to make this an exercise in likeness and just keep the main composition and add flourishes here and there. Here is the sketch I came up with. Along with the final color which I did in Photoshop.





And just for funsies, I did a mockup to see what it would look like as the actual cover. The real cover is first followed by my version.

As I catch up on some illustration ideas I've had brewing, as well as working on a new project, I thought I'd post this small sketch in the spirit of Valentine's Day. I must have done this about three years ago. I stopped because I couldn't find the right model to pose for Cupid. (My daughter was only one and my son wouldn't be caught dead in a diaper). Anyway, I put it off to the side (like many sketches) to approach again at a later date. Perhaps my son would reconsider wearing a diaper...

I'm not sure how many artists find value in dating their artwork. As for me, I haven't given it much thought in the last 10 or so years. I just sign my initials and that's it. But last night, I was going through some old portfolios, and I found a multitude of paintings I did with my watercolor instructor as a kid. Hardly any of them were dated except for one in 1981. I guessed that that put the rest of them at around the same time period. But then I started turning them over. And I found more work I did, but I knew I was older. The subject matter was more personal and the drawing skill was different. I could only guess that I did those in junior high or high school. But I will never know for sure! Now the OCD in me wants to rifle through all of my artwork and date the ones I can remember. But then the artist in me doesn't really care – it was done by me, it doesn't matter when. Oh well. Perhaps I should look at it this way: it's important to me right now because I'm just curious as to when in my life I created a particular piece of art. More than likely, it's not important to anyone else. In the meantime, here is one of those mystery pieces. I don't remember painting half the stuff I found, but I really don't remember EVER drawing anything from "E.T." but here's an "E.T." watercolor I did. That's the other thing that troubles me - why don't I remember doing this? Anyway, since most of the work I found was probably done around '81-'82, I would guess this one was done later. "E.T." came out in '82, so I would venture to guess this was done in that year or '83. But since there were other pieces in the portfolio that looked like they were from my early teens, it's a possibility that I did this in junior high or high school. I'll leave that up to you.