JP Roberts Illustration

…just random faces/characters here…experimenting with various emotions

Here’s a set of random characters. Oh…and a tree.

Here’s another sketch of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. Tried a bit of caricature on this one.

Sorry for the lack of posts! It’s taken me a bit of time to get back into the swing of things after being out for the holidays! Anyway, I thought I’d post a few pages from one of the sketchbooks I was doodling in over Christmas. These sketches were made with a graphite wash pencil. My wonderful wife gave me an awesome book on Walt Disney which inspired me to do a few drawings of him. The other sketches are just random characters and faces.

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week. I was sidelined with a pretty intense cold in addition to the normal holiday preparations. Fourtunately I’m feeling better and was able to finish up the Christmas gift tags I do each year. Several years ago, I started creating custom Christmas themed illustrations for tags on the presents we give our family. Here’s this year’s crop.

Thought I’d post a few photos of our tree and lights. We didn’t go overboard with the exterior lights like I was hoping to. Still turned out nice I think. I took these last week after the snow came in.

Started doodling in the sketchbook this afternoon and after letting the pen run it’s course, I looked down on the page and saw a polar bear looking back at me. He needed something to do so I gave him a couple of young’uns to watch over. It’s common knowledge that most polar bears don’t live near a Target or Wal-Mart so their tree is pretty bare (pun intended) this year. And yes, for all you smarty-pants’s (do I need that last “s”?), hmmmm, anyway, for all you know-it-all’s, I am aware that polar bears and penguins don’t live in the same part of the world. He just flew in from down south. Well, he waddled in from down south (penguins don’t fly unless they’re from Madagascar). Anyway, I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas and then some! Peace!

Getting back to work on new illustrations for my children’s book portfolio. To have a body of work that I can pitch to publishing companies, I need to round out my book with more images of kids in narrative situations. I was a fan of all things western when I was a kid so I thought this would be a fun series of images to work on. I started these illustrations with sketches done with a graphite wash pencil. After scanning, I tried a digital technique in Photoshop in which I applied layers of color washes at varying levels of transparency. This gave me the watercolor look I was going for and mixed well with the textures in the art.

Switching gears again. A couple of days ago, Eric Orchard, an illustrator that I know, was doing some research on hobos and asked if anyone had personal stories about a hobo. I immediately thought of “Steamtrain Maury” Graham. He was an older gentleman who decided at the age of 52 to “ride the rails” again as he did during his teenage years. I grew up in a very small town called Amory, Mississippi. The town was founded on the railroad and once a year, they hold a railroad festival. When I was growing up, I can remember a group of hobos that would arrive and make camp during the length of the festivities. One of the hobos was a man by the name of Steamtrain Maury Graham. During his annual visit to Amory, he would make it a point to drop by the schools and visit with the kids. We always looked forward to those assemblies. Anyway, I haven’t thought of Ol’Steamtrain in many years until a couple of days ago. I googled him and found quite a bit of info about him including this interview with David Letterman back in 1982. I also found out that he had been elected “King of the Hobos” 5 different times! Eric also posted a link to another hobo (or tramp as they are called across the pond in the UK). The link Eric posted was to a picture of a man named Jozef Stawinoga. Even though he had a pension and money in the bank, he made a deliberate choice to live as a tramp. Both Steamtrain and Jozef are visually intriguing so I decided to create a few quick sketches of them. The images below are direct scans from my sketchbook with a bit of post processing in photoshop.

Today’s Illustration Friday topic is “Hatch” and I thought I’d do a quick image for it. I haven’t participated in IF in quite a while and hope that I can get back into it. Anyway, I hope you like it! Happy Friday to everyone!

I thought I’d post a compilation of random characters I sketched tonight while watching Tinker Bell with my daughter. I used a water soluble pencil and a water brush then scanned the sketches. I then added a bit of tinting in Painter using the water color brush.

Here’s another quick character sketch. I threw a couple of digital watercolor washes over my initial sketch. I haven’t decided which style I’d like to do this one in. Anyway, this is still a work in progress. I’ll post updated versions of this one soon.

Shifting gears again and going back to character based illustrations. With the holiday’s coming up, I thought I’d do one related to the season. This one was sketched, scanned and then painted digitally.

Here’s another quick color sketch using the oil brushes in Painter with a bit of post work done in Photoshop. This is currently a work in progress. I want to go back and add another level of detail to this when I have time.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! Over the break, I decided to pick up my oil paints and get back to the basics. I’ll post the painting that I’m currently working on soon. Since I was in oil painting mode, I decided to try creating an oil painting using Painter and Photoshop. Here’s the result. This is a little less than an hour’s worth of painting so I consider this more of color sketch than a finished painting. Anyway, I hope you like it!

So here’s the final image after the detail pass and a bit of post work. The process was more of the same – lay down the color using a soft pastel variant (brush) in Painter then use the real oils blender tool to pull it all together. Once I felt like the image was where it needed to be, I went back over it with the pastel brush and laid down a bit of texture using brighter colors. There are a few areas that still need work but I’m calling this done for now.

Here are a few more images showing the progression of my latest illustration. I’m blocking the color in roughly at first then making a second pass with a little more attention paid to the edges. For the first blocking pass, I’m using the real oils short brush in Painter. For the refined blocking pass, I’m using the real soft pastel brush with the texture set to worn pavement. The third image shows my original sketch multiplied back over the 2 painting layers. The next step will be a finishing pass to tighten up the edges and add the details. After that, a little post work in Photoshop and it should be complete.

Here’s another 2d illustration I’m starting. Since my goal is to break into children’s books, I’ve been told by several very knowledgeable artist reps that I should consider adding more illustrations of kids to my portfolio. Makes total sense since most books for kids feature kids! Guess what one of the most difficult subjects to draw is? Yup, you got it – kids! If you don’t pay close attention to proportion and scale, you’re cute image of a 3 year-old could wind up looking like an extra from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Anyway, I cracked open the sketchbook this weekend and proceded to follow our 3 year-old around this house. She’s a great reference when I can get her to hold still long enough. Of course, that’s all but impossible to do with a toddler. So, in my quest to create more illustration work featuring kids, I resorted to taking inspiration from a photo I had of Zoe reading to her bear one night. I wanted the girl in my image to be a little older than 3 so it’s not an exact copy of the photo.

I decided to break this one down into the various stages I go through starting with the sketch. You’ll notice that I have it on a toned and textured background. I want the end result of the illustration to feel warm and cozy. If I start with the right tones in the underpainting, I’m a step closer to getting the look I want. This image was created by scanning my sketch into the computer and then adding it to my paper texture in Photoshop. The next stage will be to block out the colors in Painter.

I was cleaning up some old files and ran across this rendering of a character I modeled when I was employed with DXD Studios in Kansas City. It’s the mascot for the Texas Tech Red Raiders. This character was never used but I thought I’d post the render since the modeling turned out fairly decent. I’ll be posting more 2d illustrations soon. Hope you’re all having a great weekend!

Hmmmm….I dunno. I think it’s an alienster. Just another character painting. I need to move away from just creating these guys and actually make up stories for them. They’re getting bored just sitting around my computer not doing anything. Anyway, the workflow on this one was another mix of traditional and digital. I’ve also included another process sequence. In this one, I show the initial sketch that gave me the idea for the character. The first character was a robot. I had him bouncing a ball but when I found the sketch today, the ball looked like a yo-yo. I thought a monster holding a sucker and playing with a yo-yo would be fun.