Scott Brundage- Love at First Sight

"Of all the gin joints, in all the jungles, in all the world...."

or

"Casabanana"

Jeffrey Alan Love - Love at First Sight

When I was in elementary school a girl that I liked and I made an appointment to meet at the playground on Saturday and kiss - the first kiss for each of us.  The day came, we met, we played on the playground, and then we kissed.  Walking home I was in a daze.  My vision was blurry, I was stumbling, the world was fuzzy.  It was snowing slightly, and the world seemed magical.  "This is what love must be like," I thought.  Just like in the movies and the books I read - love really did have a physical effect upon you!  It all seemed very exciting.  When I got home, my dad looked at me and told me that I was missing one of the lenses from my glasses.  We walked back to the playground together and there, upon the site of my first kiss, was the lens, winking up at me from the snow.

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- I Love Bernie Fuchs

 Bernie Fuchs is one of my all time favorite Illustrators, so I decided to pay him a little tribute by copying one of his drawings and adding a little bit of some month of love flare. Enjoy my feeble attempt at connecting with a true master.

Scott Murphy - Dragon Love

I find that sometimes the strongest bonds are the love between humans and animals...aaand I felt like drawing a dragon.

Man's best friend.

Jeanine Henderson—Without Love

I've always loved to use quotes as illustration inspiration, and actually did a project last year that I collected lots of quotes on love for.  I always liked this Swedish proverb: "A life without love is like a year without summer" but never got around to illustrating it. It came to mind as I was walking home in the cold tonight. I pulled out my charcoal pencils for this sketch—which I haven't seen much of since my art school days!

Kristina Carroll - Heartkiller

According to urban lore, there used to be a rule around teardrop tattoos in prison that each teardrop represented someone killed.  I thought, what if there was someone who did something similar with hearts they've broken...

Later, the teardrop was adopted by gangs and a variation held that unfilled tattoos were for someone killed that needed revenge, and once revenge was taken the tear would get filled in.  I think either interpretation  works for my version.

L is for Love - Alice Stanne

I love doing incredibly ornate letters, so here is an L for Love. I hope to be able to clean this up and color it for a later date...

Sarah Gay - Loves Blankets

Graphite, colored pencil, & ink in Sketchbook- digitally colored

I am tired of the cold.
I love blankets.

Cozy in a pile

February is so cold

Blankets are my friend

Kate Feirtag- Lecture sketching fun!

Some quick sketches during tonight's lecture with Robert Hunt.

Chris O'Neill - Love your Beer

This started as a still life of an empty bottle near my desk, and turned into something else completely when I added the cute babe... I Love Beer, especially craft beer, especially IPAs. There you have it!

- CHRIS

Terese Nielsen - Lovers

WIP... collage, acrylic, pastel, oil

"Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."  -Rumi

Honoring the exquisite woman I've been emerging with, for the last nineteen years.

Tim Paul - Caffeine Fueled Love

I imagine at this time of year, Cupid gets rather busy, and needs a little pick me up. 

Carly Janine Mazur - The Gift

5"x7" oil and acrylic

If you've ever owned a cat, there's never forgetting their odd ways of showing how much they love you. Especially when they leave it in your bed...

Narciso Espiritu - Keep Trying

It's not easy, just like everything that's worth it. 

Marc Scheff - Warm Bodies

Since today is an open day, I'm posting an unfinished sketch for a paintingo. I read Warm Bodies last year, and started a sample piece based on the story. It is now the top grossing movie of the week, so it might be a good time to finish it up.

Warm Bodies is a survival tale with a slightly new take on the zombie phenomenon. I don't want to give anything away, but our zombie hero does find a surprising amount of humanity in his currently unbeating heart.

digital

Cynthia Sheppard - A Love of Knowledge

A comfortable old couch and a fascinating book = recipe for love.

Scott Brundage- Mating Season

I'm actually surprised I haven't already drawn some sort of primate. Enjoy the view.

Tara Jacoby - He Loves Me Not

Another Dorothy Park inspired sketch.

Jeffrey Alan Love - Arrows

I love arrows.  I devoured any and all Robin Hood books and movies I could find when I was young (I must have watched the Errol Flynn and Disney fox version hundreds of times), pored over NC Wyeth's illustrations, loved the Black Arrow Disney tv film starring Oliver Reed, wanted to be Legolas shooting orcs, my favorite part of Moebius' "The Airtight Garage" is when Archer shoots down the "Flying Object of Destiny",  the list goes on and on.  My dad, brother, and I used to go on walks in the woods in Germany and we would pretend to be Robin Hood and Little John, fighting with sticks on downed trees, ambushing evil knights with our bows and arrows.  When we would visit my grandparents in the mountains of Tennessee my grandfather would make me a bow from old tobacco sticks, and I would run around the fields, my head in a completely different century.  Now, as a collector of Japanese prints, I'm a sucker for anything with arrows, from the single solitary arrow of Yoshitoshi striking the deer to the samurai fighting through a hail of arrows.  As I search for my personal voice as an illustrator and artist, I am continually brought back to the child that I was, and the memories of when my imagination was just as real as the real world around me.  The child I was in 1985 is the art director of my personal work.  And he loves arrows.

Challenge #2 for Tuesday Feb. 5th

Our second Challenge comes courtesy of Jaime Zollars

The subject is:  "Love at first Sight"

Kyle Smart- I don't know what I'd do without you

Jaime Zollars - Charming Etheline

okay, this is still super loose (it's 2.5 inches tall) but I'm working up thumbnails for a finished piece I'd like to work on over the next couple weeks...Etheline is a character I'm developing who has a kindred relationship with snakes. She is part of my warrior girl series and she is quite interested in magic.

Narciso Espiritu - Freestyle

So, I love this comic called Saga. These are the two protagonists. My work is currently in an Avengers Tribute show, so I'm in a comic book mood. Then again, I usually am.

Kristina Carroll - Blue Magic

Blue Magic
Watercolor

Just playing with textures and movement. Always trying to find ways to loosen up and simplify.

Tara Jacoby - Blue

Alice Stanne - Heart Rock

I know Sunday's a free draw day, but who couldn't use a bit more love? I spent the day with my family and our unnaturally large collection of rocks, including this great heart rock. Couldn't pass it up in our month of love...

Marc Scheff - Ministry of Love

The diminishing audience for DOMA support.

digital over pencil sketch

Kate Feirtag_ Freestyle Sunday

Finley loves food and feathers. 

Carly Janine Mazur - Wing

8"x3.5" acrylic on wood

Today, I did a little experiment to play around with how I want to approach stylizing wings in a painting I'm beginning to work on.

Chris O'Neill - Rainbow Zombie Eyes

Lazy Sundays are the best day to draw rainbow zombie eyed girls.....

- CHRIS

Sarah Gay- Sunday

gesso, masking tape, ink & graphite in Sketchbook and digitally colored

Thinking of days before now.

I was particularly inspired by the Library of Congress's Great Depression photo catalogue.

Happy Sunday

Ricardo Lopez Ortiz- Free Style Sunday

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!?!? Guess I am from these Sunday doodles.

Tim Paul - Freestylin' Sunday

done in Painter with the colored pencil brush

Those that know me, know I have a love of the MTA here in New York. I love taking pictures of people on the train, and quite often those pictures are a great reference source for when I need background people or inspiration. I'm a firm believer in there being a public transit sub-culture, were there are rules and ways of behaving.

Recently I've been thinking how that culture might be, if the MTA riders were animals of different shapes and sizes. For example, would a frog have to share his seat with other smaller critters? Or the one per seat rule still go?

Also, it's just fun to draw a snooty old lady rino and her little bird friend, or a moody hipster hog.

Perhaps my next Sunday Free for all, will be to do a color version of this. 

Scott Brundage- Freestyle Sunday

Poured a blob of green ink, blew it around and then tried to see what lived in it. Apparently this guy does.

Scott Murphy - Sunday Anything

So I see some are still sticking with the love theme on this "freeform Sunday," but I've decided to diverge a little so as not to run myself thin on the love theme. And seeing as today is Superbowl Sunday....which I could care less about...but the one good thing about it is getting together and spending time with loved ones and friends. So one of the teams is the Ravens...and I also love ravens! So here's a raven:

An interesting note on my journey with this sketch. I had originally intended to do this as a proper ink wash, but much to my surprise, my moleskine sketchbook would not take a wash at all. It just beaded up and sat on the surface. I had no idea, having never tried it in a moleskine, but I know i've seen many people do it....maybe I have a weird kind? Anyway, I ended up using some gray Tombow brush markers and a black Micron brush pen which both also didn't soak into the paper at first. So I figured this would turn out terribly, but I eventually managed to wrangle into a half decent drawing...and it has kind of nice texture from how the ink unevenly soaked into the paper.

Jeanine Henderson-NOLA Love

With the big game in New Orleans today, I can't help but daydream even more than usual about my favorite city and how much I absolutely LOVE it there! So I decided to play around with a fluer de lis pattern today.

Terese Nielsen - Freeform Sunday

Moleskin, crowquill, water brush

My morning began by slowing down, strolling about in the sun on our little urban homestead, appreciating the daily beauties that I so easily grow accustomed to. Oftentimes I look past the small things and tend to not "see" in a way that honors its presence. This is sort of my form of meditation, in which I attempt to disengage from the art school, analytical programming of design, composition, value etc. and just feel my way through the lines. Though this was "freeform" day and could be anything, it was interesting to notice so many parallels to "love" as my pen explored the flowers presence.

Cynthia Sheppard - Lovely Subjects

I always considered this fact somewhat of a secret, but I'd wager a lot of figurative artists have experienced something similar. As I'm drawing or painting someone (especially a portrait or close likeness) I often temporarily fall in love with the subject. I believe it's a natural, involuntary response to an intimate connection between artist and subject. I wonder if this stimulation plays a role in attracting some of us to figurative arts, or if it's the other way around, and a deep love of the practice of art-making enhances the human connection.

Jeffrey Alan Love - Sunday Love

Growing up in Germany and South Korea, I fell in love with real football.  On this "Super" Sunday, here's something I love about the weekends: waking up early and watching my team Liverpool play.  YNWA.

Jaime Zollars - Love is Blind

You know the old saying: "Blind love is like a Pinata full of wasps". Ha, I'm joking, no one says this. Not sure why the above was the visual that came to mind upon hearing the day's prompt, but then I've never been able to fully explain myself.