Ooh and this too...

A couple of weeks ago, my mom asked me to do a retirement card for one of her coworkers. He is apparently a fan of the Three Stooges so I was told to draw them on the card. I typically don't draw these types of characters, but the card actually turned out better than I thought it would.

I looked at a picture and used pencil and micron pen to ink it in, then added tone with light washes of watercolor.

We added the lettering to the card later. I am told that my mom's coworker really liked the card.

Oh hey, there!

Yes, I am still alive.

I wouldn't necessarily call that a hiatus. I would call it working a lot and not having a ton of time to do art, which is very sad, I know. I still have a few things I want to show you guys, though.

First of all, if you don't know me very well, you probably don't know that I am obsessed with the British Period Drama Downton Abbey. You also probably don't know that I get obsessed with most British Period Dramas that I watch. Anyway, I started watching Downton Abbey last Fall when I checked out Season 1 from the library. I was immediately hooked. But after watching that, I sort of forgot about it and went on with my life. Then randomly last winter, I was flipping channels one Sunday evening when Masterpiece Classic on PBS came up and said "Downton Abbey". It was maybe two or three episodes into the second season, but I watched it anyway and with Doctor Who on break until next Fall (I believe), Downton Abbey quickly took it's rightful place as my favorite TV show!

So naturally, I did a little fan art, and I do plan on doing more...

I did sketches in my sketchbook first of the Crawley sisters of Downton Abbey

I looked at pictures of the actresses and tried to pick out their unique facial features to turn them into caricatures. Luckily each of them have such unique facial structures with a lot of character so that made my job easier. 

I then did something I rarely do...I scanned the pencil sketches and put them into Photoshop (and let's be honest here, I don't have the most advanced version of Photoshop. I worked with what I had) and rendered the colored parts digitally using layers. I was going for a more breezy, sketchy and simplistic look since that is the style I use when I do traditional art as well. So here is how they turned out. 

Lady Mary Crawley

Lady Edith Crawley

Lady Sybil Crawley (aka Sybil Branson)

The three of them together

here is what they actually look like if you are unfamiliar with the program.

Like I said, I would like to do more of these. I would definitely like to try my hand at drawing a few of the men of Downton Abbey. These little sketches actually started out of trying to draw some Mary/Matthew fanart.  For some reason, I just could not get Matthew's face right. I would also like to possibly do some Avengers fanart. I just saw the movie last week and absolutely loved it. I'm not usually a big superhero fan, but I truly enjoyed that film.