Have Sketchpad-Will Travel

It's warmed up a little bit in the last few days, enough that I can take off my gloves and do some quick sketching on the bus without having my fingers feel like they're going to fall off...

Shading studies

Here are some ink doodles I took into Photoshop, playing around with light and shadow:

Btw, I love the new Sharpie pen with the rubber grip. Fantastic drawing tool.

I've been spending my down time reading up on illustration blogs and tutorials, just trying to soak up some knowledge. However, I haven't done much in the way of trying to apply that knowledge, so that's a goal of mine right now.

Yoshiyuki Takani, Master Robot Painter

I've been a fan of Yoshiyuki Takani's artwork since I was a kid... I never connected the man's name to his work until today, when I read an entry on Felix Ip's blog. Since the 60's, Takani has been renowned for his paintings adorning the boxes for plastic models of tanks, planes and mecha from anime like Macross, Votoms, Panzer World Galient-- pretty much anything with a robot in it, he painted. His dynamic illustrations gave robots real weight, making it easy to imagine these hulking machines bounding around with a tangible vitality.

I managed to cull a couple examples of his artwork from the web: