Zombie Pirates for Talk Like A Pirate Day

Ahoy! Happy Talk Like A Pirate Day! I’ve been working on my pirate painting all week, only it’s a zombie pirate and his zombie chicken friend. Here it is (and below that is the original sketch).

I'll eat ye brains I'll will. Arrr!

This painting started as a sketch I did on the back of a piece of watercolor paper (the front had a different sketch that didn’t work out and some paint from testing colors for a different painting.I also had a speech bubble in the upper left, with the zombie pirate saying, “I’ll eat ye brains, I will. Arrr!”

This be the zombie pirate sketch. Arrr!

Brains for Lunch – Watercolor Wednesdays

Last week, I said I wanted to do a crayon resist for Watercolor Wednesdays this week, so I did. I’ve always loved crayon resist, because you never quite know how it’s going to turn out. I even learned a few things (or re-learned them, since I’m sure I knew them when I was 5), like: white crayons first, then black, otherwise the black will smear (duh).

So here it is, Sheila and her best friend Amanda talking about school lunch at Zombie High:

Brains for lunch!

Illustration Friday: Welcome (committee)

I just finished this painting last night and thought it fit well with today’s Illustration Friday topic, welcome. These cows are the welcome committee for the herd.
The black line is all acrylic because I wanted it to be really dark. The color is watercolor, using layers of different color to make the orange, purple and green spots. I really like using the real color or a color I’ve mixed before hand, so this was a challenge for me to accept what the colors looked like after layering. I like the effect, but I think it would have looked good using bright green, orange and purple too.

Meet the welcoming committee. Moo.

If you are a watercolor painter, do you like mixing colors by layering or do you prefer to mix them before you paint?

Sheila’s first day of school and a new principal

These two paintings for Watercolor Wednesdays  and the CBIG blog are from a YA zombie graphic novel I’m working on, starring Sheila the Zombie Cheerleader. The graphic novel isn’t in watercolor, but I thought I’d do some zombie watercolors this month because Watercolor Wednesdays has school prompts every week.

Sheila’s first day back at school was yesterday. (She wouldn’t let me post her first day picture last week. If I did, she said she’d, “eat my brains!”) Sheila’s best friend Amanda suffered through the first day with her. Here’s their first day picture, which Sheila said I could post today:

Sheila the Zombie Cheerleader's first day of school

Sheila and Amanda are talking about the new teacher in the next picture:

Zombie High staff changes ...

The black line for both images is acrylic paint and the color is watercolor crayon. I love watercolor crayons because they make me feel like a kid again. I get to color with crayons, then paint. Fun!
Maybe next week I’ll do crayon resist … or maybe not. Halloween is coming, and ghosts are a whole lot of fun for crayon resist.

Illustration Friday: Strong

When I saw this week’s topic, the first thing that came to mind was this scene with Sheila the zombie cheerleader.

That is one STRONG chicken!