Cars

Colored Pencil Sketch, finished in Photoshop.

It was a little harder to get inspired by this week's IF topic, since I'm not really into cars. After sketching, I wanted to punch up the color too, so I scanned in the computer and made changes in Photoshop. Oh well, this post is better late than never -- and all I can say is at least I tried. =)

I thought it might be fun to try digitally coloring lights. So I illustrated a scene (windy road up and down a hill) where cars would likely hit their breaks a lot or turn their headlights on. Watch out for deer or wild turkeys!

Yeah, a few of these cars started looking like wagons because I just wanted to get it done.

Signs

Colored Pencil and Photoshop Combo. This is the first time I've drawn after purposely taking a "mental" photo of something. It doesn't look exactly like this... but the process of sketching from memory made me feel a lot more creative than copying from an actual photograph. Can you guess where this place is?

CITRUS Road

Colored Pencil and Pastel, with some tweaking in Photoshop. Inspired by a memory of seeing citrus groves in Riverside, CA, and (on a separate occasion) seeing a faint red skyline in San Bernardino, CA where the air was picking up particles from the clay soil.

Neighbor

Pastel and ink, adjusted digitally. This picture represents what many neighborhoods today look like -- cookie cutter type structures and very close together on the outside. But the different colored squares represent the vastly different lives people are living on the inside. Some experience more loneliness or difficulty, some have more joy and laughter, and still others have a mix of all these. Yet we are each still a "neighbor" to one another.

Remember

Pastel and ink, adjusted digitally. I didn't get to submit this on IllustrationFriday.com last week, but I still managed to finish it -- so I decided to post it anyway. This piece is about a man who remembers happier times long ago. The female figure in the background is his present wife who was a different person back then. The flowers are from their wedding, and the background is awashed in golden colors that represent warmth and happiness. This is in contrast to the white space around him which represents a current emptiness. The red ribbon worn by the woman is like a thread that weaves from the past to the present and connects the man to the memory of what once was.