Au Naturale

I haven't posted in like over a month...and that's mainly due to my life taking a drastic change.  On May 7, 2014, my father passed away, and it was...and still is...very hard on me.  I miss him so much, and its just been tough adjusting to life without him, and especially seeing how his absence has effected everyone around me and not just me.  I lost my motivation to draw...and I had to force myself to do so because I was doing commissions amidst all of that.  But these pictures below that I'm posting were done before my time with my dad was cut short.

I was drawing a series of women of color sporting natural hairstyles, and I had no idea how many I was going to make...and I still plan on making more.  But my series was interrupted by real life happenings.  Hopefully I can return to this soon.  I wanted to make them look like posters but with a very limited color palette and see how that would work.

Like I said, I plan on doing several more of these.  If you would like to purchase any of these as an 11" x 17" print on high quality semi gloss cover stock paper, you can do so at Illumistrations.storenvy.com.  I'm also doing a sales promotion currently where you can save 15% off of your total purchase by using the promo code MOVE15.  Please help me with my moving expenses to a new city and a new job!

Never take anyone for granted and cherish all of the moments that you have with someone, because you don't know if that will be the last time you see them, the last time you can hold and touch them, the last time you see them smile, or the last time you can tell them that you love them.  Life is precious.

Stay blessed.

Without Wax,

-Charles

Hot Springs

I actually finished this a while ago but didn't post it here.  Life just gets in the way I suppose.  I wanted to do a more fantasy type of drawing, so I came up with this.  There is another that I want to redo from like years ago, and hopefully I'll be able to get to that (and make prints of it) thats sort of similar to this image.

Below is the initial sketch that I came up with:

At first, the background was going to be like a cave wall with water pools cascading down, but the whole thing just felt really claustrophobic, so I decided to open it up a little bit.  And I wanted her robe to be sheer to the point where it was going to be a little more than slightly see-through, but since I was going to get this printed out in a public place, I erred on the side of caution and to make her robe more opaque.  (I don't understand why my sketches on white backgrounds post on here as slightly gray, but whatever...)

And below is the final image that I decided to go with:

The spheres weren't in the sketch at all, and I just threw them in on a whim, but I definitely like how they came out.  And as you can see, I made her robe semi transparent, and you can see a slight silhouette of her figure, and I think thats probably just enough to get by and get this printed in a family friendly place.

I posted several work in progress images of this on my Instagram feed, so you should definitely check it out and follow me for more work in progress shots of different illustrations and other randomness.

And as always, if you would like to purchase this illustration as an 11" x 17" print on high quality gloss cardstock, you can do so at my Storenvy site and see my other prints for sale there as well.

Without Wax,

-Charles

Untamable

Since I've been getting very loose with sketches recently, I decided to keep my sketches a little tighter this time, and this is what came out.  I say that you shouldn't let other people dictate what you do with your hair or how you wear it.  Do what's best for you, and only you really know exactly what's best for yourself.  So below is the sketch after I went over it again and tightened the pencils up a little bit.

And below is the final illustration.  I decided to make her shirt a Minnie Mouse shirt and gave her a tattoo to her side as well.  It was hard trying to decide how to put glasses on Minnie Mouse and make it look aesthetically correct, mainly because her eyes are too close together and her ears are too high upon her head, so I made some compromises that seemed to work out well.  

Per usual, this illustration is up for sale in 11" x 17" size on gloss cover paper on my online Storenvy storefront.  Feel free to browse and even buy a print or two!

Without Wax,

-Charles