I like to think of this as the grassroots of doodling, the origins: people waiting in hospitals with nothing but a pen to ward off boredom and insanity.
I'm traveling through England ans Scotland for the next two weeks, and of course that meant I had to start a new travel sketchbook! I found it fitting that the first page shows the route I will be on.
I drew a girl holding a cupcake and felt bored by her, so I added some sweet-ass tats. This was fountain pen ink run through water brushes. For more Digital Random Joy™, be sure to check out Instagram Super_Starling, which is a fairly fun place, if I do say so myself.
WHIP IT GOOD. This ode to Devo was drawn with fountain pen ink run through brush markers. The watercolor effect was me running a wet brush through parts to make the fountain pen ink lift and pool. If you want more Leah Fun™, be sure to check out instagram Super_Starling!
Sometimes I like to draw things in the reverse (filling in the light areas, leaving the dark areas bare) and then flip them to see how I did. Today's warmups turned out pretty well. My favorite is the kid on the top, whose head & hair echo the strawberry shape. I wish I'd distinguished the girl's legs from the dog's body on the left more, but overall, not bad.
I took the skulls of monkeys/apes I'd drawn about a year ago and incorporated them into some new collages that include mandalas I did about a month or two ago. Cutting, cutting, cutting, paper everywhere. I'm a huge mess. The second one is Billy / Jigsaw from Saw!
I drew this with a brush pen, then used a water brush to blur out the lines into shadows. I used Photoshop to invert the background and tweak the colors.
Doodling my faces, this time on a piece of wood from a pallet. Re-cycling! Used watercolors and colored pencils, Carved out some spots to add dimension.
"Potato digger", watercolour and ink on paper, 210mm x 148mm(A5).
Tiny painting made on my break from a bigger project I'm working on. The whole thing sprouted from a sketch of my small potato plant. Anyone else feels sorry for their patatoes when they sprout too much and plants them? The plants are so pretty, too!
The Dragons Pearl Story - this is one of 12 illustrations created for the story: A Dragons Pearl. This scene depicts the nasty theives from a nearby village trying to steal the pearl from Mother and son. The son is about to swallow the pearl to stop the theives from stealing it....
The Molting Man first appeared on my Red Spread (see second image); I refined him for the green spread (first). This bizarre Icarus deserves some kind of short story about him. I'm not sure what the plot would be. It's probably tragic.
Like a moldy bridge, the Internet has trolls lurking underneath. Reddit: Unpopular Opinions is a particularly fetid spot for these mouth-breathers. It’s simmering with people ready to spew their most bigoted thoughts in the name of edginess/independence from the norm. ((follow-up note: for some reason, one of the images doubled. for all 5, visit: http://leahlucci.com/starling/2018/06/14/5-unpopular-opinions-illustrated/ ))
This page includes a sketch I made pulled over on the road near Pontiac, IL, a shield I stamped using a stamp I carved (pretty crude , but still works!), and some stickers I had made of sketches of other things in the area.
"I remember you put a smile on my face. Now I got the crow's feet." ~ A blackout poem from a recycled page of Burnout, an Young Adult adventure/romance story.