Happy Monday Tuesday to you! Yesterday was Memorial Day here in the United States, you see. Since I was visiting with family and friends, Sketchbook Monday was delayed until today. It’s just like old times here on the blog!

Anyhow, let’s take a peek into my sketchbook and see what I doodled this past week.

Peace!

I voted in the Kentucky primary race last week, and they gave me this sticker. After running errands and returning home, I did what any other rational human being would do with a sticker. I peeled it off my shirt and put it in my sketchbook.

Initial design sketch for the marine commander in the science-fiction story I’ve been showing other characters from lately. Didn’t really capture what I was looking for at all, though. He also looks too young here. He’s supposed to be in his 40s (or else the story’s timeline doesn’t work).

I suppose if you took a chipmunk and genetically crossed it with some dude in middle management, this is what the result would look like.

This past week I played around with a ballpoint pen a bit, which is fun because it forces me to actually sketch instead of mucking around for a half hour just trying to doodle the underlying constructing shapes. I have a tendency to do that, which usually leads to me going over a sketch multiple times as if I were inking it. I probably need to loosen up like this more often and have more fun.

Granted, without an initial underlying sketch to guide me, I kind of reverted to a really cartoony style for most of these, as you can see here.

Mister moon face here has quite the chin-beard.

One side of the page is blurred when I scan these, because I’ve been using a hardcover sketchbook. I can’t lay the whole thing flat without physically ripping the page out. Which would, of course, defeat the purpose of having a hardcover sketchbook in the first place.

Eyes are fun to draw no matter the medium.

I don’t know what time it is right now, but this appears to be Jake the Dog and Finn the Human from some popular television program that’s on the cable box these days.

I keep meaning to do these, but always seem to forget about them until Monday is already gone. I usually realize it around Wednesday or so. I’ll try to get back to regular updates, but as usual, no promises. In any cases, I have quite a few neat little doodles to share with you all this week! I even have a brand new scanner, so let’s see how the quality comes out, shall we?

A lot of the sketches this week are going to be of this character. His name is Rafa, and he’s one of the lead characters in a science-fiction story I’d like to do. This was one of the first sketches I did to begin getting a grasp on the art style I wanted for him. I wasn’t quite as worried about his actual design at this point, so his hair isn’t anything close to what I was looking for.

Here’s a later design sketch of the same Rafa character. This was the sketch where I began to feel like his look was coming together the way I wanted.

Nothing really to say about this one of Rafa, other than I really like how the pose came out.

This is the point where I said, “Yes! There he is! That’s him!” The art style may not be 100% there yet, but I feel I’ve nailed the general essence of his look.

A design sketch for another character. This is Sanvi, a childhood friend of Rafa. Both characters begin the story as young children, not quite teenagers yet. The story stretches over many years, so by the end they will be adults. Perhaps they will even have children of their own by then?

A simple test panel of Rafa. Note that it doesn’t depict any actual scene from the story. As you might now be able to guess, I’d really like the story to be a webcomic or graphic novel of some sort, but the story as laid out is really long, so I don’t think that’s feasible without committing to a decade or more of work. I suppose the options are either scale the story back, or do it as a more traditional novel.

This character isn’t connected to the story at all. Just a random young man I felt like putting to paper for whatever reason.

And here’s a female adventurer. She seems really thin and squished because she was sandwiched between two other sketches on the page (which I have edited out).

And finally, a young woman sitting in a window. This appears to be a rather popular pose.