Sketch 365 – by Scott Hulme

So this is the outcome of the last couple of sketches.  This idea sort of came from all the squirrels I always see on our street.  They’re always leaping around in the trees, running along telephone lines, and pretty much having the run of the place.  I guess I got to thinking how they’d do out in the country among actual predators.  Somewhat less well, I imagine.

I guess the companion drawing to this would be the “country squirrel” wandering goggle-eyed into the street as a taxi bears down on him.  But I think one impending-rodent-doom illustration is quite sufficient.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

This is an expansion of yesterday’s sketch, prepping for the same digital illustration perspective assignment.  I like the angle, but I was thinking of making it more visually interesting by putting it in that leather-helmets era of 1920s-ish college football.  Could make for a good color palette and design aesthetic in the final piece.  Also, I like the idea of having an unexpectedly female quarterback who’s about to make the big, game-winning play.  I forgot to fix the proportions before doing this fleshed-out version, but I figured that could be fixed later in Illustrator.

Then I realized something: there’s no actual action taking place here.  There’s anticipation of action, but that’s it.  So the inset sketch is a new idea that would integrate action directly between the foreground and background elements.  Of course, it also trades female empowerment for imminent demise of small, furry creatures.  Hope that doesn’t reveal something about the artist…

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Taking the concept drawings from yesterday to the next level.  There are still many things I would want to do differently, but the idea starts to come together.  This would benefit from a lot more details throughout. I did have enough time to add a few details to the rovers (shown below), but overall there is a lot more time that would need to be invested in this idea.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

A second attempt at some exploratory sketches for a future settlement on Mars.  I stepped it back a bit and took inspiration from desert bunkers, remote stations and the like.  I’m trying to think a little more realistically about what kind of stuff would really be taken to Mars.  But to avoid everything looking totally utilitarian, I modified the greenhouse dome a bit, drawing on inspiration from the design of London’s city hall (file under: Inevitable Dash of Pretension).

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Yuck — don’t like this at all.  I got a digital illustration class assignment to create some sort of isometric world.  Thought I’d do something with a city settlement on Mars.  So I created these buildings, kind of inspired by a couple of reference photos, but they just both ended up looking like hideous, drab, public museum architecture of the late 1970s.  In fact, I realized one of them looks very similar to this previous sketch of the El Paso Science Musuem.   Quick Google search: that museum opened in…wait for it…1980.

Suffice it to say there is some re-imagining to be done.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Had just a few minutes to sketch before happy hour.  This is the Borders bookstore in Glendale (shown here at night).

[Comments and critique always welcome]

May 7th, Take 1.  This is what I was looking at for most of the May 7th that started in Australia: the inside of a Qantas Airbus A380.  Not a terribly exciting sketch, but when you’re stuck in the same chair all day, there’s not much to choose from.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Day 1 of the First International Conference on Mars Sedimentology and Stratigraphy in El Paso, TX (yes, it’s all you imagine it could be!).  Sketched this during a break in conference activities.

What’s that you say?  When am I going to include some exciting foreign locales in the Sketch 365 project?  The wait is over, my friend — that’s Juárez in the background.

[Comments and critique always welcome]

On a business trip this week.  Got to my hotel room, and the pillow was wishing me “sweet dreams.”  Yeah, not interested.  Make me a pillow that says “Awesome Dreams!”  And on the backside should be embroidered a bullet list of potential starter ideas: jetpacks, avalanches, robots, swordfighting, hidden volcano fortresses, shootouts, international smuggling, time travel…

[Comments and critique always welcome]

Regular readers will know that my elder brother has become the de facto antagonist for the Sketch 365 story (wheninrealityhehasbeennothingbutsupportive-butforgetIsaidthat).  Here, the sinister mustache-twirler lurks just left of frame.

[Comments and critique always welcome]