Sketches and Studies by Craig Houghton

Craig Houghton November 28th, 2007

This is simply for the sake of practice. I’ve been working on it here and there for a few weeks. I’m drawing in colored pencil and then using alcohol to blend it and then going back over it with the colored pencil. Some things I’ve left untouched by the alcohol and whatnot.

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• techniques , colored pencil , figures , women , illustrations , portraits
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Craig Houghton November 28th, 2007

older man with walking stick - watercolor and ink on hot press watercolor paper

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• pen , figures , watercolor , illustrations , men , ink
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Craig Houghton September 13th, 2007

I think I’m going to start a series consisting of isolated areas of the body. At the very least, it’ll be good practice.

I couldn’t sleep, so I did some test runs. pastel and charcoal on ink-stained hot press watercolor paper. small, around 5×4 or so each

• charcoal , pastel , figures , women
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Craig Houghton September 9th, 2007

Here’s my latest belly button. I did this a few months back, but I never photographed the piece. I know, it’s an odd subject, but the body is a curious thing.

navel in oil pastel 4×4

• figures , women , oil pastel , navels
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Craig Houghton September 7th, 2007

I’ll probably use this as a cover for a collection of short stories if I ever put it together.

painted entirely in photoshop. here’s the original sketch When doing digital stuff with a tablet, I’m used to corel Painter IX, so the adobe switch is a first for me.

and, a closer view

It’s sorta funny, but while the girl’s profile was entirely from imagination, I realized afterwards that the lip shape, nose, and chin all match up very closely to my girlfriend’s profile.

Oh, and the font is debatable…

• cartoon , digital , figures , women , illustrations , portraits
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Craig Houghton August 18th, 2007

The Cheshire Town Council…

800 x 445 (smaller)

1024 x 569 (larger)

I started with a pencil sketch

added a scanned ink-stained paper

and threw in a few highlights using Painter IX

• graphite , digital , figures , women , illustrations , men , portraits
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Craig Houghton July 25th, 2007

I don’t think I’ve ever done a political cartoon before, but I’ve drawn (with varying success) just about everything else. This is regarding a local town issue where our town government bent over and changed the laws to allow some big developers to pave-over (along with some token shrubbery) 400 acres. We even just found out that there’s a 65′ tall hotel in there as well. To my dismay and surprise, it’s the dems that sold us out here. The cartoon makes a lot more sense when you know the details, but nonetheless, here it is:

• cartoon , pen , figures , illustrations , men , ink , political
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Craig Houghton July 5th, 2007

Women of all ages across mediums and styles.

• colored pencil , graphite , charcoal , pastel , acrylic , pen , digital , figures , women , watercolor , illustrations , oil , portraits , ink , vids
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Craig Houghton June 24th, 2007

I put some digital color down on the young priestess who has so lovingly volunteered her person to the spiders

• cartoon , digital , figures , women , illustrations , creatures , animals
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Craig Houghton June 17th, 2007

some sketchy junk and idle time spent with a fashion mag

in the service of spiders (work in progress) (yes, she’s quite happy about the whole affair)

and, I found more packaging. It seems that I’m on their product booklet insert thingy as well (news to me ).

Thanks for looking!

• colored pencil , graphite , figures , women , illustrations , published , crap
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Craig Houghton June 11th, 2007

Water em’. They’re thirsty!

• cartoon , colored pencil , figures , women , watercolor , illustrations , plants
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Craig Houghton June 5th, 2007

I’ve discovered the ASIFA - Hollywood Animation Archive. And, not surprising, that led me to John Kricfalusi’s blog, all kinds of stuff. I’ve spent about a week and a half roaming the halls of the Archive and attempting to wrap my head around John K’s classic cartoon wisdom. There’s so damned much to learn from the Archive, and John K is one hell of a tour guide.

To start things off I’ve been doing a crash-course version of the archive’s (free)$100,000 Animation Drawing Course. I stress crash-course since I haven’t been drawing each and every example in the lessons, and I’ve not been checking my work against the originals using the computer as they/John advise. I think that means I fail, but I like to pretend that I’m unafraid of failure. Actually, it’s only because I started out casually — I’ve since been sinking further in day by day. John K knows his stuff.

Each lesson has a wrapper post on the Archive’s site that references the corresponding lesson on John K’s blog and provides additional links or necessary source materials. I’m including the links to both grouped along with my homework.

1: Construction/The Head | archive / john k
2: Squash & Stretch/The Head | archive / john k
3: Proportions/Check Your Work | archive / john k

My work from the first three lessons has been piled together on this page. I’ve left out some of my studies, but they weren’t worth posting.

4: 2 Legged Characters/Full Body | archive / john k

5: Line of Action/Silhouttes | archive / john k

6: Advanced Head Construction | archive / john k / GIANT MOUTH…post at Funny Cute with Katie Rice

The studies for lesson six come from Katies blog. These two drawings are my clumsy copies of Katie’s awesome work and are in no way my own.

7: When Generic Is A Good Thing | archive / john k

I was supposed to stick with something extremely generic in this lesson, but I ended up drawing from a disney model sheet. Nonetheless, I get the point that studies from simple generic subjects can really slingshot your learning process.

8: Proportions Affect Design / Contrasts | archive / john k

9: Hands- SImplifying Complicated Things | archive / john k

It literally took me days to complete this page, but I managed each and every hand from the lesson.

• techniques , cartoon , graphite , other artists , figures , women , illustrations , animation , animals
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