Bottles

Potion bottles done in Painter. Simple and quick. The subject matter is inspired by a scene from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. First I did a pencil sketch on paper and scanned it. Opened the scan in Painter and saved it as a RIFF. With basic paper as my canvas texture I lifted the sketch to a watercolor layer. Then I created an ink layer above that. I started drawing with the real drippy pen brush, but then switched to the crowquil.  It just seemed to work better with the scale and detail of this particular drawing.  For the flat color, I created a layer just above the canvas and painted with wet gouache round brush.

The next two sketchbook spreads

Boy, do I need to draw faster if I'm going to fill all the pages in time to send the book off by January 15th.

A pair of drawings in pen and ink:

More artifacts

I had a lot of fun getting the lights and darks right on this old fossil:


I set the object to be drawn on the table and illuminate it from one side only to get maximum shape definition from the shadows.

Here's a South American fabric printing stone. Drawing all the little patterns and swirls really gives you an appreciation for what an intricate carving job the artist did.

I am quite open to illustrating artifacts on a freelance basis. I can be reached via email at jawogaman (at) gmail (dot) com.

Artifact drawings

When I was a grad student in anthropology, I entertained the possibility of a career as an archaeological illustrator. One of my archaeology profs lent me a few of her artifacts for practice. Here are some ancient stone tools:

Pinecone spots: