21. Equestrian Desert Adventures

This may be yet another interpretation of Hari from The Blue Sword. It is also possible that I just saw an outfit like this one and thought it looked cool. I think I was going through a lot of books about ethnic costume at this point and pulling out things that I liked.
Again, what is it about certain things that makes them feel epic? Maybe just their foreignness, but ruins, archery, and riding a horse through the desert all seem to basically come with a story attached. Perhaps some desert nomad would look at my Civic and think the same thing though...

20. Jungle Explorer

I can't remember exactly what inspired this sketch, I mostly remember that while drawing it I realized that I don't really enjoy drawing plants. So I'm pretty sure this is the most nature heavy picture in my entire sketchbook.
It is interesting how interests differ isn't it? I am always impressed by people who can sketch plants and animals so well they look real. I just have never been interested in them enough to master that skill. It falls under what I am coming to realize is a category of things I think are cool and wish I could do but do not actually enjoy doing. It has taken me a while to learn to differentiate between the two, as my spinning wheel covered in the dusts of  numerous years of disuse can attest. I purchased it thinking how awesome it would be to dye and spin and weave my own fibers, and quickly realized that I just really don't enjoy spinning, even though I wish I did. One of my favorite blogs, The Art of Manliness, just posted a great article about this, which you can read here if you are interested.
How about you, do you have a hard time differentiating between things that you wish you liked and things you actually like?  

18 & 19 - Emblems of Adventure

Well, I have been a bit distracted lately, but I am going to try and get back to posting more regularly! I have been focusing most of my time on the doll, and Ella is nearly complete! I will hopefully post pictures and her full story very soon, she just had some last minute improvements come up that I need to complete. It has been a lot of fun getting back into doll making!

For now though, here are a few more sketches. I am posting two pages today because they are kind of connected. I really like the Japanese style crests that were used to identify families similar to how heraldry was used in Europe, so I decided to create some of my own. Thus the page full of crests. The Large one in the center was my signature for a while since it was made up of my initials. Now that I'm married I need to come up with a new one! 

This second image was my attempt to draw the ultimate adventure outfit. However, I didn't really do any research about what would be useful on an epic adventure, so I'm not sure that it is really practical. Oh well. I had fun drawing it.