the art of Will Terrell

I didn’t want the old man that I sketched yesterday to be lonely, I decided to do some old lady character designs for him to spend time with. These are memory sketches from today. I was on my way into the Hobby Lobby with a stack of old gift cards, to buy a new sketchbook for warm-ups. I saw this old lady on her way out. She was perfectly, amazingly, round in the middle. I love her.(the sketch in the middle is probably closest to what she actually looked like)

-Will

My wife Amber was doing a memory sketch of an old man we saw at the movie theater while waiting in line. I decided to do several variations of him to try to push the design farther. I haven’t really done a lot of character design. I’m sure there’s a lot more to it. But I had fun at least. My favorites are the 4th one on the first page and the first one on the second page.

And of course I had to take a stab at ripping him up like a Spumco drawing. Poor guy.

Ren and Stimpy style

It has been a very busy month, but I’ve tried to squeeze in sketching whenever I can. I’m almost finished with this moleskin sketchbook. Probably 7 or 8 pages to go. After this I’m going to switch to a brown paper sketchbook, just to keep things fresh for me.

Lately, I’ve been drawing with red/blue pencils, and for some reason purple prisma color brushpen for outlining. On this page in particular, I’ve been smudging the purple to get shaded effects, and then go back over it with colored pencil, or greys to give it more depth. I’ve almost completely stopped using black ink for the last few weeks or so. Most of these were drawn at the Lubbock Comic Book Expo this past weekend.

-Will

I was asked by the Lubbock Arts Alliance to do an illustration to be given to the winning team of “Cake Aces” at the cake competition at this years Lubbock Arts Festival. I like how he turned out. This was all watercolors/pitt brush pens and a little bit of airbrush and white acrylic paint for highlites.

-Will

I sketched this lady while I was waiting in line to see the Hunger Games. She was NOT happy. I decided to splash a little color on with photoshop.

-Will Terrell

I am trying to push my caricature sketches more towards designing characters right now. Simplifying characteristics, instead of adding details. I saw this girl at the local grocery store, stopping for some lunch. I think I could push the design a lot better though.

–Will

I just really love sketching people in the wild. It really forces you to develop a vocabulary with creating characters. Both in attitude, and personality. When I would only sketch from my imagination, it was always frustrating to make characters look unique (and correct). I don’t feel I have that problem any longer. Here’s a few from this week…

Self portrait. This is basically how I draw.

There was a 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Oklahoma a few days ago. I was at my studio in Lubbock Texas, on the 13th floor of my building, and I felt the building start to shake for about 40 seconds. It made me a little seasick and the vertical blinds swung back and forth wildly. At first I thought it was the wind, till I realized there WAS NO WIND!

Moments later, life was back to normal…

(click to enlarge)

Monday’s Warm-up sketch. Kitty Ninja.