Duckish Cowboy And Talking Horse-Chicken

Alright, as previously announced, here's my hand-drawn gift for dear colleague Achdé ("Lucky Luke"). I did this in parallel with my Toby Skybuckle day-to-day drawing and writing "operations". A few minutes here and a few minutes there... I had a lot of fun with it.

Hey, I should think about drawing some duckish Daltons...

The next one will be for my pal Crisse...

Progress

Things are making progress. Slow progress maybe, but progress...

Uh, before I forget, the Lucky Duck will come next post, promised. I'm still quite held up with "computer crash things".

Crash

Yesterday evening, I had a very bad computer crash. This gets on my nerves. This costs time which in turn costs money. I'll be back on the blog not before next week. Thank heavens we back up here everything 3 times, and back up the back up, twice. Just wish me luck for installing the new machine...

The Jury Dragon (or, rather, sketching on the road)

Update (Monday, JAN 19, 2009): This is a small preview/detail of what I'll post next...

...and here's a wee bit more on this. But wait, there will be still more about this duckish cowboy and his ACME LL1961 Marble Wind-Up Gun. But for all that please, pssst, mum's the word. This is a surprise for Achdé ;)

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The original Jury Dragon post from last Saturday:
I did this very quick piece (below) while doing some jury work on student projects in Salzburg, two days ago. Well done everybody, that was really a fun day...

Btw, I'm way behind with email. If you're waiting to hear from me, please give me some time... uh, some more, my pal Mark pointed me to Olivier Derouetteau's wonderful work: Olive2d

Photo © Maryam Laura Moazedi

Monday Morning Drawing Hand

Heavy hand on Mondays...

Toby Skybuckle: Teaser Sujet

"I, the Skybuckle,
promise to improve,
as from tomorrow."

TOBY SKYBUCKLE, adventurer

"A likely story,
snotty brat!"

HAROLD, dragon

"Listen to them.
Children of the night.
What music they make."

DRACULA, monster

TOBY SKYBUCKLE^©, Adventurer by Mistake - Book I, "The Fall". Btw, guess where the colours for this teaser come from...

I took those shots somewhere between Milano and Torino out in the country, last week. Splendid colours, no?

Photos: © Satzinger & Hardenberg Archive

Toby's New Year

I wish you all a Happy New Year! I for one will start working on Toby Skybuckle I (besides StarDucks of course), in January. Cheers and big thanks to Crisse and the good girls 'n' boys from Soleil Productions for letting this boy's adventures begin...

...I call this, btw, a Swiss sword. And I've had a few optional Austrian-Salzburgian extras installed ;)

Something Special

This Christmas, I got a wonderful present from Achdé. A copy, fresh from the press, of his newest Lucky Luke* comic album...

...including this incredibly wonderful illustrated inscription. What a gift:

So, now it's on me to give away some goodies to Achdé and Crisse... wait and see :)

*For those who are not familiar with this very cowboy: Lucky Luke (Wiki article)

Big Christmas Stocking

Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year!

Star Router

Update: The finished piece... (colour palette included)

The original post from this morning:

I should finish this rough piece today sometime but I've a massive headache from that party battle yesterday. Let's see what this does to the colours...

StarDucks Design Work By Degrees

By this example (I showed the finished piece "birdish critter on horse" once before) a great inspiring key element was a sort of external component, a design driven clay figurine of a horse bought at a crafts shop while I was in Montevideo some months ago...

Btw, much more about the StarDucks project and its influences and thoughts behind will follow in the next issue of the GOmotion Magazine... (Cheers to Marta)

Yellow Critters

As mentioned before, these kippers are from a closed/stopped project...

...still like the colours.

Talking Inspiration...

Not only do the colours of Carl Spitzweg's paintings bring inspiration my way but also the concept gives me a boost. And look (butterfly!) how well that panned out for this New Yorker homage ("The Many Faces of Eustace Tilley") I did last January:

Image source ("Der Schmetterlingsjaeger"): Wikimedia

The Butterfly Catcher is, btw, one of my favorite paintings. Oh, and sorry for posting something old... but I promise to improve with the next post ;)

Update: The same - I'm referring to the colour palette - is true for these characters from a different project (which will never be made, but it was big fun while it lasted):