Drawing-a-Day number 29 (one more to go!)

I’d been drawing the graphic novel all day, and needed a change of pace. Tonight was the weekly gathering of several fellow comics artists, where we catch up on each other’s  work and do comic jams, or just sketch while we talk. I was showing them my animal character designs that I’ve been posting here lately, and asked for an idea, since I still hadn’t drawn anything but comics today, and I needed something for my challenge! Someone suggested a platypus, and someone else suggested that he should be a cowboy, since cowboys and platypuses both have spurs. So this little fellow emerged — I didn’t have time to paint him tonight, but I will, soon, and I will post the finished version. I think I’d like to make another platypus character that would show off their wonderful webbed feet, but this guy just had to have boots, and his six-shooters…

One thing this 30-day challenge has done for me is to make me much faster on the draw — I’m practicing up for conventions, where I’ll be doing character sketches (in public!) and participating in artist games (in public!). I’m normally pretty slow with my drawing, because I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to having the lines just right, but I need to learn to speed that process up. And to maybe not care so much about exactitude. In certain circumstances, anyway.

As to the sartorial mechanics required to accommodate a platypus’s tail… well, don’t ask, because I don’t know. He hasn’t turned around yet.