I have not been doing a lot of printmaking this semester yet, but I certainly have been drawing a ton. For my animation minor, I am required to take a bunch of drawing classes that have helped me work on my personal style and drawing skills, which I think is a precious asset for a graphic designer to have. I really enjoy incorporating cute little illustrations and characters into my projects to give them a fun vibe that represents myself as a person, and I love how I can communicate that through my work.

This recent assignment from my Character Design class is a little different this week, as we were asked to create an homage—essentially copy an illustration of a character made by an artist who inspires us. Essentially might be an understatement, as my professor wants it to be so that you cannot even tell who drew what when compared in a side-by-side, which I thought was a cool challenge.

For my inspiration, I chose Chris Sanders as my artist and found a work from him I thought would be fun and challenging to replicate. I admire Sanders for his super unique art style as the way he draws is so sweet and enjoyable to look at. You might know his work from the Lilo and Stitch series that was based entirely on his designs and style. This was actually harder than I thought it would be since this illustration has two characters, and the line work is very wispy, especially in the lion’s mane, which I truthfully struggled with. I have not even had a chance to finish it yet either because I kept getting frustrated trying to replicate the little girl’s perspective, and I know better than to draw when I am frustrated, so I decided to take a break to write this and come back to it.

Looking at it now side-by-side I can tell there are some things I need to fix since it is pretty hard to get everything completely the same when you are not tracing, but nonetheless I am happy with how it is coming along. Use the slider on top of the image below to shift between the original and my version.