Sketch: Ransom Springs

The next story/sketch challenge with Makenzi Crouch. A whole month late, which is entirely my fault. Not only did I get pretty swamped with work, I also had to sort out a grand total of five computers in the last few weeks, only one of which was actually mine. I am not techy, so computer problems take me quite a while, and eat into my sketching time quite considerably. 

But, despite two of those computers being this weekend, I managed to get this finished off, finally:

****

“I am wondering,” she said, “Mr. Raymond Geelbert, ees he here?”

            “I ain’t seen Gil in weeks,” the man replied. “Who’s askin’?”

            Marta folded her hands over the handle of her valise. “I am Marta Berge. Mr. Geelbert say he will be here when I come. ”

            “Fred Nelson,” he said, sticking out his hand. Marta looked at it for a moment, and then carefully put her hand in his to be shaken. “Why you here t’see Gil?”

            She tilted her head at him. “Geel is Mr. Geelbert?”

            Fred folded his newspaper and leant forward on the counter. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Everyone calls him that. What’s your business with him?”

            “I not think Mr.—Geel—want me to discuss matter,” she said.

            The sound of hooves and the clatter of wagon wheels outside cut short any reply Fred might have thought of making. He banged his hand down on the counter, making Marta jump, and said instead,

            “Betcha that’ll be Gil, then. Can tell from the squeak on that ol’ wagon of his. Oughter get the damn thing fixed.”

            “I am hoping it ees. I am pleased to meet you,” Marta added, with a polite smile to Fred, before turning and walking stiffly back out onto the platform.

****


What's the story? You'll just have to go over here to find out! ^.^


Adobe Photoshop CS4, with a texture from cgtextures.com 
Inspired by 1950s magazine illustrations.

Illustration: Tree Full Of Owls

A Post for Halloween!

This is entirely down to Makenzi Crouch, who suggested that we do a story & sketch for Halloween. Unfortunately, at the time I was suffering from a sick headache that was about to develop into a migraine, so to make things easier I sent her an old image with a vaguely Halloween-y theme, and let her play around with that. And once she'd finished her story, and I could see/walk/type in a straight line (hooray!) I gave the image a bit of a tweak to fit in better.  

So, without more ado:

.......

Most of the porch lights on Alpert Court were out. The only reason anyone bothered to trick-or-treat here at all was for Mr. Jackson's candy, and only a very few - the well-informed - braved his house. Chris had been scared so badly last year that he had promised himself he wasn't going to go anywhere near Mr. Jackson's house this year, and now he found himself standing at the end of the walk again, distracted from the ghosts swooping around the porch by something in the tree in the front yard. He tugged nervously on Matt's sword.

"Matt, there's eyes in the tree. Matt!"

.......

What happens next? Go over here to read the whole thing!

And, for your edification, here's the original image:

This was done way back in September 2009, when I was just starting to use Illustrator. I've come along way since then – this was mainly just me poking around with various tools to see what they did.

Inspired by a line from the 1956 musical High Society:

"Uncle Willy, this morning you look like a tree full of owls."

No, I don't know what it means either.

******

I think the night time version looks better than this one – but that's okay, I wasn't trying to do anything fantastic with this in the first place. ^.^

Illustrator CS4.