In the meantime I have listed The Bob O Show over on the Artcast Network . If you haven’t seen the show yet the first thing you’ll probably notice is that I like to have a lot of fun when I’m on air. I keep it loose and don’t worry too much about technical difficulties. I’m always happy to pause and answer technical questions… and as far as projects go each one gets the Super Official Bob Ostrom Studio stamp of approval before going on air.

Please check Twitter or on the Artcast Network for future broadcast announcements. See you on the next Bob O Show.

I started out with a pencil sketch and then outlined it with marker. I usually wait until the end to do my ink but I had this cool new non-bleed sharpie marker that I was dying to try out. After the line art was done I began adding light washes of blue, green and purple to the background. Once I had a basic idea of how I wanted the light and shadow to go I went over the colors again this time darkening and adding deeper tones. The basic idea with watercolors is to work in washes, gradually building as you go.

I added a little Dr. Martines Die to my watercolors to help punch up the color. I used Rose-Carthame and Magenta to pump up my reds and then added a little Cerulean Blue to help out the background. You have to be careful with Dr. Martins. The pigments can be difficult to reproduce (especially with a cheap scanner like mine). Since this piece was just for fun I wasn’t too worried about reproduction.

The trick to working with Dr Martin’s dies is to add them sparingly. A little bit of die goes a LONG way. They can easily overpower your artwork if you don’t thin them down a bit. On the other hand they punch up your colors nicely and can really put down a smooth wash. Oh, and one last note of caution: These dies can fade over time if exposed to direct sunlight. If you take good care of your artwork though the vibrant colors will last a long time.  I have a few Magic School Bus pieces I did way back in 1995 hanging in my office and they still look great after all these years.

[View with PicLens]

The other day as I was jotting down some reminder notes an idea popped into my head. Luckily I was sitting at my computer so I decided to work it up in Adobe Illustrator while everything was still fresh in my mind.

I took a few snap shots as I went to show you how I typically work through the development stage and added my some of my thoughts to the captions. Unfortunately a few of the shots are a little on the small side so the notes below don’t read as well as they could, but I think you’ll get the idea as you go through them… I’ll try to fix those later. Note to self- zoom in, enlarge art, and leave a little white space before taking snapshots.

I’m pretty happy with the look of this one so far but I’ll probably revisit it at a later date and make a few tweaks. Sometimes the ideas go quick (like this one) other times I need to let them rattle around inside my head a little bit before they come out. I’d think I’ll add something a little more cartoon-ish to that space above the type on the right so it looks more like it belongs to the Bob Ostrom Studio family, but that’ll have to wait until I’m finished with my next set of deadlines.

Click on the images below to enlarge…

[View with PicLens]