Professor McGonagal

One of my favorite running gags in the Harry Potter books is Lee Jordan's spirited commentary of the Quidditch matches and how Professor McGonagal has to constantly keep him in check. So I tried to depict just such a scene for this week's Harry Potter Drawing Challenge.

And as I mentioned last week, I am working on a postcard for one of my favorite bands, Harry and the Potters. This week I'm posting the finished pencils, and I'll post future steps as I finish up this challenge.

Hermione Granger

For this week's Harry Potter Drawing Challenge I drew a very studious Hermione Granger, working hard to rack up another top mark. It has been a lot of fun working on these Harry Potter drawings, and I'm happy to announce that I will be doing some more Harry Potter themed illustration work for one of my favorite bands, Harry and the Potters.

As an added bonus while I finish up this series of drawings, I thought I'd post some process pictures of a postcard I'm doing for Harry and the Potters. Below is the super-rough thumbnail that I used to pitch my idea. I have seen these guys play in some pretty bizarre/cool spaces, so I thought I could depict the band playing in an odd place in the wizarding world, namely, on top of the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9 3/4! Next week I will post the pencils.



And actually I might be a bit late in posting next week, as I am heading West this week to go to the Stumptown Comics Festival!

Hagrid

Well, after a week off, I'm back to working on Matthew Reidsma's Harry Potter Drawing Challenge. This time I needed to draw the Hogwarts grounds keeper, Hagrid.

My favorite description of Hagrid, is that he looks "too big to be allowed." And I thought there was no time he would seem bigger than when floating across the lake with a new batch of first-years. Then I thought about that time Dennis Creevey fell into the lake...

After checking his entry in The Harry Potter Lexicon however, I realized that Dennis crossed the lake in a horrible rain storm and the giant squid SAVED him, instead of pulling him IN to the water... So, um... I guess this is just some random students from a different year! :P

New portfolio update!

This week I am taking a break from the Harry Potter Drawing Challenge to announce the quarterly update of my illustration portfolio site: aleclongstreth.com! There is a lot of new work up including the following new pieces:

This is a dragon character I hope to do a lot with in the future (so he's © 2008 Alec Longstreth! Okay?) I drew this as a new promotional postcard which I just sent out to a lot of art directors and illustration contacts. There's also this one:

This is an engagement announcement I did for some friends. Each letter form has a small illustration featuring some aspect from Isla Mujeres. It's based off the design of some really old tourist postcards from places like Coney Island and San Francisco. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun!

Well, I'm already working on the next batch of Harry Potter characters and then it will be on to a new drawing challenge... Thanks for checking in!