I know, it’s been weeks since I’ve posted, and now I’m just giving you another drawing, but this is all I’ve had time for lately!

The most recent Sugar Frosted Goodness was “sketch” and I was excited because I figured even when I’m busy I can find time to do a sketch. I was mostly wrong, the category was last week’s, but I figured I might as well finish it anyway.

*I’ve been interested lately in steamer-punk art and sculpture. I realize I’m coming a bit late to the trend, but I’m completely intruiged by the combination of industrial elements and victorian ornament. I’ve been wanting to do some kind of drawing in the style, but the elements of steamer-punk; archetectural and mechanical, are exactly the kinds of things I don’t have experience drawing. I’m far more comfortable drawing people and organic objects, so I figured instead of leaping straight in, I’d take a lesson from Mattias and steampunk up something I was more comfortable with. (If you haven’t seen Mattias’s Baroque Star Wars I highly recommend it, particularly the Death Star.) I’ve done this before on a small scale with a metal lobster (not to be mistaken for a rock lobster), but a tree was a much larger undertaking.

It took for freaking ever, possibly nullifying the time benefit of doing a “sketch.” Most tedious were the “leaves” which were inspired by Solio portable chargers, which are sort of flower or leaf shaped, and being solar chargers, do in fact serve the same purpose as leaves.

For some reason I wanted the roots to include wheels, and they are therefor obviously not rooted at all. Matt insists that the wheels make it a car, and he’s probably right, but I don’t see why it can’t be a tree as well. Now that I’ve got it on the computer I can see that I’ve left a few areas unfinished (trailing wire, needs extra wheels, etc.) so maybe I’ll post the final version once I finish.

The visual charm of steamer-punk for me is that it has aspects of both design and art. Steamer-punk drawings remind me of the da Vinci sketches of crazy flying bicycles.  At some point I’d like to start making show type art (as opposed to illustrative art) which exploits that design visual. It probably won’t be steamer-punk, but playing with that style is a nice way to stretch my skills, and also much more satisfying than other kinds of practice, like say, still lifes. Bleagh.

*Click on main image for larger version.