Started playing more with foreground and background, and action. Oh, and angst. I had plenty of angst to spread around in my sketchbooks. (Who doesn't, in middle school?)
I did some stuff in color. Most of it scans like crap, because I was using cheap pencils on poor paper and knew as much about contrast as nobody. Note the clever hair which covers the eye I couldn't get symmetrical, and the continued avoidance of feet and hands.
I thought this piece was so spiffy I made a dozen copies of it and gave it to my friends. Copies by hand, not xerox copies.
More color play. I have a number of landscapes along these lines that I didn't bother scanning. (Seriously, these pictures are like 2% of the work I actually have - I wouldn't bore you with all of it!)
One of my earliest dragons. I have a much, much older piece (that I couldn't find to scan) which has a princess looking offscreen, and a note that 'there's a dragon over there,' which was how I had previously dealt with the subject.
This is an illustration to the book I was writing at the time, very creatively named 'DragonEyes' and so full of drivel and crap that you will never see ANY of it. Thank heavens I wasn't hooked up to the Internet at the time, or I'm sure the way back machine'd have horribly embarrassing evidence of it. I think I wrote more than 300 pages on that sucker.
Similar dragon - I tried this subject twice, and may do it again.
I often designed stories and books that never made it any further than a cover design.
I loved fairy tales, and still do. By this point, I had read all of the colored fairy tale books several times, I owned a complete translation of the brothers Grimm, and I had several 'fairy tales of the world' books. I like fairy tales way, WAY better than I like fairies. All those curses and betrayal and good versus evil and romance! Joy!
I was also starting to stretch into sci fi at this point.
I can't decide if I'm missing a sketchbook for 1991, or if I just didn't draw as much. I was pretty active in drama and other stuff at that point, so it's possible I just didn't have time. I'll have just two scans for that year. So far...