I read some very sage pieces of advice regarding artists and style, as well as reaching into your inspirational roots. It talks about stretching your art muscles and trying out stylistic effects from other works that have influenced you over the years. Here are the comics in question. Check them out, they are very enlightening:

http://stephenmccranie.deviantart.com/art/Know-Your-Artistic-Lineage-341651390?q=gallery%3AStephenMcCranie%2F33259908&qo=14

http://stephenmccranie.deviantart.com/art/Diversify-Your-Study-369034403

In the vein of those comics, I want to take a more earnest crack at stylizing and giving more "elastic" personality to my characters. Considering the works of Bill Watterson and Don Bluth were the kinds of things I immersed myself in when I was a kid, I want to see how much I can push the envelope with this more "cartoon" work, which is a far cry from the types of things I normally make. I may even come out of it with lessons that I can apply to all of my art.

So, these pages are a result of all that messing around. My old character Topaz was up first, and I found out quickly that she is very easy to stylize, and a lot of fun to draw in this sort of style as well (not that she isn't fun to draw in other styles). The brush pen helped immensely in freeing me from my more exacting methods and forced me to think more about the movement, expression and the form and less of the details comprising said form.

Will be doing these for my other "main" characters as well. They make a good warm-up before commission work too.