This week we turned in our thumbnails/comps for the Wind in the Willows assignment. Going up to this point, I took a lot of inspiration from Terryl Whitlatch and Justin Gerard; as they approach creature designs with a lot of life studies. Perry also gave a list of great artists to refer to as well, viz;

Heinrich Kley
T.S. Sullivant
Boris Artzybasheff
Daniel Merriam
Carlos Nine (might be NSFW)
Omar Rayyan
Charles Santore
Scott Gustafson

I started looking up toads, but actually cut the process short because we had a quick assignment change. But the idea is to draw from life studies of animals and objects; then using that information you have gained to create a new imaginary creature. Justin Gerard shows a lot of attention to detail in his sketches, and they look quite good:

These type of sketches would later turn into something like this

Even though the third sketch is an imaginary creature, it still feels natural, like something that you might actually see in a cave hidden deep in the Himalayas. Using the knowledge that he gains from life studies and implementing that into his own illustrations makes that possible. These sketches are from Justin Gerard's blog

I started with a toad sketch, but also looking up images of moles, rats and badgers. After our new assignment is completed, I will go back and do more study sketches to try to imitate Justin Gerard's and Terryl Whitlatch's method.