Guerilla Portraits!

Finally!

Some sneaky sketches done at my favorite café. Each one took anywhere from five to ten minutes....I feel like that's a fun timeframe to challenge myself to gather a basic idea of someone's character or mood. People tend to tell so much more about themselves than they know, based simply on their posture, faces and idiosyncrasies. More an exercise in seeing than actually drawing....though hell know both could use the practice, haha.

Autumn-Geared Gouache Test Run!

It's my first time ever using gouache, but already I'm madly in love with it. We're gonna elope,  me and gouache, and it'll be beautiful. 

Just figured I'd post this test run I did on an old drawing! She's a character that I'd been saving up for a short story idea, and I'm still rather fond of her. She has a name, but I AIN'T TELLING.

Aaaaaaaaand here's some newer uncolored linework: just ink, plain and simple. Hopefully the colored versions will go up in a few days' time, but I've got a storm of sketches that will probably tumble through first. I did promise, didn't I?

East vs West

An inking assignment that I lovingly turned on its head....although this is over half a year old at this point. The object was to ink the first panel entirely using a nib pen, the second only in brush, and the third panel a combination of the two. Pretty sure they'd wanted a more seamless integration of both tools in the last one, but goddamnit, I chose not to for REASONS. Silly as it is, this one was insanely fun to make.

So. This is my submission for Brian Lee O'Malley's Tumblr Contest! It's Ramona recolored, albeit in tropical fish mode! Originally, I had colored the black and white linework just for practice, but I ended up liking the way it turned out enough to actually enter. (So much fun!) She's one of my very favorite comic book characters.

ANYwho. Time to hit up the fresh farm stand down the road and pick up the components of my dinner-to-be. I do believe we'll be quite happy together.

Meet Old Beard!

Vidjagames! I've been helping (sort've) to make vidjagames!


See, the Boooooooooooyfriend had to make a simple one for a Game Design class at his school. And no one in their group "could art," as it was so eloquently described to me. So, after little to no persuasion at all, I agreed to design and animate the main character for Terminal Hero, along with two of the major bosses, and a title logo.
Needless to say, the game itself (as well as the increasing requests for what exactly I was commissioned to make for it) turned out to be Not Quite So Simple.


'Specially since I have very little experience with pixel art, OR animating anything! As I'm sure is apparent...my stuff is super-basic, and very humble-looking at that. But it was a really great experiment, and a whole ton of fun. Spriting is always something I'd wished I could kick ass at, so it was a nice excuse to get some practice in. Their entire project turned out quite wonderfully, and a lot of really hard work went into the writing, programming, turn-based combat system, and overall design. AND I GOT A SHOUT-OUT IN THE CREDITS. Of an indie RPG! For me, this is the stuff of dreams. 


So that's a sampling of the video game art that I've already done.......

And this is concept art for a FUTURE MYSTERY PROJECT, far down the road. Something new! Something secret! Something.....grimey? ALL PART OF THE MYSTERY! 


Plenty more to come soon...I intend to keep that promise about the scanned sketches.

Pew-pew-pew!

And here. You know what? Since you guys have been nice enough to keep returning, despite my horrible negligence as a blogger. Have this cotton candy nightmare of a half-assed comic strip. Aren't I just the sweetest?


Next post: a veryvery serious essay regarding the importance of realism for sound effects.

Tawny (Predatory, Sex-Starved Tobacco Whores!)

Hey, all! Just figured I'd toss another sketch up in hurr. Because of my tireless love for nudity, and such. I swear there will be a veritable SHITFUCK of drawings from my actual sketchbook coming up soon, because that guy is filling up like crazysauce....I just need to get my lazy butt to a scanner. (Truly, it is the laziest of butts! Never was there a butt more lazy.) Swiftly to follow said sketch-scans, there will be some pages of an actual comic that I've been working on over the past few months! FANCIFUL!! (It's only thirteen crummy pages, so don't get all excited. But hey, it's a comic. And if that excites you, then by all means, get excited! Like, run-and-dance-around-for-no-reason-discernible-to-others excited!)


I think I'm excited, too.

C is for.....

Hey, guys! Back again from the abyss of interweb unconsciousness....it was dark back there! Just a quick sketch that ended up, quite inexplicably, in a show. And ended up being the very first print I've ever sold! I guess that's......some sort of rite of passage? Who knows! It was nice, either way, and utterly unexpected.

Tango Till They're Sore...

Man...guess I'm a pretty rotten blogger, huh? As a reward for coming back after these weeks of neglect, I'll toss up something a little different. 
Here's an oldie for you guys, another illustration project, this one from a few months back. We had to design a concert poster, for any artist we wanted. And even though I listen to more music than I know what to do with these days, I knew exactly which singer I'd wanted to pay tribute to. I'd decided to stick with interpreting the lyrical content of Rain Dogs just to keep things cohesive, since he's so prolific. But honestly, I've never heard a Tom Waits album I didn't love up, down and sideways...that man is a goddamned legend.


Ink on Bristol, hastily colored in Photoshop. Needs touchup, I know, but it was a ton of fun nonetheless. So I figured I'd share it!

TRIIIIcycle, TRIIIIcycle!!!

All I could think of today was Mass Effect. In fact, my fingers are itching so badly to be off this keyboard and wrapped around my 360 controller, that I am going to make today's post an extra-brief one. Because Mass Effect, that's why.


So yeah! This was an assignment for an illustration class of mine: to design a label for a bottle of wine. Our professor provided us with a brand name he had invented, and told us to go crazy. (Shouldn't he know better than to say something like that to a room of Illustration students?)


Anyway: THIS THING!

Bathing Venus

I absolutely adore nakedness. Don't you?


Usually I prefer calling classical figures by their Greek names rather than their Roman ones (maybe because the Romans were thieving, culturally oppressive little punks), but then, this isn't actually supposed to be Aphrodite. Plus, there's such a rich tradition of the female nude coming to be known as a Venus throughout art history...so the title stays!


Aaaaaaaaaanyway. A rough figural sketch from my head: done on my Wacom from a few days back! A healthy chunk of the stuff that turns up on this blog will be digital, simply because I'm an artist who's more comfortable working with traditional media, but would rather not get too comfortable in any. (And am trying to work past that wicked learning curve that first-time tablet users have to suffer through!) I've been using mine on and off for almost a year at this point, and can now tablet okay. 

A Brief Introduction

"Only quite a little fellow in a Wide World"

Huh. How strange! I have never kept a blog before.


Hopefully, this place will be more of a personal challenge for me to maintain a consistent flow of drawings drawn than a silly soapbox or "Lookameeee!" sort of thing. But then, I suppose it takes at least a smidgen of hubris to start something like a blog at all, thinking that I, amidst the endless sea of faces, have something special to share or show.


So why should you look at all? I mean, really...I'm only one very small person. Still a student, lost in transfer, far from being an established professional artist....


Well! On a good day, I like to think I am reasonably charming, and modestly talented....but ultimately your reasons for coming here will be your own. For anyone who does return, this blog will be a haven of sorts for a variety of sketches, strips, and illustrations in all kinds of media, of whatever pops into my head! If that sort of thing from a complete stranger sounds appealing to you, then by all means! You will be welcomed back most gratefully.