Goddamned Punks!

Two posts in one day? I'm a new woman! This is a repeating pattern that I made for my Illustration studio...my prompt was punk haircuts. I drew it out of a hat. No, I'm not joking, and no I didn't cheat. Fuckers.
This was almost obscenely fun to make, from the research right down to the actual rendering. I'm thinking maybe wrapping paper would be its final form, in all its chaotic, seizure-inducing glory. Maybe the good folks at Dischord or SST would have liked to use it to swaddle their self-recorded wares. One can only hope....

Casting Circle of Comicking

Hey, folks! Just thought I'd put up my new biznazz card design. You know. The ones I'll use for biznazz. It's a fairly candid behind-the-scenes look at my process.

Posters and Promises Broken...

I know, I know....I haven't been updating like I said I would. So to help you forget the bitter taste of promises unfulfilled, here's a poster I was commissioned to make! 

This was a project for my friend Jo Leonard, for an upcoming event she's doing. She's a rather outstanding lady, who's really committed to helping kids figure out how to unravel their messy lives and get on the right track for school or a career. That being said, Jo is someone who really helped me during my in-between year, while I was fervently applying to art schools and trying to figure out how the hell to make it all come together. I wouldn't be here at MICA if not for her help.

More to come soon...I've got some crazy illustration finals and a comic zine in the make.

Robo-Toaster Lives!

Alright, all you bastards out there. I'm back again, and things are gonna be a little different. I'm going to try for updates twice a week, just to get into the practice of putting my work out there. Out...here? Where the fuck are we, anyway?

That's right, we're at Pocket of Nonsense, my tiny blog which is and shall continue to be true to its namesake. For those of you who've decided to stick around, I'm still convinced you ought to have your heads examined. But I appreciate your loyalty immeasurably: it warms the cockles of my heartplace. If (and that's a mighty huge 'if') there are any newcomers, you still have a chance to escape! But you are, of course, most welcome to stay.

Anyway. Here's a junkerpunk inventor bringing her robo-toaster to life. He's designed to be a butler who serves only toast. What more do you really need, anyway? 

Inked traditionally and colored in Photoshoop, but I also screenprinted about fifty of these sons'abitches as a final hurrah for my summer internship with Pizza Party Printing. (Dan and Jimmy are two of the best dudes in the universe, and work incredibly hard: go buy up all their T-shirts!) 

But getting back to Robo-Toaster Lives!: if any of y'all are gonna be in Baltymore around the holidays, I'm selling my own handmade prints at MICA's Art Market. (The paper I got is slightly more orange in color, so I picked an ink that's a bit of a greener teal to compensate. Otherwise, the design is the same.)

Wheeeeee for shameless self-advertising! See you soon!

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.