Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Students Inked

Yarrrgh! Getting back to doing a weekly comic means more drawing with fewer results. Yeesh.

I ended up inking my students, because the pencil smears badly in my journal.






Plus, a simple sketch of a lady I drew up earlier in the week and inked today:



I'll post a link up to my comics next month, assuming I have continued being productive. There's nothing worse than advertising a comeback, only to do a couple strips and then lose interest for another year.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Obsessive-Compulsive

Here's a little comic inspired by my DeviantArt gallery:



Ever get the feeling that a large chunk of your pageview count is you hitting the reload button again and again? To see if someone's replied to/commented on something? I think the Internet makes me obsessive-compulsive. :D

To people who read my old comics: #58 is on the drawing table. That is all.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Students

I did some sketching in the Student Union Building on campus a few weeks ago. A couple pencil sketches:





and a more stylized guy in ink:



I think I'm definitely a bigger fan of pencil than ink. It took me a long time to not have my inks look completely terrible. On the other hand, pencil just doesn't scan well... so what can one do?

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Keep Your Tusks Clean!

I think this might be it for the orc:



And I finished her up just in time for my dental appointment tomorrow! Yay!

Of course, once I took the picture into the bathroom I noticed I'd completely screwed up her jaw. /sigh. And now I'll have to look at it forever, thinking "curse you stupid jaw!"

The moral of this story is -- look at your art in a mirror BEFORE you ink it! Yet more good advice I never actually follow myself.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Orc Flats

Orc, flatted with markers:



And now, for some pencil crayons.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Preview

Stupid comic. How can 4 panels take me 4 months to do? I mean, seriously! I'm like a cautionary tale against perfectionism.

In the meantime, for your enjoyment, here's... panel #2!



Also, it is Angst Thursday again. And I am sad. :(

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Zug Zug!

Here's the start of my next masterpizza:



At some point (probably around the time of my last dental appointment), I was thinking "what I need in the bathroom is one of those kid-friendly dental posters, with monkeys reminding me to floss my teeth." But because I'm a big geek, what I am actually making is a little orc to put in my bathroom.

The Horde says: keep your tusks clean! Zug zug! :D

Monday, February 05, 2007

Girls and Dragons

Here's a few rough sketches I've done this year that I haven't had a chance to upload before.

A charming exotic dancer (pardon the super-sketchy hands -- I plan to finish her sometime):



A not-so-charming naga fortune-teller:



Little Red Riding Hoodie, carrying groceries to her grandma across the wild urban landscape:



And a couple of dragons in ballpoint pen that I sketched out at work today:



This one still makes me laugh:



Neil says "You'd think dragons would have gotten used to 'incidents' in bathrooms."

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Figure Studies

I managed to make it out to my first life-drawing session last night. The weather had turned nasty -- we were in the midst of a minor snowstorm. The person running the session hadn't expected many people to show, but there were about 10 of us there.

I'm not sure what I was expecting. Nude people, certainly. While I've drawn nudes before, they have always been of people I knew and felt comfortable with. This was my first time working in a more professional setting. I wondered whether I'd feel comfortable with it. I shouldn't have worried. I was far too busy working my ass off for the next three hours to notice anything. I did worry about whether all the other people in the class were awesome artists and I was just some jumped-up, self-taught art monkey. But of course people varied in skill level, style, and even what skill they were concentrating on (one guy was only working on faces). So I fit right in. I'll feel a lot better about going to the next class, I think.

I tend to work with pencils (charcoal -- so! messy!), and I tend towards the harder end of the pencil spectrum.

But anyway, here's a few scans from yesterday's session. We had two models, so the gestures were a bit longer than they would usually be, I think.

3-minute poses:



5-minute pose:



15-minute pose:



The better of the two 30-minute poses:



And the last pose of the evening, a 10-minute pose:



I think that last one turned out much more lively than the first few sets. I found the faces to be quite difficult to draw in general because of the way the light fell on them. All in all, though, I was quite pleased with my work once I got warmed up. I'm sorta looking forward to the next class... in that way that one looks forward to a rewarding but challenging workout.