Funky Creature

Hmmm. Not exactly a success, but not a complete failure either.



I really need to keep working on my painting.

Mushrooooms

Getting back into painting now that I have some time off. Acrylic on watercolour paper.

Not a bad picture considering my brushes are all split, the paper wasn't gessoed and I messed up the plate. Luckily paper can be cropped without breaking out the table saw.

Also: mushrooms NOM NOM NOM. I ate my subjects and they were delicious.

Pixie

Busy, busy weekend. Cleaning, shopping, screwing around with acrylics.... Finally got around to scanning some sketches from last year and decided to toss some colours on this:



Maybe 45 minutes' work with PS. Was doing some designs for a gang of pixie criminals. It might be fun to turn it into a bigger illo, if I can figure out what to do other than have them stand around looking nasty.

In Ur Face!

Hey, we were the second coldest place on the planet last weekend! We beat out Antarctica at -46C. WOO!

You would think "Hey you raving nutcase why are you proud of this fact?!" and I have finally realized why. It is because this is the only time when I feel more awesome than tiny stylish women with purple purses. I? I am built for the cold. I am short and pasty and *insulated*. And I'm not afraid to wear three pairs of socks simultaneously.

So three cheers for winter! I might as well get while the getting's good.

Fighting Radish Go!

Hunter

Merchant

The Card Game

Finally finished this. I was almost done on Monday but Photoshop decided it didn't like saving files about an hour in.



I didn't notice that I was working on too small a size for this one. I think all I'll be able to do with it is print postcards. :P

Urban Leaper

Gonna do a bunch of character sketches this month, I think. Maybe I'll work my way through the CHOW topics from the beginning.

Dwarf Girl

I was looking back through my earliest blog sketches and one of the ladies I did way back then turned into this scandinavian-inspired dwarf girl.

Pirate Wimmin

Some pirate ladies from back in October.

Steampunk Progression

Since I had to post one of these up for the contest, here's my process:

Chow Chow

Steampunk harem girl! Now with more gears!

Vancouver

Sat around sketching when Neil forgot his bike lock back at the hotel.



I took a photo as well, so if I ever recover it off my Macbook's hard drive I can finish it up.

CHOW WIP

What I'm working on this week:

Punk Cheerleader

What I was drawing at the cartoonist meeting in Vancouver in August:

Found another batch of sketches from the convention in April:

Card Game

Scanning stuff from August. This will probably make a nice digital illo:

Woofman

The wolfman:



Didn't finish Frankenstein or his bride in time, but I may do them next week as they'll be a nice addition to my portfolio.

Dracular

This is what I eventually ended up with for CHOW:



Someone in the thread commented that they liked the "Dracular" and now I can't stop thinking of this guy as Dracular. He's not quite Dracula. He's like a big, vampiric, owl-shaped Elvis. I was going to give him a spotlight so he could conduct the magpie chorus but it didn't look good so I gave it a rest.

Next up, I will be working on the Wolfman and then Frankie and his bride. I also have a tentative design for an emo, mulleted Phantom of the Opera.

The Mummy

Workin' on the mummy for CHOW:

Self-Portrait Day

For self-portrait day over at ConceptArt.

Coloured

I don't need to deceive you
'Cause I feel no pain
Maybe I should let you
Come on and eat my brain
- The Odds

Hallowe'en!

Doing a bunch of digital sketches lately, including this lovely lady. Don't run into her on your morning jog!

Who is Cooking?

Who is cooking? Bear is cooking! How can this be?!

Catgirl 2

Another Harvey James catgirl:



I should colour her up. Except that I'm going to be working on a mummy this week.

Catgirl

Sketched up some girls for Harvey James' Catgirl project, but never got around to finishing or submitting them. I only found out about it three days before the deadline.

Heritage Festival Sketches

Some sketches from the Heritage Festival back in August:

Conference Sketches

Some people from a conference I went to last April:



I'm sure I had a few more pages like this but I think they got stepped on.

Mop Top

He's just this guy, you know?



A companion sketch to Ms. Buckteeth.

Buck Teeth

I've spent the past month and a bit painting an acrylic painting for an art show (an art show whose opening is going on Right Now, which I unfortunately can't attend). Which means I've been neglecting pretty much everything else since early September. However, now that I have a bit of leisure time, I'm getting back to sketching and goofing around.

Here's a quick digital painting of a weird caricature from my sketchbook:

Vancouver Lanscape

I did a bit of watercolour painting on vacation in August:



Watercolours aren't really my thing. This was the third painting I attempted while there, and the first that turned out even somewhat to my satisfaction.

We sat on a bench near the Burrard Bridge in the afternoon. I painted and Neil played the guitar. Some guy walking by took a look and said "meh". Everyone's a critic! :)

Pretty Dresses

For a jam. It's been too long since I sketched with no project in mind!

Abstract Texture

Finally getting around to posting more stuff from the painting course. This was an exercise in creating an abstract painting from a natural texture. I used a very sprockly rock.



It doesn't really look impressive, but I think that out of all the paintings I did for the class, this is the one I'd actually put on my wall.

Sunlit

Another speedpainting I did a while back, based on this stock photo by Faestock

Feesh

Finally got some time to do a speedpainting! Fish are neat, but a challenge to paint.



From this neat reference picture by Summer's Solstice.

About two hours' worth of work in Photoshop.

Bus Sketches

I've been working on a project lately, so I've had very little time to sketch outside of that. Still, here's a couple people from yesterday's bus rides:



I should have a new speedpainting up soon too.

Chaosine Street Scene

Just trying to figure out if really sketchy lines and colouring would cut my production time down and still look all right.



Opium and Arch from my maybe-future comic, Chaosine.

Fall Back & Regroup

Okay, I give up. I've mostly lost track of what was drawn when (although I still have a bunch of paintings to photograph) and there have been at least a few days in the past couple of weeks when I didn't draw anything.

But that doesn't mean I have to fall off the wagon until next January! I'm going to take a break, maybe until April or May, and then see if I can go another two months.

Abstract

The homework on this week was to do a an abstract loosely based on a master's study we'd done a few days earlier. My master study was Cezanne's "Houses in Provence", which I unfortunately didn't finish as I was borrowing the instructor's book for reference.



So... I dunno about this one. It's... almost good? Maybe? But not quite. It wasn't at all the effect I was looking for. I love all that cobalt blue in the background, and I think if I'd done more with the angular bits in the center it would have worked better.

Cobalt blue has got to be my absolute favourite blue, but it's horrible to work with. Grainy, transparent, you need half a tube to cover anything and it's toxic to boot. But so pretty!

He's a Guy

4-Colour Study Redux

This was another 4-colour study for homework. This time I picked red, green, blue and orange to be my complementary pairs.



I think I kinda half-assed this one. I can't remember why. I think it was really cold in the sunroom that day. The oranges turned out much better than last time, though, so maybe there's hope yet!

Female Sith

Female Sith design for CHOW (Character of the Week on ConceptArt.org).



On the one hand, too bad I didn't get a chance to do some proper work on this. On the other hand, they had a ton of entries and mine probably would have been cut.

4-Colour Study

In-class still life study. We had to pick two pairs of complemetary colours (I picked red, green, yellow and violet) and paint the still life we'd assembled.



Those purple things flopping about are my purple driving gloves.

I'm not sure what I think about this. Way more brightly coloured than I'd like, perhaps? But I don't dislike it.

Abstract

We were supposed to do a balanced grid abstract based on the rough Master Study (mine was Cha-u-Kao, posted a few days ago).



Yeah, not really my thing either. I thought we were going to finish the abstract in class, so I just made a bunch of rectangles and then had to occupy myself for 2 hours. Not that I don't like Mondrian, because I do, but I think I'd have to practice a lot more to make something that someone might hang on their wall.

And speaking of Mondrian, I must get one of these!

Unibrow Brewery

Unibroue makes my favourite beer, but if I had a brewery it would be Unibrow!

Cha-u-Kao

We were supposed to do a (very, very simple) master's study for homework. I ended up picking Cha-u-Kao by Henry Toulouse-Lautrec, partly because it's appealing, and partly because we weren't supposed to use the Internet for reference and all I had was a book on Post-Impressionism.

So here's my "copy":



And here's a scan of the original:

Baba Yaga

This week's CHOW was Baba Yaga. Once again, no time to finish.

Li'l Red

Update

Still managing to do some drawing every day! I can't scan or photograph my paintings every day, though, so I'm keeping a list and backdating everything. I'm doing a better job of it this year than last year, even if just barely.

Mab

Honestly, this one's not worth seeing yet. Needs a serious dose of photoreference.

It's half-inspired by the Titania pics, and half-inspired by the Dresden Files books.