The Ultimate Wool-Bearing Mammal?

If there's one thing that seems to remain a constant... it's that I'm not very good at painting.

I bought some cardstock remnants to play with, and thought I'd try to re-do Rabbit Sheep. I dug out my old acrylics (haven't been used much since I took a studio course in 1998) and gave it a go:



Cute, but lacked a certain... oomph. I threw on some hasty digital inking to see if I'd like it better with an outline:



And I do think I like it better with an outline, but the sharp line just contrasts too much with everything. I think I'll find my pencil crayons and see what I can do with those.

Hey -- imagine what kind of wool we could get if we bred these with the Nepalese Llamayak!

Final version:



Also... I was perusing the Dream Shapes blog just now (there, on the side bar) and it reminded me about the dream I had this morning. I don't remember anything, other than one of my co-workers telling me (in an aggrieved voice) "I'm sorry, but these sheep are NOT my responsibility! And neither is sex."

It's probably just as well my husband woke me up. I don't think the dream was going anywhere I really wanted to be.

Forum Superpowers

Occasionally, arguing on forums makes me want to shoot beams of destructive energy from my eyes. Maybe if I squint my eyes and scrunch up my face really hard, I'll eventually mutate into some kind of forum Godzilla. Except shorter, and with snazzy red socks.



This is a lot like my Supervillain picture near the beginning of my blog -- except better of course. About an evening's worth of screwing around.

Panel

It seems like the comic is all I work on these days. And sometimes I wonder... is it worth it? I've spent a year and a half on a project whose plot I thought up in a weekend, and hardly anyone reads it. By the time I'm as good an artist as I want to be, I'll have been dead for 10 years.

But then I look at how far I've come, and I feel pretty happy.

Maybe I'll post the occasional panel here, just so I still feel productive. Ones that I'm particularly fond of. Like this one:

Linden Trunk

There is a row of mature linden trees near the building where I work. I had some time free on June 23rd due to a network outage, so I sat on a bench with a cup of tea and looked at the texture of their trunks:



Mosquitoes found me before I was quite done my study. When I got back to work, I dug up a laptop and discovered that someone had at least brought the wireless up. I should get in to work early so that I can take more breaks... :)

Schtuff

My production rate has slowed considerably this summer. Actually, that may or may not be true -- however, my scanning rate has gone right down the toilet.

Speed sketch I did today when I got tired of stippling my comic:

Illustration Friday: Camouflage

Something based on some rabbit sketches I did last weekend:

Charming

Goofing around with a woman's face from some random photo:



I quite like the expression on her face. It's an ambiguous smile she's wearing... What was she thinking?

Green Apple Pie - The Move

Click for bigger image:



I've been kicked out of my old digs. It was a sad occasion.

She Hunts Pies

A couple weeks ago my husband got Lord of the Rings Online, and I caved in. Now that I'm playing a MMORPG again, I need a sig for my guild forums. Here's a speed-paint of my hobbit, Takha Pie-Hunter:



The colours took about an hour so far. The linework was a lot less.

Green Apple Pie - The Internet

More Green Apple Pie. Click for the bigger version:

Cartoon Girls

I've been using the sketchbook a bit more in the past week, so I have a few things to post. The three silly girls came from a very, very boring meeting during which I was trying to channel Katie Rice. But of course my normal style is completely different, so I can't do goofy in such a charming way. Still, some of these came out pretty well.

Spork punk girl:



I just like saying the word "spork". Much like "moo" and "mukluk", it's a funny word to say. A scary, vapid would-be celebrity girl:



And a grumpy country girl:



And now, just to cleanse your eyeballs, a not-goofy-at-all lady:

Painting Practice

I went out to paint a bit this evening. It's been a hot weekend, but the evenings are quite lovely -- if you can stand the mosquitoes. They're quite bad this year.

Anyway, I painted my yard while the sun was setting:



I'm not really all that happy with the painting -- it's difficult to paint a mass of plants, do it fairly quickly before the sun goes and have them all look distinct! I much prefer painting overtop of inked lines, I think. Still, any practice is good practice!

Green Apple Pie - Sketchbookoholism

I'm still doing the occasional journal comic. I'm going to bind them all together into a comic diary when I'm done. The only way that I can do this is if I don't clean these guys up, so you'll all have to live with my crummy lettering and occasional bad line. I will remove inky thumbprints, though.

Click for full size:

Sketch Weekend

Here's a sketch from Saturday's sketch crawl. I went to West Edmonton Mall, one of the biggest malls in the world. I hadn't really planned on any specific destination (next time I plan to catch a random bus somewhere and see what there is to see on the bus route). My brother was visiting, and I asked him what his plans were for the day. He had planned to go shopping, so I came along for the ride.



West Ed is not a bad place to sketch. No one bothered me. There are so many people that it's easy to sit somewhere and sketch people without them noticing you. And there are some interesting things inside.

Anyway. Here's something from Sunday, since I was still in a sketching mood. My aunt-in-law's cat:

Catching up on Bus People

I actually moved my butt and went on sketchcrawl yesterday. I will have some new stuff to post soon (I'm planning to drag my sketchbook out today, too). In the meantime, I've been cleaning up some older pages from January-March:

Stickies

I just re-discovered a couple sketches I did on sticky notes and stuck into my old journal sketchbook. Both are from my in-laws' house.

A cup and spoon:



Their tea cups are very cool. They're round and have a map of the globe etched on them.

And their small, geriatric dog, napping:

Lamp

A lamp I sketched out in a local restaurant. Crummy pen on index card:

Meeting Sketchies

It's not that I've fallen off the face of the Earth... it's just that the Earth is spinning too quickly and it's flung me off. Stupid Earth.

Here's a couple sketches from Tuesday's meeting. A coworker whom I've probably made more frazzled-looking than absolutely necessary (I think she was starting to suspect that I might have been staring at her for a reason):



And when I got tired of squinting at people out of the corner of my eye, I victimized my shoe:



So, yeah. I still have a backlog of sketches to post, I just haven't had the time to scan them.

One Day Off

Okay... I honestly thought it was Monday yesterday. I don't know where Monday
*actually* went. Maybe I don't want to know.

Inspiration Monday

Hot Bathing Suit

The result of this week's inspiration.

Fiery children and swimming don't mix:



You can try this at home, but you'll be overly warm AND soggy, at the same time:



I kinda like having a topic but not going straight for the obvious interpretation.

I feel bad about neglecting the ol' sketchblog, but doing a weekly comic is a lot like having homework to finish every week. Between that and Kung Fu and getting the labs ready for the spring semester, I barely have any time to relax. I did get out this weekend for a bit of outdoor sketching. (I only managed 20 minutes. It looked warm and sunny outside, but the wind was just evil.) I'm hoping to throw some watercolours on the picture once I get a few minutes of free time.

My time on the bus is just about over. My bus pass ran out yesterday, and I'll be biking again starting either tomorrow or Thursday. I have a few more bus people to scan, but after that there will be no more until October. I still plan to get out and sketch from life, though. It'll just be a little more difficult to find opportunities to do so.