In Joke

I'm working on an environment concept for the Blizzard art contest at the moment (the deadline is coming up quick! And I've only just started!) and maybe I'll post the rough colours in a bit, but in the meantime all I have is this:



It comes from a post someone made on our guild forums about how he likes dressing his friend up as a schoolgirl and riding him while other people eat popcorn and watch. The whole thing came completely out of left field. In fact, since it was a response in someone's introductory "can I join your guild" thread, it came right out of ballpark, and possibly from a different planet. This is the not-so-rude interpretation of the comment, with avatars instead of people. I'm just as happy not having to illustrate yaoi.

I've also been doing more life studies. I attended a party this weekend where I sketched a couple of friends and I'm also inking a cityscape I drew last Wednesday. There should be more stuff posted soon, and then I'm going to be on vacation for a few weeks starting in mid-September. I hope to fill the rest of my life sketchbook while I'm gone!

Journal Sketching

I've been trying to sketch more stuff from life, to help me with things like backgrounds which I hardly ever bother with (because why? Because straight lines are difficult, perspective is difficult... I'm lazy as all get-out. You heard it here first.)

So here is that front yard picture I posted up a few days ago. I spent some time tonight trying out my watercolour pencils on it.



As you can see, either I suck at watercolour pencils (very possible) or they are not what I should be using to colour complex pictures like this. It could also be a combination of the two.

Luckily, I think I'll stick with inks for the next little while. I'm inking a picture I did yesterday of a little nook outside of Cameron Library on the University Campus, but it'll take me a while. I even had to go back today to get a reference photo so that I don't screw up too badly.

While I'm finishing that up, I'll post this picture I did today at a local Cafe:



I finally swallowed my something-or-other and dragged the sketchbook out for lunch. As a matter of fact I DO get distracted while drawing and am not a brilliant conversationalist, but since Neil was busy eating his pizza, I'm not sure he minded all that much. I had just enough time to sketch out this couple before they left. Turned out quite respectable for a quick drawing!

Yet More Undead

An Angelina Jolie reference photo, as processed by my brain:



I think she was (is?) too skinny. If I look at a picture of you and think "Ooo! The creeping undead!", then it's either time to gain a few pounds, spend some more time outside, or be very proud of your last Hallowe'en costume.

Anyway, I'm colouring this one up. The face and shoulders are pretty much done and I'm working on the dress.

Life Sketches

I haven't been doing nearly as much sketching from life as I intended to do this summer. Still, last year I did exactly none, so anything is an improvement, really. I just need to get over the embarrassment of sketching in public and to be a little quicker about whipping out the sketchbook in dead moments.

Anyway, here's the last two sketches I did from life. Here's my husband eating a cheese stick on one of our Sunday bike rides:



And here is a drawing of my front yard that I've been doing a little at a time, sitting on my front stoop on rainy days.



I'm planning to colour that last one using some of the watercolour pencils I picked up last month.

Jamie Hewlett

While perusing a thread of Jamie Hewlett's art, it finally dawned on me that he was the guy who did the Tank Girl comics (he also did the designs for Gorillaz). I never actually had any Tank Girl comics, but I used to see the art every once in a while and thought it was damn cool. Anyway, his style is awesome, so I did a couple sketches loosely inspired by Hewlett.





I'm partial to seedy fairies. I rather think that if fairies existed, they'd bear more resemblance to Tad Williams's Applecore than they would to fantasy pinups done by (the totally fictional) Moondreamflower Wolfsbreath.

Macbeth, As Re-Enacted by Squirrels

Actually, it's Lady Macbeth.



Being an artist is great. Who else gets to waste their free time imagining squirrels doing Macbeth? I'm trying to work out some designs for the three witches now. It's not easy making squirrels look witchy.

Oh, and while I'm at it, here's a quick little sketch of a squirrel I did from life today. There's a small oak tree growing right outside my office window, and it's dropping tasty acorns for squirrels to eat.



This was a very quick sketch for me because squirrels are very, very twitchy. Also, there were some grad students smoking outside and they thought the squirrel was cool, so they tossed acorns to it. It would have probably moved in any case, they don't stay still for long at all.

Goofy Elf Kids

Pretty self-explanatory, really.



Actually, they're a continuation of my musings of what some of my WoW characters might have been like as children. Guess which one grew up to be the warrior and which the priest? It won't come as a surprise, I assure you.

I guess even elf kids need braces and annoy their siblings.

The Crunch

Updates are going to be a bit sporadic for the next month or two as my job moves into the long, dark crunch-time of the year and there won't be much sketching going on at work. Plus I'm going on vacation in mid-September.

Anyway, I'll still try to put something up regularly, I just might not succeed at it.

Good and Evil

Evil John Goodman:



Why is his hair on fire? It's because I was tired and Neil said: "Hey! He looks really evil. He should be on fire or something!" and my brain thought: "That... that's brilliant! Plus, then I don't have to try to fit the hair in because I've run out of paper."

And in case you're saying to yourself that it looks like there's plenty of paper left... well, I was planning to give him a 'fro.

Another caricature of a caricaturist.



I have four other versions of this. I couldn't get the exaggeration right until, after four nicely-rendered but portrait-like drawings, I finally flipped out (like a ninja). Yelling "arrrgggghhh!" (but quietly, because I was at work) I told the photo that I hated it and scribbled something fast and stupid-looking. And of course, it's the best of the lot.

I think I could get away with that because I'd already studied the features so closely. The trick, I guess, will be getting to the point where I can study the features for a few minutes and do it right the first time!

And In With the New

The first picture in my new sketchbook:



Phoenix (Rachel Summers) done for the "Summers Time" character jam. I imagine she's waving good-bye to my childhood, back when I followed Excalibur, spent long days trying to draw just like Alan Davis, and thought my favourite comic book would be exactly the way I loved it, forever.

Jump, Jive & Wail

You know you do it...



...the Kitchen Dance! Incidentally, the only thing bananas are good for, apart from being used as pretend guns and pretend boomerangs.

Summer Cleaning

Continuing with the old sketchbook post... Another goofy girl from a photo:



I was going to colour her with markers, but in the end I decided not to. Might still do digital colour since I can put the colour underneath the inks.

And an attempt to sketch a friend from a photo:



It's difficult to goofify really serious-looking people!

More after I get home from work, I guess.

Out With the Old

As promised, a few sketches from the old sketchbook. An old key sketch:



We used to give our rabbit a ring of old keys to toss. It was a noisy toy he enjoyed playing with very much, even if he occasionally bonked himself on the head with the keys.

Here's a sketch I'm in the process of colouring:



I did it for the Jungle Girl Jam, and of course I moved on to something else and am now two months late for submission. But it's looking pretty good, so I will post it anyway.

And a couple of odd logo designs I was fooling around with. A robotic bunny bomb:



It is a weapon of cuteness and mass destruction. And a modded Computing Science snail:



I imagine it coloured up all metallic, with a shaped neon light spiralling around inside its shell.

Anyway, it's late and I've got to scamper. I'll post more odd sketchbook tidbits some other day.

Sketchbook

I'm just a few pages away from finishing my very first sketchbook. It's lasted me about one semester -- I started it at the end of March, and it is now the end of July. It's been a good haul! It took me a while to suck it down and stop drawing on both sides of the paper. The ink and marker pieces really helped that since all the colour bleeds through.

I've got a different little sketchbook waiting in the wings for its chance, but I'm going to miss this one.

I was thinking about the stacks of paper I've been filling with art for the past 15 years. I go through my old sketches sometimes, looking for inspiration, and I seldom find it. It's a little cool and a little scary to realize that the work that I am doing right now is the most innovative and exciting stuff I've done for a long time. It's scary because I'm not sure that what I'm doing right now IS all that exciting or cool! But I guess it's hopeful in that in five years, when I look back at my first little sketchbook, I'll probably think that its contents are boring -- which will mean that whatever I am doing then will be that much more exciting! And I can't wait to get there!

I will post moar art later in the week -- I'm raiding tonight and I have no scanner at work (just as well, really). I have a couple more life sketches from my journal to post, another caricature or two and a couple silly WoW one-panels. But in the meantime, I've got to get cracking -- those last few sketchbook pages are eager to be filled!

Asian Girl

I feel as though my art output has decreased in the past week or two. I'm not sure that's really the case, but I think that the WoW comics have required a bit more polishing on my part, which slows the rate at which I can post them, and also many of the other sketches I've been doing in the little sketchbook have been very rough and uninteresting. I have also had a busy week at work, though, so maybe there really are fewer sketches to post. I've forgotten to date many of them lately, so it's hard to tell.

I have been doing a bit more marker art, though, mostly because my markers now live beside my computer at home and it's easy to do a bit of colouring with them while I'm waiting for something to load or flying my character somewhere in WoW. This is another random photo girl I distorted and then coloured. She had an interesting face shape and very prominent cheekbones, which ended up making my picture of her look very masculine.



I mostly like the way the markers turned out, except that I accidentally used the darked shade of purply-pink rather than the lighter, and while the cheeks look all right, I definitely think it was the wrong shade to use on her chin. I've bought a few more peach-coloured markers on the weekend, though, so I should be able to get a nicer effect next time.

Silly People

Still distorting poor buggers I find on the web. This poor girl had a cool nose and that hard to draw you-can-take-my-picture-but-I-won't-like-it expression.

This is All I Do Now...

Okay, yeah. It's not all I do now, but I've been working on finishing up some of my WoW comics, so it feels like that's all I'm doing this week.

Here's the world-infamous Gnomish Aggro Magnet:



My favourite part is that I'm not sure whether the device or the gnome holding it is more of an aggro magnet.

I think this is one of my favourite fan-comics that I've drawn for WoW. I was going to enter it in Blizzard's comic contest, but it is only open to residents of the US. It's probably some legal thing, but in my crazy brain, I imagine it's because the iPods explode if shipped outside the US or to Florida or Rhode Island. Maybe they even sprout tentacles and eat their new owner's pets! That would be cool. Awful, but cool.

WoW Comics

I've been doing a few little World of Warcraft one-panels. I think these two might need captions before I submit them anywhere.

This one came out of a guild discussion, where one of the people said that no monster wants a gnome warlock running around between its legs because all the warlock hats have horns on them.



And this one was a little comic of the characters my husband and I play:



He plays a mage, and isn't a very cautious player (but with good reason -- his gnome is a tiny little blizzard of destruction) and me... I like to be careful. It feels like I'm always hiding behind his character. Which is quite a feat, since Wixxit only comes up to Laevis's thighs.

Laevis is a shadow priest, though, so she's slowly starting to come into her own. She's never going to do the big damage (Wixxit puts the "mage" in "damage", ya know!) but she can hold her own in a fight.

More Goofy People

A really silly caricature of someone I found on DeviantArt. I wish I'd written her name down before Mozilla crashed!



And the first caricature I was reasonably happy with, from a picture of a caricaturist on the Drawing Board forum:



Lumpy people ARE easier to caricaturize!