November Girl

Got some new brush pens a few weeks ago and I've been experimenting with them.



I think I like them a lot better than just straight-out brushes. They're easier to control because (I think) the bristles are stiffer. I think I also like them better than dip-pens because they have a steady ink flow.

Anyway, that was just a quickie sketch of a girl.

Bok Choi!

I finally got a chance to try out my birthday present today (the watercolour travel set... not the bok choi).



I haven't really ever worked with watercolours before, and I don't normally paint, but this was a fun way to start. I set up the baby bok choi in the sunroom, which faces north, sketched out an outline and went to it. I'm not sure it turned out all that well, but I'm not sure it turned out all that poorly either. I guess I'll have to work with the watercolours a bit more to get the feel of them.

I guess it was interesting to work with something so predominantly... green. I can see myself having to buy a lot more green in the future.

Roughs

This is just a rough colour block-in of the Stabbity sketch I posted back in April. I do a lot of sketches I later intend to colour, but few of them ever get past this stage. I generally finish the face and hair and halfway through the clothes I end up with 20 other sketches that I'd like to colour. Photoshop gives one the potential for a great deal of detail, which makes it attractive to try and make parts of my work smoother and smoother, while avoiding other parts of the drawing. Pen and ink are fairly immediate, though. At some point the drawing is just done and you walk away from it.

I'm posting some of my roughs because a). I haven't had a chance to scan in some of the newer sketches and b). hopefully this will prompt me to finish colouring a few of these. I think they could be really good if I just got them done.

This Post is Too Boring to Have a Title

Still stuck in bi-weekly meetings. I don't know what this meeting fetish that people seem to have is all about, I'm just glad I don't have to go to more of them. I may have to start bringing toys or odd objects I can draw, because meeting rooms have got to be the most boring places on Earth.

If I ran the world, meeting rooms would have Lego. And Scrabble sets. Of course, if I ran the world everything would be done through e-mail and no one would need to meet unless they wanted to play Scrabble.

So out of the unending excitement of meetings comes...



...a coffee cup.

At least someone had the good grace to bring one so that I could draw it.

Vacation Leftovers

So there's a few vacation sketches that are sitting in my journal half-inked. I've been finishing them up very slowly. (Very... very... sloooowlyyy....) But hey -- they'll all end up here sooner or later!

This is a balcony I drew in Rome. It was across the street from our hotel window.



I wish I'd taken some time to get a reference photo. In fact, I wish I'd taken photos of all sorts of things in Italy, like sandwiches and the guy herding sheep on a motorcycle. Heck, I often sit on the bus and wish that I had a little camera in my head, like the skull gun in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I'd love to record all sorts of odd little things about people that I don't feel comfortable just taking photos of outright. There was a girl on the bus a couple of weeks ago that had a purse made out of ties. There's wall climbers at the gym that occasionally do cool things as I jog by (the yoga-climbing lady comes to mind). There's even normal stuff I ride by on the bus that I know I won't come back to because it's halfway between stations and it's winter outside.

The best pictures are the ones you never get a chance to take, hey?

Something from the Vaults

Actually, it's something from the desk drawers at work. My desk is FULL of half-baked pictures going all the way back to 1999, when I started working here. This was one of several pictures I drew at around the time I was playing Baldur's Gate 2 or possibly Neverwinter Nights. I was going to colour them up and use them as player character pictures.



I think this one was a Mage or Cleric. I also had a rather cute Bard which I had just begun to colour, another Mage I didn't like as much, and a very evil-looking Dark Paladin that never got beyond pencils.

I should go through the vaults again, scan all the stuff that doesn't look like crap and rework all the stuff that does. My body of work, while not particularly great, is stupidly large. I should make some attempt to organize it.

The Grim Reaper Makes a Move

Imagine going to the drive-in only to find out that you have a date... WITH DEATH!



I don't really know why this popped out onto the page today. I was looking at the Drawergeeks' theme du semaine (the Grim Reaper) and suddenly thought about all those songs and stories from the 50s where someone's sweetheart dies in a horrible car crash and the singer/author wails about it for three minutes or 100 pages. Before I knew it, the Grim Reaper was out on paper, making his move.

Too bad I didn't draw him as more of a Grim Greaser. That would have been cool!

Vintage Doodles

Just a quick sketch today. I was looking through one of my larger sketchbooks and found a bunch of loose pieces of paper with art from a few months ago.



The ninja rabbit appears in my meeting doodles on a regular basis. Fight on, ninja rabbit!

Honey Apples

In the spirit of posting work more often, here are the apfels:



I'm still planning to work on a background for them, but I may not have the time until the weekend. I can't stand working in the dark anyway, and even the days are gloomy and overcast here now. Stupid fall in stupid Alberta.

Really, the last little while has been super-frustrating as far as artwork goes. It seems that every time I have a few minutes to pull out the sketchbook an interruption comes along. Neil's been home sick, which means he's bumping around the house when he'd normally be off Kung Fu-ing. He's in the kitchen when I want to make lunch, and he's on the console when I want to play games, and today I was thinking that maybe, MAYBE I could go sketching at lunch before my lunch meeting (the cow-orkers have helpfully scheduled a bimonthly meeting during my lunch hour; thanks, wankers) before the weather turns really cold. But no. He's got to come in for an afternoon meeting and we'll be having lunch together again. (Lest you think that I'm insane for complaining that husband wants to have lunch with me every day, you should understand that "having lunch" these days mostly means "walking to the food court, standing in separate lines and then dragging the results back to eat at our desks, in separate offices.) I could do without the five-minute walk to SUB and back, only to be stuck at my stupid desk eating my stupid Edo shrimp.

But y'know. I'm not bitter.

I think I'm back in my "Fuck you, human beings! Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!" phase. I seem to be feeling it particularly badly this morning.

* * *

Sheesh. And after all that complaining I did, it just so happens that Neil missed his bus and wasn't able to get here in time for lunch. And did I do any sketching? No. Because I forgot my watch on my bedside table this morning and if I go somewhere where I can't see the time, I will miss the lunch meeting.

So, not only am I bad-tempered, but I'm dumb as a sack of hammers too.

Somehow, this has restored my good humour. Now all I have to do is to try and convince the cow-orkers that we should hold all our meetings in HUB mall, where you can buy tasty cafe lattes and which is more interesting to draw in than the meeting room.

Maple Leaf

Oh, hey. I'd completely forgotten about this thing:



it's a Japanese Maple leaf. I was planning to do some watercolours of autumn leaves, but the leaves are all gone now and I just can't seem to break out the paints. However, I AM trying out some ink brushwork (it's hard; never again will I look at a simple brush picture and think "pffff!"), it's just that I've hardly done anything worth posting so far.

Anyway. Apples some other day! I've had a request for a background for them so I guess I'll keep working.

Getting Back Into It

There were so few vacation sketches I did that I'm trying to make up for things now that I'm home. I'm especially trying hard to see the potential in my everyday surroundings. (When I took a studio course, my TA used to criticize my choice of subjects. I happen to think that computer cables and circuit boards are just as interesting to draw as drapery and plants. Just because it's not traditional doesn't mean it isn't good!) Of course, after all that, something like a nest of cables is just darn difficult to do. If you're a lazy artist like me, it's much easier to knock out a dried rose:



especially if it's sitting on your desk and doesn't require you to go and open up your computer case.

Today I drew some apples, but maybe I'll save those for another day.

Vacation Sketches

Here's a few more sketches from the vacation. There's three or four more apart from this, but they are in varying stages of completion (I took some reference photos so that I'd be able to finish some of them, but I don't like to take reference photos of people. For one thing it's rude, and for another thing it forces me to draw quickly before the subject buggers off).

This is a sketch from our hotel balcony in Viterbo. If there's one thing that I think I would truly enjoy, it would be a quiet spot above a semi-busy street where I could sit and watch people on a warm summer evening. Neil sat beside me with his camera, watching pigeons roosting across the street and taking long-exposure photos in the dark, while I tried to sketch people below us. This was a guy standing outside a pizzeria, waiting for his friend who had just stepped in for a few minutes, and having a smoke.



A week (and a few unfinished sketches) later, Neil and I were hiding from a downpour under an overhang in Orvieto. It was right beside a bus stop, so there was a small crowd of people there, waiting for buses or tours or for the rain to stop so that they could run home. This was a dapper old Italian man who was having a great time joking around with some older Italian ladies. Eventually they broke into a song and did some dancing. They looked like they were having great fun.



A couple days after, we wandered around the Palazzo Pitti museums in Florence. We were worn out long before we had a chance to see everything. This was a tourist I sketched out during a rest stop.



We had to hide in the waiting room of the train station in Florence. We sat outside for a bit, but then we got waylaid by someone trying to bum a cigarette off us. He couldn't understand that we were non-smokers and didn't have a cigarette to give him. Anyway, train stations are great for catching people napping, and napping people are great because they don't notice you drawing them and they don't wander away nearly so quickly.



And last of all... my backpack and bike helmet at the airport, before heading home. The thing about airports is that either you have to race for your gate or you have a five-hour layover and plenty of time to kill. We had a couple hours at Roma Fiumicino so I got the chance to do a longer drawing than I usually bother with. It turns out that more detail makes the drawing look much better. Who knew?



I'll post the other sketches up as I finish them. It may take me a while. It usually does.

Italy

I am back from my vacation. Somewhat as expected, I didn't do much sketching in Italy -- for one thing, it's hard to sketch when you're out touristing. There's all that walking and cycling and milling around in confusion with a map and guidebook in hand. Having an impatient husband who neglects to bring reading material with him wherever he goes is also not very helpful. Still, I managed to sketch a few things. Here's a lamppost from the sixth town on our tour, and the town I think I liked best, Bolsena:



Anyway, it's been three days and I'm still jet-lagged. I've started eating normally (which is a lovely change) but I'm still falling asleep by 22:00. Heck, it's only 20:00 and I'm sitting here, typing this up, thinking longingly of pillows and other freshly-laundered bed things. I had plenty of plans for artwork this weekend, all of which have taken a backseat to being dead tired. Very sad.

Bettie

Only a few days left till the trip, and I haven't been drawing much. Here's a picture based off a Bettie Page pinup.



I didn't do that great a job on the colour, especially the background. How the heck do you do backgrounds in marker without streaking, anyway? Saturate the area with as much ink as it can handle?

In any case, who looks at a pinup for the background? Enjoy!

Okay, here's the rough colours for the environment concept:



I'm sure it'll look terrific, assuming my wrist gets better in time to finish this.

People are People

More stuff from the sketch journal. This is one of my friends, Greg, whom I tried to sketch at the housewarming party last weekend.



I'm not sure it really looks like him. It's difficult to get someone's facial features right when they keep turning their head away.

And these are people I drew on the bus a couple days ago:



Well, the bald guy was actually at the Cafe, not on the bus. Why is it that as soon as you decide to draw a picture of someone, they suddenly up and leave?

At least I now have something to do with myself if I end up riding the bus all winter. I mean, apart from knitting socks.

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.