Sketchdump

I'm about to finish another sketchbook. This one was quite fat 'n' sassy! Here's a few faces I should've been posting as I went along:



The girl on the far right was my idle take on Faye of Questionable Content. Pointy-eared girl may be the main character of some future comics.

I also went to another life drawing class last night, so I should have a few more things to share on the weekend.

Tablet

I've been thinking about t-shirt designs lately.



Also, I bought me a 6x8 inch Intuos3! It's... interesting.

Bloodsuckers

A quick something I threw together for a jam while sitting at the loading screen in Bioshock.



Mmmmm. Bioshock.

Update

Phew. What a busy month it's been! The work server was starting to get unreliable at about the same time I got a few good plugs for my webcomic, so I had to set up my own site two days before my vacation. Thank badgers that I set up my old site in a way that allowed me to just zip the whole thing up and plop it elsewhere without too much fuss. Also -- I love ISPs that give you shell access. I'm going with nearlyfreespeech.net, and they're also great because you only pay for what your viewers use -- which means you can spend just a few dollars to keep a small website running.

The whole process has been much like moving out of one's parents' house for the first time. Suddenly I can put whatever I like on there -- but I have to pay the rent.

Then I went to BC for a couple of weeks, which would have been all right except we apparently despise driving and I caught a cold on the second day after arrival.

Just a few days ago I discovered that my comic has been accepted to one of the bigger subscription sites (although I've chosen to continue providing it for free -- I think building an audience who will eventually buy merchandise will probably work better for me in the long run) -- so transferring the archives over is going to be a metric buttload of work. Also, I will be on a webcomics panel at a tiny sci-fi convention here in town in October. It never rains, but it pours! Really, September is a terrible time for change. In about a week, I will have a hundred students lined up at my door, looking for help. And -- AND! -- I've got Bioshock to play. Why does everything all happen at the same time?

But there, I shouldn't complain. Here's a speedpaint I did today, in the finest spirit of procrastination:



I was experimenting with some brushes I downloaded. Done from a reference photo I took while on vacation. Kinda blobby, innit? Maybe I should dig out my ancient copy of Painter and see whether I can re-do it with more natural-looking brushes.

Chalk Flower

I saw a little brown paper sketchbook at the art store yesterday and picked it and some pastel pencils up.



I'm not sure about the chalk pastels. I think one of the pencils is all busted inside. However, the sketchbook should work just as well with pencil crayons.

Don't Run with Scissors

Just a marker & pencil crayon doodle on some cardstock. I was leafing through my old sketchbook and he looked like he might go well with green marbled paper.



Creepy dude says "don't run with scissors!"

More Colour!

I coloured the line-art for the forum superpower cartoon. I like it quite a bit better this way.

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: