Delayed Flights and boredom

..equals SKETCH-O-RAMA!

Just got back from New York con, where much pimping for Divalicious! took place.
Mucho hugs and thanks to TP doodz Tim Beedle, Rob Tokar and Paul Morrisey for looking out for me and taking care of me and putting the hell up with me for 3 days. ;)

While Sunday night's snow-dump on NY was enchanting at the time, it proceeded to slightly foul up the next day's flights. Both my flights from Laguardia and Chicago took off late, so that made for lots of SKETCHES, inspired by the two Stephen Silver sketchbooks I bought.


It's the only Beethoven that's on the iPod, and that's only because Vince Guaraldi is playing it.


I have a copy of this Prelinger gem on my laptop.


Practicing people-sketching - still not loose enough...


sleeping mermaids are teh pritty.


The pink paint pen exploded on the plane and ruined my jeans, enjoy!

Public Holiday Dump

Not much to do when your editor is enjoying HIS public holiday but your husband still has to work 9_9


I'm having an unabashed Shane Glines day today... You wouldn't believe how much jogging between Photoshop and Painter and Painter Classic it took just to find a bloody pastel brush worth a damn.


This one came out a lot better.




Always room for Rosie, even when she's not doing anything particularly naughty.


Tina - girl of many moods, most of them very enthusiastic.

Paint dries in approximately 2.34 hours

Been a dull couple of days, waiting for work to come through from Tokyopop. I finally got a bunch of background material to play around with for a future project, so that's something. In the meantime, pics!


I wanted it to look like her shadow was threatening to swallow her up. I think it's only in the middle there. Ah well.


One of those sketches that was only 'eh' in sketch form but came to life with some colour. I like how this came out.


When I was little, my sister and I used to draw characters based on our toys. One little rabbit I had became almost my alter-ego - a little Mary Sue that lived the life I wanted. Luckily I grew out of it by the time I was 11 or so and even MORE luckily, this all took place long before the Internet, so I was spared the opportunity to post some EXTREMELY embarrassing crap.
So today I sketched this little bunn. She looks nothing LIKE the rabbit I used to draw, but more a little bunny acting like the me I really was. Naive, gullible, easily enchanted and usually off in a dreamland. Maybe there's a story in her, I don't know.

She has hair because I felt like it.

Padding!

Was digging through my archives and finding some new cool art blogs to link to...
I found these two old quickie pieces which I think deserve a wider viewing:


Well really... Tintin's luck's gotta run out SOONER or later.


Because ANY cartoonist worth their salt must worship at the altar of Herriman.


This one is from my deviantart account... one of the nicer spontaneous original pics I've done. This was a real marker job, too, not digital ;)

The 30 minute limit

I've set myself a limit on these little free-form pics - they must be coloured in 30 minutes or less. For these 3, I failed once.
This one took about 40, because of the clothing colours ;)



I like painting dusks.


Hands up all those who have Alvin & the Chipmunks singing 'Thank God I'm a Country Boy' on their iPod!

...tch, you people are so boring.

Thinking too Much

And Why it is Bad for Art.

I sometimes wonder if I am destined to get along with Painter 9. I see so many artists doing awesome things with it and yet when I do it with my own art, it never works. I'll fuss over it for hours and hours and then realise it looks like arse. In Scott's words, I'm 'fighting' the art rather than making it.
I think it's a combination things - most painting involves working over the pencil lines, using them as merely a guide, the final work being the result of working layers and layers of colour over those pencil lines so there's nothing left of them by the end. Voila - a painting.
I love my pencil lines. I like working UNDER an outline. Maybe it's the animation and comics background talking ;)
I am not good at traditional painting. Never have been. The only digital non-Photoshop tools I feel comfortable with are watercolours and pastels, which can be blended lightly and have some texture to them. I like texture. Makes it feel not quite so Photoshop airbrushy.

Today's art - cued by whatever was playing on my iPod at the time. Try it, it's fun!

Painter 9 - I'm STILL getting used to the watercolours on painter 9. If anything, there's too MUCH choice and it's still very hard to control translucency and get a good bleed going.


This too two goes. The first version was on Photoshop and ended up looking like it was done with flat gouache. It took me a while, which cued me that perhaps it wasn't working. So I rescanned the pencil, clicked open my well-loved Painter Classic and 20 minutes later, done.
LOVE Painter Classic's watercolours. Shame the level function doesn't work and they only take JPGs.
Oh, these are problems you WANT to have, shut up, woman.

*spit*... polish polish polish

I think that's a good start. Can I say I really really HATE CSS? I have to thank my bestest friend Jet Wolf whose Blogger code I swiped and tweaked for this layout.

Anyway, yes. Lots happening right now. But I don't feel like babbling it about it right now, so here's a pic I did on my coffee run today:

.

Yes, this is a style I am unabashedly trying after being inspired by the awesomeness of Chris Battle (see the links ->). My new trick for this one was discovering the Wet Edges function on Photoshop brushes.

TOOK me long enough! 9_9