i like ponies (and hate thinking up subjects)

I ordered my Moo cards tonight! JOY! I think I picked 20-odd pictures for them :)


Personify The Tacky Food Picture. Works every time.


The redhead was a girl sitting near me. She looked like she belonged on an early 60's magazine cover, wearing a buttercup yellow sunfrock and matching poodle.



Molly decided today that she is a British shorthair tabby and if she knew what cat macros were, she would NOT be impressed.

I'm looking at the man in the mirror...

Another raid-the-old-periodicals night.
I can't believe I was born in this decade. How EMBARASSING!


And brats these days say we looked ridiculous in the 80's...
OUR PARENTS WERE WORSE!



I write half the captions myself, others are actual copy from the ads in question.

Joyeux Anniversaire, M. Remi

Tintin and Asterix were the most borrowed library books of my childhood (to the chagrin of my mother, who wanted me to read books WITHOUT pictures!). The world needs Tintin again. The US MIGHT be a lot nicer to Europe if our plucky Belgian boy reporter took on the terrorists. Picture Osama running screaming from a foxhole with Milou tenaciously hanging onto his butt.

-----
In other news, I've decided to end my current run of Pinup Disney Girls (see last entry). Time for a break, I think ;)
For those of you who missed it, the series starred:
Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Briar Rose, Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mulan, Snow White, Jane Porter, Megara, Esmeralda, Malificent, Kidagakash and Capt. Amelia.
Whew.

Happy Sketch Crawl

My contribution is.. kinda tiny, but I didn't forget!
Husband had to work yesterday, so I took myself out for coffee. The cafe was nice and full, so I ended up with a pretty okay batch of faces.

We went bowling last night with friends, of which my best friend Nikki makes two appearences on the sketches I made there.
I look at other artists with their cool sketchbooks of people-watching and when I do it, I invariably end up with just heads. I guess I just think faces are interesting :)


(she didn't REALLY do a voodoo dance, I just wanted someone to blame because I missed several easy spares ;p)


The weather has been fining up and aren't I LOVING IT!!!!


Over on dA, I've been keeping the masses happy with my Retro Disneygirls series. Ah well, they're enjoying themselves, even if their grammar makes me despair /_\.
This is probably my favourite one I've done so far. Making Cinderella into a pinup girl was TOO easy and TOO fun.

Oh, and I now have my own Myspace now, so if you have one too, fellow artists, I'd love to friend :)

Why Disney Heroines suck

Because they WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!!! Just when I think I've GOT all the Disney fanart out of my system, I find all this stuff in my old books that I never finished but which still look okay and I want to finish them and argh.
My sketchbook collection dates back to May 1984. That was when I was in hospital for an operation and my mother bought me a sketchbook to pass the time. That's where the dynasty started.
Yesterday I did a spine count and as of now, I have no fewer than EIGHT sketchbooks all in various stages of being filled. Oy, damn me and my fetish for nice new blank books...
Some of them are new, some of them have been in action since last year. Not only that, but I discovered that I hadn't numbered and chronicled any completed sketchbooks since around 2000.
So that killed half an hour. THAT'S where I found a whole bunch of sketches or scribbled notes for other Disney gal fanart I wanted to try.

Yeah, I'm one of those freaks who actually ENJOYED working at Disney and loves the characters. Yes, I like drawing Disney girls. Pretty toon girls rock.

So last night I whipped up a couple more 'retro pinup'-style pics of Ariel and Jasmine (they're over on my dA account) which made my message box explode with fangirl squee. Tonight I felt like going even simpler and did this little Mary Blair-inspired piece:

Kick off your Sunday Shoes

It's 80's day!!
Time to grab an old issue of Glamour and the squeakers...


Every decade has its silly model poses. In the 80's, it was 'airborne'.


touch of Photoshop for the skin - the paper didn't blend very well.
Funny thing about tooning 80's fashion - it's IMPOSSIBLE to make the hair too big.

Vrrrm.

Dodge Dart in my cafe's parking lot. Possibly a 1963.
Portlanders luvs them awesome old cars.
(yeah the front wheel is meant to be distorted. I started out trying to caricature the car...)


Hunter in the grass is a gas, baby. Can you dig it?


Just felt like sketching a real-life Tink. Better description over here

New face

There's a final piece in Rosie's world that still had to be added.
With every Master must come... an apprentice.


Meet Joe. As average as his name, all Joe wants is someone to show him the way. To let him know he's not ENTIRELY useless and worthy of a purpose in this world.
Rosie has found her True Minion.


Could these three take over the world? Possibly.


Burns and Allen, Gleason and Carney, Savage and Hyneman....


Another rejected design for Joe, done to set proportions with Edie and Rosie. Scott and I decided he looked a bit too Schroeder and not enough Charlie Brown.


Sketch from the pocket book - I dunno why Tina came out decked like a Rainbow Brite Christmas Tree, she just DID.


Mucking around with brush pens.

Edie Edie Edie!!...

Not that Rosie would whine like Jan. She'd just walk over and kick someone in the shins.


Just stylising some old Sears fashions. The brunette woman with the flip do is Rosie's mum, Laurie.


Anthony, I know you view this blog, but I am honestly not out to rip off your 'girls in chairs' idea. I just found an ad with a really funky chair in an old Good Housekeeping mag and HAD to use it ;)


Edie looks so cute in earmuffs :)

Cats and Crosshatching...

Had the parents visiting all last week, so I haven't drawn a thing all week. 9_9
My dad and I were on a big Robert Crumb kick last week, ordering CDs and a book on Amazon while I picked up the R.Crumb handbook. I now want to chronicle anecdotes of my childhood in anally cross-hatched glory. God dammit, is there such thing as artistic ADD??





I like drawing obese felines :)


Bunch of cartoon gals based on Sears catalogue photos. The swimsuits were damn sexy back then, but I'm SO glad we don't have to wear support underwear like that anymore...

Girls girls brats and a cat

Just more doodling of Rosie and her chief partner-in-crime, Mollificent the Kitty Kween. Molly likes canned tuna and clean laundry, ideally combining the two.


My husband bought the last JLU DVDs the other day. I know next to nothing about DC canon, but this gal stuck out and I decided to draw her in mid-morph.


John K sent a very nice note to Tina's Myspace a while back after she friended him. He offered to direct a video for her one day. Needless to say, Tina was very excited and immediately tossed this out as a suggestion. I think he liked the idea :)

Do do do dooooo....

(Blame webradio, it's playing 'Potluck' by the John LaSalle Quartet)

Just a bit more dumping off...

Rosie and her little gang, Jeffy and Marti. Let there be no doubt who gets first pick of the lunchbox treats around here!


Angie ranting about something... her Twinkie filling was probably flakey and stale and WHOLLY unacceptable for her home-made Pepsi meringues.


Just some thumbnail research into classic Levittown architecture. Ah, cantilevered roofs, crazy paving on the WALLS and picture windows that would dwarf most movie screens. I was born 30 years too late :(


One of my pipe dreams - get Divalicious! into the funnies. I drew a whole week's worth as an 'audition' for Tokyopop and although they loved them, no openings yet.
(T, if you're reading this, yeah, go ahead and share, what the hell...)

March 19, 2007

Blah. One of those nights. My copy of Drink and Draw arrived today and I spent a happy hour devouring the awesomeness therein.
I wish I had awesomely talented arty friends I could hang out in pubs with :(

Plus, I swear they made the book the PERFECT size to perch on your lap and be a makeshift drawing board. That HAD to be deliberate!

Anyway, that started yet another anxiety attack, worrying that I'll never be anything more than just an also-ran artist, you know those days...
Ironically, I did a couple of pieces today that came out rather well. God dammit, why is creativity ALWAYS its most fruitful when you're having an emotional bummer??


Sandy - an old character of mine. Occasionally I feel compelled to do a portrait of her, just as a guage of how my construction has improved. I think this one is a VAST improvement on the last one I did a couple of years ago. Yay, growth!


Just posted this on my Deviantart account. I expect yet another fangirl deluge. Aah, dA. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

March 17, 2007

Just ducking in to drop off a few journal dump items:

Rosie attitudes. Trying to see how far I can squash and stretch her little body and face. I'm not really going for John K levels here, just so she can move and act well.


Typical day for Rosie and Edie, plus some girl I sketched at my cafe.
I finally found a good white pencil that works well on this paper. joy!


Guess which DVD we just bought.
(sorry about the scanner flair, my art journal is a thick bastard and won't lie totally flat.)

Why I hate book distributors

Because they make you do the cover art BEFORE you start the actual comic, so by the time you get to the end of drawing the comic and your technique is all nice and loose and polished, the cover looks like arse.

Still, while my 4 rough thumbnail cover ideas sat in two inboxes today not getting commented on, I pencilled 7.5 pages. Bollocks to the schedule, I'm getting started.


For a DrawingBoard Jam - Nicole Richie. You wouldn't think a social parasite like Ole' Skanky here would be hard to draw, but she is.

I think there might be a series in this :)

Waiting for Script...

..some bits and pieces I've been posting to DrawingBoard:

Hawkgirl - I think I surprised Scott when he walked in and found me drawing an OMGSUPERHERO!

More caricature practice.

Limbering up...

I can just about see my editor standing there holding up the handkerchief at the starting line, ready to cue me to start drawing. I'm hoping to break a land speed record - my deadline is August, I'm hankering for mid-July.

So I figure it's time to get back into the Diva groove and get Tina ready:

Something about female gluteal dimples taps a very very primitive instinct, I am told.
jeez, she's only 17 and she's had a nose-job already!


This was just an airport sketch that got a photoshop lick of paint.


More practise on caricaturing. This was just some old Italian guy in an in-flight magazine.


Spazzy dog. Very very spazzy dog. Sorry, PUPPY!(avoids glare of best friend and owner of said spaz)

I've started posting to the Drawing Board, because that's where all the cool artists hang out. I joined yonks ago but only posted my first pieces yesterday. I need to hang out with artists more talented than me, it's good for the feedback.