Saturday, September 26, 2009

gettin there...


well, we're makin progress kids! =)
these are just the flats. not sure what i wanna do with the BOOM on the cannon yet. i'm not being very creative at the moment.

time for some color

here's the harley quinn that i recently did for an ebay commission. went for a more cheesecake-y look (whatever that means) and i ended up really liking it. but no matter how much i like it, everytime i go back to looking at my drawings, everything still seems to look stiff. how the heck do i fix that for myself?!?!
this was only meant to be a pencil commission but ever since i fiddled with gray copic markers, i just can't help but use them. especially at cons, i feel like my commissions lack a bit but having the grays makes me feel better about what i give to people. and now i can't stop. i'm going to color this so we'll see how that turns out. perhaps it'll be good enough for a print. but who knows!!
i'm also having an internal struggle with myself about what direction i want my art to go. lately i've been very influenced with these manga artists like Shunya Yamashita and Hyung-Tae Kim. i really like the look of the faces and delicateness of the figures. but i feel like my fan base is drawn more towards the more comic-book look like this harley quinn and i can't help but feel like i'm driving them away. also, more and more i notice that folks seem to hate on the anime/manga look. like to them it's a cheap way out of "real drawings." which i think is completely BS. then again, it's probably cuz we've never set up at an anime con. i hope we do one soon so i can have some sort of enlightenment.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

on to the next one

man, nothin like the new Jay-Z album to get u pumped!

at any rate, i finished it! Zatanna is done! i tried my hand at some art nouveau stuff (which i can barely spell as it is). i'm a big fan of Alphonse Mucha stuff and this is my first attempt. try not to look at it too long cuz then all the flaws come poppin out. i'll keep workin on it to see if i can make a better attempt.
the first one is the finished colors as is. the second is what i plan on making for the print to sell. i desaturated it a bit so that the colors aren't so jarring and somewhat has that older look. the background was done solely in photoshop with shapes and erasing shapes with brushes. it was a lot harder than it looks to decide the different shapes in there. as i said, its my first attempt so it's not perfect. heck i'm not even sure i'm in love with it but whatever. if i didn't stop, i'd have overdone it more than i have already.
i also just finished a harley quinn commission but i won't post it till i send it to the client. hopefully, with permission, i can color it and have that as a print as well. i've been given a list of characters to draw by the hubby so i guess i gotta get started. these ladies won't draw themselves. ;P

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

that'll be all

ok so after my stupidly long contemplative blog, clearly i needed to get it together and stop the tea party. so i took some time, got my big girl panties on and said "that'll be all."
so i'm back and on and poppin. haven't drawn much worth showing cuz i've been doing a lot of commission stuff and logo work. it's tough to post any logo work cuz i hate ruining the surprise for the clients and stuff. even when it's done, i just don't wanna put their logo out there until they've put it up on their own websites and whatnot cuz i'd hate to be the reason for a concept to get stolen.
since my last journal, i've been to Otakon in baltimore, then Comic Con in San Diego, and then out to Wizard World Chicago (which apparently wasn't even called "Wizard World" anymore). i have tons of pics of my exploits (especially in San Diego) but i haven't gotten the pictures off my camera yet cuz my printer (which has my memory card slots) broke!! so i haven't been able to post anything.
ANYWAY, moving on to the entry for today. i've finally been able to draw something for myself after a long drought of creative juices. i've been trying desperately to draw Zatanna for a print and whenever i force myself to draw during an artist block, it will inevitably turn into poopoo. and of course, once i see its poopoo, i get so discouraged and i tell myself i'm a waste of space. but one day i finally got up and decided to draw something and it turned out not so bad. i plan on making it into some Mucha-inspired piece but we'll see how it turns out. hopefully i'll be done with it to make it into a print in time for Baltimore Con. the rest of ID Comics keep crankin out these fantastical new prints and i'm still clingin to my Powergirl print that everyone and their Uncle Bob has. at any rate, after this i got another commission to work on and then maybe i'll tackle a Storm piece. EEP! wish me luck!!!
by the way the Pittsburgh Comic Con is this weekend starting friday the 11th until sunday the 13th. if ur in the area and plan on attending, come by and say hi to us ID Comics folks!!! we got more of our new sketchbooks printed (Inside the Box Vol. 3) and new prints. come and see! then we'll get to see fellow artists that we haven't seen all summer. it should be fun times.
anyway, hopefully i'll keep up this drawing stuff now that stuff at my day job has chilled out again. but as i type this, i look down at my new little Ranma (girl-type) figurine that i just got this past Otakon and i can't be too upset. (^__^)