ready

[listening to "i love it" by icona pop]

i see that with these blog entries, my emotional range isn't very deep. most days i just feel like its another day of balancing work with home. work errands run into home errands and i'm just doing what i gotta do. today is like any of those days only i feel like i'm remembering things more today than usual. so i'm ready to get these things accomplished!

i forgot to post this last week. this was my entry for last week's Girls Drawin Girls blog theme of bunny ears. i doodled her in my new sketchbook and i don't really know what her deal is. i assume she's just some bunny chick who really likes to sit on giant mushrooms. i really like how her face and freckles came out though. =)

confused

[listening to "on top of the world" by imagine dragons]

"Squidly" finished

"Squidly" sketch

though i am starting to really get tired of Coldplay-wanna-bes (though many have said Coldplay are U2-wanna-bes), it's tough to not wanna listen to a band called Imagine Dragons. luckily, they're not that bad.

i'm thoroughly confused today because despite it being 5 days into spring, it's totally snowing here in Maryland. what the?! after an extremely mild winter with very little snowfall for our area, suddenly it's been snowing since last night and it doesn't look like its gonna stop anytime soon. thankfully, i love snow! so it's quite the welcome treat. and because i work from home, it's doubly great! but still, its pretty unbelievable.

today's images are from last week's ID Studios' art jelly. the assignment was to create a creature. so mine was a squid-like creature with gross huge teeth. =/ drew a lot of inspiration for the amazing talents of CreatureBox. (if u don't know em, u've gotta check em out! they're amazing!!!) this time, i decided to color it traditionally with my copic markers. its been a while since i did something with them (besides the sketchcards of course).
for this week's art jelly assignment, we're supposed to draw our respective covers for our 2013 artbooks. i'm totally excited and very intimidated. i hope it looks as good on paper as it does in my head. wish me luck ya'll!

persevering

[listening to "the writer" by ellie goulding]

Dancin Machines

so tomorrow, the ladies of Girls Drawin Girls have an art show in LA with a Motown theme. (for more info on the actual event, check out http://girlsdrawingirls.com/muse-box-motown/.) this was my first opportunity to contribute to one of their shows and it's my first time being in an art show that wasn't at a comic con or something. so despite my lack of knowledge of Motown, i jumped at the opportunity. i mean, just to demonstrate how much i didn't know, i thought Motown was a genre of music that lasted during a certain period of time. names that pop into mind are Temptations, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, and Smokey Robinson. between the hubby and wikipedia, i learned that it's a record label. D'OH! and even though those names are correct, there's also Jackson 5 (pre-solo-michael jackson), brian mcknight, and boyz ii men. i've been listening to Motown all along and i had no idea!

but i digress! so here's my piece for the show that i had to mail out to get to them in time. this was inspired by the Jackson 5's "Dancing Machine." since they didn't have music videos back in the day, i based this off of one of the outfits that they wore one of those times that they performed this song (can't remember which show it was exactly). they looked pretty fly, like futuristic superheroes! this piece is called "Dancin Machines" with each lady-robot doing some of the moves that Michael did. (that dude could do the robot the likes of which i've never seen!) i think my personal fav is the one on the left. it's framed and matted at 12x12. it was drawn traditionally, colored digitally, printed and the silver dots embellishments were done with a silver pen. above is the digital piece, below is a scan of it with the dots. i hope folks like it. (i hope more that i makes it to Cali in one piece instead of several.)

flustered

[listening to "speak up" by pop etc]

Doodles 1

Doodles 2

as i take a mental break from all the balls i'm currently juggling in the air, i just thought i'd share some doodles i did at the pet expo this past weekend. while the guys were extremely busy drawing over a hundred doggy caricatures during the event, i was trying to teach myself how to draw faces better. faces with more expression and variety. my studiomate Flash let me borrow this friggin amazing book called Creating Character with Personality written by Tom Bancroft. it was just the right amount of words and exactly the kind of stuff i really wanted to learn. once i read it, it was almost like a light clicked and i understood stuff. i know to most people, these doodles seem really dull and lame. but u don't understand, this is the kind of stuff i've been struggling with thanks to my non-formal learning of how to draw. i don't wanna say that my college education was a waste of time and money, but sometimes it feels just short of that. not saying that all college education is useless, just mine. =) anyways, just wanted to share it. cuz if i don't share it with anyone, its as if it never happened.

some notes on the doodles:

• in Doodle 1 - that squidy creature is the sketch for this week's ID Studios art jelly. we're supposed to create a creature and i dunno why but i seem to be focused on underwater creatures lately (as evident by my octo-pie). pretty much everyone in those doodles, with the exception of the mermaid and marilyn monroe, were people (or dogs) at the pet expo.
• in Doodle 2 - the robot-chick in the corner was the first sketch of this piece i recently did for a Girls Drawin Girls event this weekend. i'll post more of that tomorrow. and that ton-ton with luke skywalker actually started out as a really bad german shepherd doodle. guess u can say it was an epic fail as a german shepherd, but a fun alpaca/ton-ton doodle.

unrested

[listening to "thuggish ruggish bone" by bone thugs n harmony]

headin out to the Super Pet Expo in Chantilly, VA today. theFranchize & Flash are gonna be drawin puppy caricatures for folks and i get to handle the moneys. =) but before i head out, i wanted to post my finished art jelly for the week! WOOP WOOP! the other guys didn't get to finish theirs this week, but with the pet expo starting today i suppose i'll give them a little leeway.

this only took me an hour and a half to color, which is really fast considering i'm still trying to get used to these new brushes. i did lose a little sleep (hence me feeling unrested) but it was totally worth it. there's something sweet about creating a piece that came out like u pictured it in ur head. it's not sweeter than when it turns out better than what u thought, but i'll take it!

i don't really have any progression shots of this since i kinda just worked the shadows and highlights on the same layers, unlike what i usually do where i put those on separate layers from the flats. the grainy stuff was actually a very happy accident. i took a photo of the lines cuz it was tough to scan inside the sketchbook. my inability to get rid of the shadows completely caused the grainy splotches on the lineart. but it worked out cuz i turned the lines to Color Burn and it kinda just added to it. love it when stuff like that happens! i may turn this into a mini print for this con season.

productive

[listening to "mrs. sexy" by robin thicke]

this started out as just a little doodle in my sketchbook of Ariel when she was using the flower to determine if Eric loved her or not. but then the Girls Drawin Girls blog decided to make this week's theme about mermaids so i waned to try something new with the colors. since i'm not allowed to post licensed characters on that blog, i turned her into a koi mermaid instead. cuz why the heck not!

of course, when i try new things it takes me HOURS to finish something simple like this. but it's just what i gotta do. i'm never gonna get any better. so with this one, i started with the doodle out of my sketchbook and built up from that with these new brushes i got (the ones i used to color my recent Harley Quinn piece). but this is the first time i've ever completely removed my original lines and the entire thing is digitally painted. i'm trying to move in this direction but so far i'm still not comfortable with the way the wacom pen glides on the cintiq surface. practice makes perfect i guess.

busy

[listening to "personal jesus" by depeche mode]

octo-pie

well, this isn't the busiest i've ever been, by any means. but trying to keep things updated online and drawing and inking, it just seems hectic. i guess it's a good thing i multi-task fairly well.

it's another cold and rainy day today and all i wanna do is snuggle up on the couch with my dogs and nap. however, it's a short week for us since we're heading out to do a pet expo this weekend so i gotta get as much work in before then.

i have finally updated and redesigned the Identity Comics Studios website - identitycomics.com - to bring it current. a ton of stuff has happened since it was last updated in May of 2012, both in our individual lives as well as the direction the studio is headed. we have decided to bring back our art jellies. it was the jellies that brought about my Mary Jane in a venom shirt print. it's mostly to keep the members of the studio drawing for fun. we each have our own projects going on now and sometimes it can get a little frustrating drawing something we don't exactly want to draw. (not to say that we don't appreciate our projects, mind u.) in time we'll be asking folks to participate, but we can't expect others to do it if we can't do it ourselves. so we gotta show we're committed.
at any rate, it's a weekly "assignment" and we each get a week to choose the theme and then post on the ID website, as well as our own. i took the first week and i chose "a person interacting with an animal." i keep looking for excuses to draw octopi so this one is called Octo-Pie. i guess that's her name. i think she's some kind of octopus nymph (if they make those). [to see the other members' jellies, just head on over to http://identitycomics.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/jellies-are-back/] we're supposed to color these by friday. so stay tuned!!!

drab

[listening to "the winner takes it all" by abba]

sometimes a cold, windy rainy day really affects my mood. really makes me not wanna do anything. its days like today that i have to dig deep and remember that i draw for a living. sigh.
anyways, nothing too much to talk about today. so i'm just sharing a sketchcard i recently finished. this is the last of my DC New52 AP cards. i usually use my sepia copic pens and my copic markers to do these cards. then add some white colored pencil and white gel pens for shine.

glad

[listening to "can't hold us" by macklemore & ryan lewis]

 

 

 

seattle and emerald city comic con was pretty fantastical, but i sure am glad to be home. cuz there's no place like it. not to mention seattle is so gray. i don't know how folks that live there wake up every morning without being instantly blown about the day. it's just like what they tell u on tv. i think the sun came out on the last day we were there.
i don't think i've ever drawn as much in my 32 years of life than what i did this past weekend. it was pretty incredible to be associated with the fantastic artists at KaBOOM! sat with the likes of Noelle Stevenson, JAB, and Kassandra Heller to name a few. amazing ladies with amazing talents! i dare to breath their same air. still, i had tons and tons of fun despite the fact that i didn't get to see ANY part of the con cuz of how busy i was. so here are just some of the 60+ sketches i did this weekend. these were all done on the "Adventure Time with Fionna & Cake" #1 2013 Con Exclusive sketch covers.