Skizzenblog

Such a comfortable goddamn hoodie, too.

I could have sworn I blogged about this before, but  I didn’t. Fail me.

So, who remembers cthulhu cupcakes? Well, they now exist in both Tshirt AND hoodie form, immortalized in all their non-euclidean glory.

As part of my internship, the lovely people of Prism Sportswear gave me the opportunity to design and print my own Tshirt. I agonized over what to do for a while, not wanting to do art of anything that might give me copyright issues and so on. Eventually, I settled on The Cupcake.

I drew up the art in illustrator. Then I did the color separations, printed the films, and even burned the screens myself! (With the help of Mr. Printer Expert, Hank.) I did most of the actual printing, too, and holy crap, they look amazing. I made some regular tshirts, a ringer tshirt, and this hoodie, which because of the color contrast, is my favorite.

I’m kind of still working out where to go from here. I loved the process, I LOVE seeing the finished product- seriously, I can’t get over how great they look. But I’m at a loss as far as selling shirts, which is what I ultimately want to do. I definitely want to hit up some conventions or something, maybe not with this design (or maybe with!) but beyond that.. it’s just new territory. But it’s exciting!

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The Guilt Monster hit me yesterday, and would not be satisfied until I cleaned all the things, baked some (more) donut muffins, and made some art. So, I made some art.

As I do pretty much any time I “need” to make art but don’t have any ideas (and don’t want to do World of Warcraft Fanart..) I dug around the internets for some kind of reference image. Truth be told, I was looking for some interestingly hot woman to draw, but even after I passed up the image that inspired this illustration, I just sort of.. kept giggling about that old lady and her glasses.

So, here we are. First time I’ve really done an illustration like this I think. I spent so long totally avoiding/hating line (influence of my chiaroscuro obsessed high school art teacher, I tell ya) and yet.. I really like this a lot. I’ll definitely do more of these (eventually.)

Anyway, thanks to Thomas Hawk on Flickr for taking such a neat photo and offering it under creative commons! (PS: I just read about his $2 portraits project under that photo, and it is really cool. Check it out!)

Ahh, less than a week into playing World of Warcraft again and I’m already doing fanart. I can’t help myself!

This is one of my many alts, my draenei shaman Mounanchou. She’s only level 52, and yet somehow manages to look TOTALLY AWESOME. First colored fantasy art I’ve done in .. a really long time, failed paintings from that painting class aside.

That boy looks like a neckless turtle-child.

I haven’t been posting a lot of art, but believe me, I’ve been making it!

First of all, there’s the dailybean, which I tweet every day. Well, I draw one FOR every day.. I haven’t been spectacular about doing it daily, per se. Anyway, if you don’t have a twitter, you can always check the above link every few days for beany silliness.

I’ve also been interning at Prism Sportswear, which has been basically the best thing ever. I love it. I get to make a ton of art for real clients. This stuff ends up on Tshirts that people BUY. And WEAR!

The drawing on the left is one of the more exciting illustrations I’ve done at Prism. Technically the shirt was one color, and I’m not even 100% sure that this got used, but I really enjoyed drawing it. I love drawing kids.

Tee hee, butt!

I still really really wanted to do a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, but none of my books had a good image with a naked lady. So I did some naked guys, instead. This is a very tiny excerpt from the very enormous The Fall of the Damned, which must - wow - be really intense in person. (The figures I did are from the left/middle.)

This time, it’s all watercolor. I’m much less comfortable doing stuff like this with watercolor than I am with watercolor pencil, I think in part because I’m just more comfortable with drawing. But I didn’t even do a sketch for these, I went straight to paint. (Well, I made light outlines with paint.)

Anyway, I’m super happy with most of this. Working on it, I realized one huge strength of the moleskine watercolor paper- it’s super easy to pick watercolor pigment back up off of it and bring back highlights. Really useful for getting muscle detail in the back.

My sister calls him "Star Trek Santa."

I don’t really tend to get into the “Holiday Spirit”, but I do like making cards. This is the front of the Christmas card I made for my extended family this year.

Actually what I wound up doing was making a combination Christmas card / ornament. This was the front, and inside I had another one glued to thicker board and cutout, with a loop of embroidery floss tied at the top.  I saved the board I cut the shape from, so I could press it back into place and give it a little frame to sit in before the card was opened.

It would probably make more sense with a photo, but I don’t have one! SO SUCK IT. And I hope you had a lovely holiday season.

Yes, that's yours truly having a breakdown in the back of the bus with the cereal. True story!

Long time no post. Fail, I know. I’ve been busy with school, making art I don’t like.

But here’s some art I DO like!

Our assignment was to make a “self-promotional piece” - so basically, anything we wanted. I HATE assignments like that. There are so many things I like to do, I’m still learning what I really enjoy focusing on.

I wound up deciding to channel the dailybean a little. I was pretty pleased with how the flat colors / digital linework were coming together over the summer, and while the drawing style is very natural to me, I don’t actually have much of it in my portfolio. So, it made sense to fill it out with this self-promo piece.

I also realized that I definitely enjoy “autobiographical” illustrations- I think I can imbue them with a sense of heart and humor I can’t manage as well when I’m inventing things out of thin air.

So, anyway, this is what it’s like to ride the bus in Milwaukee!

Cthulhu finds strength in numbers.

A bunch of my friends and I got together last night and made a double-batch of cthulhu cupcakes for Halloween. Minor change- this time we went with skittles for the eyes. I think it works better, certainly more delicious. (more…)

Imma do that for free! Twice!

So, remember when I posted that contest entry a few days back?

TURNS OUT I WON THIRD PLACE!

I didn’t think I’d find out anything for at least a few weeks, but not only did I qualify, I landed third place! That means I win two round trip plane tickets (for visiting Mr. Boyfriendman!) and some serious pride points.

Apparently, right now the art is up in the Milwaukee Art Museum, and then later it will be moved to a gallery at General Mitchell Airport! I’ll be heading over to look at the other entries as soon as I can.

Syrup was on the table this morning to go with PANCAKE MUFFINS.

Last week I got my hot little hands on a shiny new tablet laptop! It’s part of HP’s tx2000 series, and I love it. Lots.

Part of why I wanted it was to use as a digital sketchbook. I like drawing from life, and especially working in color from life, but I hate wrinkling up sketchbook pages and lugging around color media. So, this is a perfect solution- I have a near infinite set of tools and colors, packed into a light  portable frame.

I’ve tried sketching in a few different programs so far. Photoshop is a little too laggy, Painter Essentials is alright, but so far, my favorite?

A little thing called Artrage. (more…)