lots of art, because I have not posted here in a good long while

One of my friends and I decided we were tired of never seeing each other's art (we are both a little bit less than adept at remembering to share our drawings) so we ended up making a pact to share with each other a sketch every single day. This has been carrying on for about two months now, and we have both drawn many things.

The latest thing we drew were these lads-- bored with the "draw whatever you want" rules, we decided to draw a private school boy every day for a week. Here are mine, all finished up:

And many more sketches, some decently alright, some rather terrible:

I have been drawing many faces (all with disproportionately small eyes) on the cardstock backs of my sketchbooks.

My friend requested I draw this one directly after I complained about how much I hated drawing hair.

I scanned each step on the drawing of this-- I ended up not really liking the final outcome, but I put enough work into it that now I must post it everywhere.

The above four were all experiments with oddly colored lineart-- I have now decided that bright pink lineart is my favorite lineart. It is so much fun to work with.

I drew this for a friend. I've recently discovered that blue ballpoint pen is extremely fun to draw with.

I also love my sepia brush pens. And drawing siblings.

Someone I knew needed some cheer-- original characters dressed as the Tenth Doctor always does the trick!

This is a character study for a kid in my graphic novel comic thing-- he might be my favorite character. He's taken me a long time to figure out, but he's now very fun to draw. 

I have been on a bit of a mythology kick, here's a gorgon lady. Snake hair is a ton of fun.

Watercolor paint is not my forte, but it is fun to use.

redraws of ancient cave scribbles

 The above three pictures are all various stages my comic project takes-- costume design and thumbnails, to be specific. Costume design has been terrifying. Picking out clothing is really hard, and then you have to remember crazy stuff like which side of the coat has buttons and which shoulder the backpack is on and what kind of collar the shirt has.

more doodles for more friends.

Another friend asked me to draw her a piratey woman, and I cheerfully obliged.

Superhero designs for a random story. Also, newscasters.

More superhero designs. (Actually, the skinny kid ended up being a super villain. I love stories with super people.)

That's about it, I suppose! Pretty much everything I've drawn in the past few months. And now I can stop feeling guilty about not posting here. :)

art stuff

Page one. The typography is terrible. A lot of stuff is kind of terrible. I'm learning.

A few settings. Sometimes I get really into settings, and sometimes I just draw a random green blob because I can't be bothered to even try making a couch.

oh yes, I suppose I forgot to mention...

sand colored sea crab
nervous eyes perched on long stalks
small legs scuttling

salt coating lips, face-
hair dries into crunchy spikes
spit out the brine taste


In other words, last week we moved to the beach.

And now I spend every day sitting on a towel by the ocean.

I have named our new house... okay, I dunno yet. I'll decide after I've unpacked.

alpha beta gamma delta etc etc

I took a Greek alphabet class for about an hour and a half over the internet tonight. It was fascinating. I was fascinated.

Not so much by the wonders of the Greek alphabet, which was admittedly fairly cool, but more just by the wonders of technology that made it totally doable for 50 different kids from around the world sit around in their rooms or whatever taking a class from the same teacher and still being able to ask and answer questions.

Yeah, it was fascinating.

Also the Greek alphabet is hard to write. Why did they have to make all their letters weird, complicated squiggly lines and going all over the place?

Anyways, technology and foreign languages are just pretty much beyond me.

(Bye the way, I'm typing this all on my newly fixed laptop. The one that was sitting under my bed for over two years because I just cannot control machines and I decided I hated it.)

adventures in graphic noveling

For those of you who maybe didn't hear, this New Years I resolved to write and illustrate an entire graphic novel/webcomic type thing.

It has been a crazy lot amount of fun so far. I've only done one page all the way, although I've almost finished page 2, sketched pages 3-5, have the paneling planned up to page 10, and have everything up to the third chapter scripted, and have almost the entire plot finished.

I do still have an awful lot of kinks to work out. For example, how to speech bubbles work? what about font? And drawing with a mouse is a bit stressful.

oh, a comment!

Zoe said...

Your comparisons are so cool - the ones where you compare the same drawing from different years. I just love to see how your style has changed. And the expressions, too! They keep getting more and more defined! 

First off, thanks, Zoe! Second of all, those comparisons are the most fun things to do, ever. I knew that one day it'd be handy to have all of my old drawing lying around my room. :D

YAY

I surpassed my 27,000 April word goal with a grand total of 27,032  (admittedly not very skillfully written) words and went on to ecstatically print out my finished 115-page-long first draft yesterday morning.

In other words, HALLELUJAH. I can get onto phase two now!

(and begin planning my November novel, ha.)
 

Also I drew this clothing reference for one of my characters in an online art group-- I have continued my drawing and procrastinating since April began. I really had honestly forgotten how wonderful I am at procrastinating when I'm supposed to be doing something else. I've managed to get myself hooked on a new TV show, doodled constantly, and learned to cook.

(Speaking of learning to cook, I'm still very bad at it, but that's okay. Maybe I'll post some of the things I've learned up someday-- I figured out how to make baking powder, sautee stuff, even get the onions so they don't make you cry. Hint: don't watch Doctor Who while chopping those things.)

Also, I think that's it.

I can't wait to begin editing my truly atrocious novel! No, really. I' going to give it a few days to sit, but then I'm taking a red pen to it. Hahahaha.
I can't wait.

and bye the way

Since I desperately need to write my NaNoWriMo novel this month, all my drawing (read: procrastinating) skills came back with a vengeance. Le sigh.

NaNoWriMo... again

So there's this thing called Camp NaNoWriMo... which is basically NaNoWriMo, only during April and July.

And of course I'm doing it.

 So far I'm on track! (Sort of? not meeting my personal word goals, but at least not officially behind.)I'm finishing my November novel, which I didn't finish as far as plot goes.

Motivational sketch. Read the "write you fool" part in Gandalf's voice.

Oh, speaking of sketching--I just got my arting abilities back! I can hold a pencil again! Hallelujah.just in time to help me procrastinate.

...don't mind me, I'm giving my fish a new pond. (see side bar, heh.)

Random interesting words:

"waveson" --goods floating on the sea after a shipwreck
"whangam" --an imaginary animal
"woodshedding" --spontaneous barbershop singing

When I figure out how to use these in an actual sentence, I'll let you know. 

still trying to kill my art block

I have now graduated myself to quick scetchy paintshop-painting pieces. Basically: I'm bored so I color sketches super fast and don't really care how it looks.

Most of the time while drawing these (I've got a few more about halfway colored) I just hum Dory's "just keep swimming!" song from Finding Nemo. yep, I've gone pretty wonky.

Also, spell check doesn't believe that "Nemo" is a real word and wants me to change it to "anemone". Random fact.

OH LOOK, I DREW STUFF

My latest attempt at vanquishing my art block (yes, I'm still incapable of drawing. sigh.) has been to spend hours drawing lineart in Paintshop Pro. I'm getting very sick of it, which is the basic idea. I figure once I literally can't stand this anymore, I'll be so relieved to pick up my pencils again it won't matter what I draw. XD

On a (slightly unrelated) note, I've decided to do camp NanoWriMo, which begins in April. Basically, it's NaNoWriMo, only with more flexible word counts. i'm planning to do 25,000 this round.  The above characters are all part of my plot.