Drawings: iPad + sketches

I haven't drawn in a while so I thought it was about time! Here are a few things I doodled in my notebook with a ball point pen. I coloured them in digitally.









And this is my first sketch on the iPad. It's really fun using just my fingertips to draw.

Drawings: Randomness

Random sketches...

Drawings: Random Sketches

Same chicka, different outfit.

Drawings: Random Sketches

Some sketches I did this week. I added the colour in Photoshop.

Drawings: Random Sketches

Recently I was accepted into the group Girls Drawing Girls (http://www.girlsdrawingirls.com), which is an extremely talented bunch of female artists in the animation industry. Check out their blog, and shop. GDG's Volume III book (full of pin-up art) just went on pre-sale at a discounted price and includes a special edition print! Oh, you can also follow Girls Drawing Girls on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/girlsdrawingirls

The artists in that group are all so amazing and it makes me feel very intimidated! I haven't been drawing in a while (eep!), so I've been pushing myself to draw more. Here's some things that have spilled out of my head and onto paper:

Drawings: Custom Mug from Zazzle.com

I made this mug for my Dad's Birthday this year. :) I had it custom printed through Zazzle.com with the drawings I did of my cat Lucky. Zazzle's printing quality is pretty good, so I would definitely get any future custom mugs made through them. Oh, and my Dad likes his gift very much... infact, he's having a cup of tea in it right now! ;)

Drawings: Kittehs!

I know it's been a while, but I finally have some drawings to show (wow, really?). I've been trying to push myself to keep drawing more... for several reasons. First because I'd like to, and second (most importantly), because I've been commissioned by my brother (♥) to do some illustrations for the political campaign office he works in (pics will be posted when finished). I need to get all the ugly drawings out now so I can start drawing good stuff! So, I've been doing some life drawing of my tuxedo cat Lucky. I think pets are the perfect life drawing models because well, it's free, and they're always lying around in the cutest positions. I think cats have such a beautiful round and fluid shape. They can stretch their bodies and torque their spine into crazy shapes. I love how their ears are always listening to the sounds around them. Okay, enough babble, here are my drawings:



I originally drew them with a blue Col-Erase animation pencil (the best type of pencil to draw with, IMO), scanned them, desaturated them, and then bumped up the contrast. Cheating a little? Maybe. But I wanted them to have a nice and crisp presentation, rather than the faded blue pencil.



I have always loved drawing cats, and drawing Lucky made me remember how much fun it is. Okay, waaay off tangent, but it's time for a story: One of my favourite artists who draws/paints animals is the German Expressionist painter Franz Marc. He created amaaaazing paintings of red deer, yellow cows, blue pigs and blue horses with gorgeous round shapes and some cubist influences. This Google search shows some of his amazing paintings. I LOVED Franz Marc in high school, he was definitely one of my art heroes. I loved him so much that one of my high school projects was of two brightly coloured cats curled up sleeping on a cloud in the sky. I painted everything in bright colours. I might have that painting somewhere in storage... who knows. But the models for those sleeping cats in my projects were my kitties. Like I said before, cats are the best life drawing models! :)



When I used to draw a lot (in College), my art teachers would say that for every 100 drawings, you'll maybe get 1 that's good... or something like that. They were really strict on us (man, do I have stories!). We were taught that unless your drawing was amazing (or got an A), you might as well throw it out and do it over again. So I would throw away my sketchbooks filled with drawings that I didn't like. My Mom was completely appalled and would rescue my sketchbooks from the garbage all the time (which annoyed me greatly, lol). But it's kind of silly because I really think you need to draw bad drawings to get good ones anyways. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a part of the creative process. So now that I'm drawing again and showing my stuff without fear of criticism or bad marks (since I'm doing it for fun), well, it reminds me of my Mom rescuing the drawings I thought were not good enough. I know she'd be happy that I kept these and posted them on the internet! :)

In Progress: Two plush dolls > pics + creative process

I'm currently making two plush dolls for a special project, so I thought I'd share some in progress pics and talk about making them. :)

1) First I start out with a rough sketch of what I want to make. I already have an idea of what their personalities are like, and I try to bring that out in their expression, outfit, and overall look. My creative process is always evolving, and new decisions are made at every step that I could never have forseen with the initial sketch (later on you can see that I scrapped the dresses, and swapped the mouths).



2) Next I choose the colours and fabric I want to use. I lay everything out in an abstract kind of way to help visualize what colours go together, and what don't before I start cutting the fabric.



3) Then I cut everything out. It's hard to tell that they'll look any good at this point, lol.



4) Then I sew everything together that I can with the sewing machine (it makes my life easier!) and I start stuffing body parts.



5) Everything is sewn together! In this pic you can see that I've done a bit of handsewing already (sewn the legs on the body, sewn the hair on the heads, etc), and I've also pinned the eyes on their faces. I do this so I can start adding the smokey-eye look (with pastels and q-tips) exactly where I want before sewing the eyes overtop of the added makeup.



6-7) I hand sew the tiny collars for the dresses, and choose which buttons will suit the white-haired girl best. Then I sew their eyes on after adding eyeshadow and blush.



8 ) I think once they have smokey eyes, the dolls really start to come together and their personality starts to show. At this point I'm figuring out what type of lace I'm going to use for the ruffle collar and other lacey accents. Their heads and arms aren't attached yet... I do those last. The white-haired girl's hair buns won't be sewn on until last because her buns sit low on her head, and I need to have room to sew the ruffle collar to her neck first. The ruffle collars are then pre-sewn (so they are nice and ruffly), and ready to be attached to the bodies. In this pic I decided on pink mouths.



9-10) The dolls are both happy (and unhappy) with their new smiles, and can't wait for me to finish them! I'll be revealing their names & backstories when they're completed. :)



...To be continued...

Drawings: Random Sketches

One of my Summer goals is to try and make a serious effort to start drawing on a daily or weekly basis again (I haven't been that dedicated to drawing since College). Basically I want to keep drawing, no matter how lame the drawing looks or how uninspired I feel. I figure if I keep it up, I just might get something good out of it, and maybe I can put the good drawings into a sketchbook someday. This is what came out of my drawing session today (I haven't drawn in a while, so please bear with me...):


Dorothy & Toto
When I get some time, I'd like to clean her up & add colour to her in Photoshop. (It's not a bad crop -- I didn't have enough page to finish her toe... lol. >_>)


Rose Lady
She's just a random sketch of some lady. (The composition was completely unintentional, but I like how it turned out.)


Kittehs
Lucky (my kitty) is the tuxedo cat on the top left, Crookshanks (my parent's kitty) is on the top right (I apologize, I have no idea WTF happened -- her feet are drawn SO BADDDDD!!), and some foxy kitteh striking a pose is on the bottom.

Drawings: Superhero Chicks Part II

As promised, I have more girly superhero drawings! (I used the same colouring technique for these ones that I used in Part I.)

First I drew Harley Quinn, one of my favourite characters from Batman: The Animated Series. HQ was once the Joker's psychiatrist while he was an inmate at Arkham Asylum. Instead of curing him, she falls madly in love with him and becomes a villain herself. HQ was only supposed be in one episode, but her character was so greatly received that she was written into the rest of the series (and has her own comics and toys) and she has gained a big fan following. (I think that HQ's character was inspired by Cyndi Lauper, because her voice and bubbly personality are so similar.)



My friend Anna wanted me to draw her favourite superhero, Black Canary, so here she is! I have to admit that I didn't know anything about BC, so I had to look up her backstory and costume reference. BC fights crime in Gotham City with martial arts, and her deafening Canary Cry. I think she rocks because she fights crime in fishnet stockings!



The third drawing I did isn't a superhero, but she's still awesome. I drew Emilie Autumn, violindustrial singer-songwriter. EA is one of my favourite musicans, and I think she wears the most fabulous outfits ever! (Some of you might remember the EA doll I made for myself a few months ago -- I luff her!). I have tickets for her show in November, so I'm super excited! ^_^



I still have Poison Ivy, Batgirl and Sailor Moon in the works, so stay tuned! ^_^

Drawings: Superhero Chicks!

This week I drew two of my favourite girl superheros for fun. My plan is to take the time to draw more (like Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, etc...) I tried a new colouring technique this time. Instead of doing the flat layer of colour thing, I decided to colour them in properly. It took me much more time, but I think they look pretty good this way, especially Wonder Woman, since she's so colourful and vibrant. I tried to make my line really clean this time around, because I wasn't too happy with my messy lines in my previous drawings. (I was once a clean-up artist, so I really should try to keep my skill up.) Now that I look at them, I think they look like animation cels with that white background! Anyways, without further ado, here's:

Wonder Woman...


...and Catwoman!

Drawings: Alice and the Geisha

Sketchclub didn't have a theme this week (not that I'm good at keeping up with it anyways...), but I decided to draw my own stuff this week anyways. I always start off with a Col-Erase pencil (in this case I used the colour pink), and when I have sketched everything out, I clean-up my sketch with a blue ball-point pen. Then I did the usual thing of adding a layer of colour over top of my drawing in Photoshop. This is what I came up with:

Alice's Shock


In this scene, Alice has just fallen down the rabbit hole in pursuit of the white rabbit. She tries to go through a small door to chase after him, but she's too big. Alice drinks a shrinking potion (to get through the door), but when she's shrunk, she realizes that she's forgotten the key on the table, so she finds a piece of cake (in my case a chocolate chip cookie), takes a bite and gets bigger again. She grows way too big to get through the door and begins to cry. Her teardrops create The Pool of Tears, which whisks her through the door and off to Wonderland. (For the Alice fans, you might notice that this drawing is in homage to John Tenniel's version. ^_~) When I added the layer of blue to the drawing, I decided to add a bit of white to Alice's eyes and pink to her cheeks to really enhance her look of shock.

Sad Geisha


Okay, I have to admit it: I *love* Geisha's. I love them for their aesthetic value, and I love their dedication to their artistic lifestyle. One of my Flickr contacts (mboogiedown) is always posting absolutely gorgeous photos of authentic Geisha's (Geiko's) and Maiko's, and it's such a delight to peer into this secret world. It's really hard *not* to appreciate the beauty of these women. Geisha's wear a kimono (which can consist of over 10 layers of fabric), all held together with an obi (the large "belt" that is tied around their waist). They also wear geta (wooden sandals) which can be almost a foot high off the ground, so their body movement becomes quite limited and restrictive. However, when they do have to move around to dance, they can get quite expressive poses with simple shapes like the tilt of a head or a bent arm (like this photo or this one). I love playing around with these shapes while I'm drawing Geisha's. This drawing is also a commentary on the life of a Geisha. I will never know what it is like to dedicate my entire life to mastering the arts 24/7, but I can just imagine that you'd have to sacrifice a lot. I think there is such a beauty to Geisha's, yet I think there is an incredible sadness about them too. So, my Geisha is feeling sad as she lets beauty fall away.

I guess I have Geisha's on the mind more than usual because of the Hannari: Geisha Modern documentary premieres in the next couple of weeks.

If you would like to read more information about Geisha's, the Immortal Geisha site is great for information (for instance, did you know that the first Geisha were men?) and they have a great forum, too. If you're looking for a great read, pick up Geisha: A Life by Mineko Iwasaki, a true biography written by a real Geisha who lived in Kyoto. Her story is fascinating, and she hopes to squash the common stereotype that all Geisha are prostitutes... a stereotype that is held up as fact in the well-known Memoirs of a Geisha book by Arthur Golden. Even though the life of Sayuri is practically stolen from Golden's interview with Iwasaki, I still think it's a good book, and the movie is gorgeous.

Paintings: Zombuki sisters ♥

I recently completed these two acrylic paintings of Hanami and Ume, the Zombuki Sisters. I kept the Hanami painting for myself (because I own Hanami), and I sent the Ume painting to Brigitte (because she owns Ume. Brigitte is also the mastermind behind the Zombuki customs). A few weeks ago Hanami sauntered off to spend some time at the "Zombuki Spa", getting minor changes to her face-up. When she came back, she was even more gorgeous than I thought she could be! I was so pleased with Hanami's new changes, that I decided to make something as a thank-you for Brigitte. That's when I thought of making two paintings of the sisters. I thought it would be fun to make a set of paintings that match when they are side by side (they mirror each other, and the blue/turquoise gradation (that is hard to tell in pics) matches in the background), but they will forever be apart, just like Hanami & her sister Ume. Awww. ♥

[Hanami is on the left, Ume is on the right.]


[Strange Sisters #5, by pbrigitte]

Here are some close-up shots. It's hard to tell in these pics, but their eyes have a silvery/shiny layer of paint over them.




Here are a few in progress shots:


[First concept sketch]


[First I draw out the preliminary sketch, then I draw directly on the canvas exactly what I'll be painting. ^_^;]


[Next I just fill it in! I start painting their faces, and then their hair, and after Hanami & Ume are all painted in, I decide on the colour of the background.]


[They're almost 1/2 done in this pic. There's my reference pic of Ume, and Hanami thinks this work is very tiring, so she takes a nap. ^_^]


[And after all that painting, they're finally done!]

More pics here!