Pencil Lines

I’ve been doing a little bit more sketching, mostly thanks to the prodding of my friends. I’ve been focusing on the fun cartoony stuff, because I just can’t stop being amazed by these people that are so damn good at it. The one I’ve been fawning over recently is Chris Sanders, the guy who came up with the style and story for Lilo & Stitch. He has an adorable little webcomic called Kiskaloo, and the cute is just about killing me!

Anyway, in this first page you can see the naked chick is very much inspired by him.

Though I’m also really fond of the random heads I have up there too. I love the Inuit-esque dude, with his cute round face and pudgy cheeks! drawing him was a lot of fun. Then just to contrast I had to draw the elongated, pointy-eared elf guy. Haha, so much fun.

The inked chick with the pointy hair was done first, and Dennis said he liked her so I slapped some colour on her in photoshop:

The hair isn’t blue, by the way, it’s black; I was just remembering Archie comics and their tendency to colour the highlights in Veronica’s hair blue. Well, I guess using grey would make her look like an old lady…

And yes, the colouring is horrible, and yes, I did use the dodge/burn tool like a rabid ten-year old. What can I say, I’m lazy. I really have to kick that up and stop being such a flake. Maybe I’ll try colouring it again sometime, make it look a little less elementary.

The next page is really just a bunch of random scribbles, not much to share.

Yeah, some random people, a bad drawing of Mickey Mouse, and… omigod, the lolwut pear!!

Haha… no, I don’t know what I was on. And the biting pear (or lolwut pear) is actually the original creation of Ursula Vernon. It was originally called The Biting pear of Salamanca and was a part of her Weird Fruit series. It was just taken (or “borrowed” if you like!) by people like those from 4chan, and now it has a crazy internet life and is used for protesting scientology and all other crazy things… wow.

Anyway, I wanted to draw round, cartoony blobby things, and the biting pear was the first thing that popped into my head. I like the one of it lounging on the piano; I was going to give it a feather boa, but thought that would just look too silly. But yeah, all credit for those go to Ursula, not to me. They are stupidly fun to draw.

Right. That’s all I have to share. I do have a few other rather failed sketches of creature and stuff; trying to come up with a pose I could use on The Totem Lands. I haven’t spent much time there yet, but it looks like a lot of fun. We’ll see what happens.

Right. So I’m drawing this picture, and I’m having trouble coming up with an aspect of it. Want to help me out?

So, it’s this naked chick with a mohawk. She’s carrying a pole. There is something (or “things”) hanging from it. What are they?

When I originally started sketching her I had this vague idea of an angel with some kind of weapon, like a pike or a halberd or something. But as she progressed she changed into something much more neutral. Now she’s this lady with a mohawk, which I really like the idea of. Mohawks are usually associated with very strong stereotypes of alternative, or punk rocker types, which have their own sets of personalities and behaviours and characteristics attached to them. But here, you can’t see her studded leather wrist bands, her crazy ripped denim and fishnet arm socks. I like the idea of going to the basics, behind the stereotype, to show you that it means nothing. Just because she cut her hair a certain way, she is inundated with these stereotypes, and I wanted to convey the idea that she can, and is, anything. I really liked the calm, neutral overtones from her pose, like she really is an angelic being, but defying her own labels.

Maybe I’m thinking way too much about it, haha. But anyway, I need the pole to be something other than just a pole. Not a weapon, though. I came up with a couple ideas; one, a lantern of some sort, but I’m not sure if that conveys enough meaning. The other was maybe having some sort of semi-precious stones hanging from the ends of the poles; stones too are given arbitrary meanings and characteristics, but they too are very neutral and can be meaningful or meaningless, depending on how you use them. But now I can’t decide on the stones I want to use, so I’m all conflicted there…

Any other ideas out there? Anything would be helpful, even if it’s silly. =) I would like to work on this more, but right now I’m stumped!