Drawn just after that last Shaintar comic. A random bear, a sketch of Polly smoking, and a random cartoony chick who unfortunately doesn’t have a proper face. Poor girl.

A bit of a sketch page filled with little mice sketches, since a good friend of mine asked me for some. Unfortunately mice are terribly hard for me to draw (they don’t have boooones! Or… don’t look like they have bones…), so these aren’t all that nice. Still… mice. Oh, and some ladies too.

A close-up of the woman in the last page. I liked her a lot. Sometimes I have to remind myself that, yes, I can draw semi-human looking things. I still have to practice noses, though.

Aaaand some puppy sketches. There were done without any references (can’t you tell?), and are for that project I’m working on to do a series of dog/cat breeds on postcards with watercolour. That corgi is actually the next card and is all transferred and inked; I just have to finish painting it. Man, I need to start practising canines again… And cats. Yuck. My problem with cats is the same as with mice; they’re like bags of jelly or something, and for some reason that’s really hard for me to draw!

A quick sketch of a girl I saw… somewhere. Didn’t end up looking anything like her, but I liked the sketch.

Just a very small and silly little self-portrait.

And last but not least for now, some fanart of T.O.E. and Rice Boy from the comic Rice Boy. It’s such an absolutely excellent comic, one that I own in real life now thanks to my awesome sweetie. You won’t regret reading it, it’s one of the best webcomics I’ve read yet, and in such an interesting, original world…

Right, now some sketches for my illustrations for the Open Game Table project:

And:

These are illustrations for a couple articles in the up-coming book. I’m currently in the middle of inking them. The OGT is a really neat project, I’m glad I’ve had the chance to be a part of it; I just hope I can get these done on time, yargh!

Anyway, yes, that’s it for now. I haven’t really been drawing much, despite my best efforts; things have been rather hectic. As always, I hope to do some more drawing soon; we’ll see what happens. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Oh gosh, I forgot to post this one!

Drawn at the local burger place (Moderne Burger; mmm) on their oh-so-handy blank white paper place mats. Suggested by Dennis, who has all the best suggestions. He also suggested a whole series of sketches of strange people with appropriate dog breeds as noses, which, who knows, may become a reality on future visits? Hehehe.

I love the weird stuff the most.

Yay, Shaintar! This was a (couple) scene(s) from our game session two nights ago. It was interesting to see how each of our different characters reacted to the news that four aggro’d Camonere soldiers were closing on our position thanks to an anonymous tip that some Pro-Light misfits were lurking around. But still, I think Nigel’s character sitting down the two remaining soldiers and managing to convert them to the Light while the other two of us were being chased up and down the city… so rad. He totally wins.

Who said being a Priest/Monk/Paladin/Holy Man was uncool?

And the bread/pastries thing… well, this whole mess started because we decided we wanted pastries. We went into a local Bakery (well, Lii didn’t… she has some issues with bakeries and baked goods in general) and Norwick thought he’d take that opportunity to ask the locals about the person we were trying to find. They’re the ones that tipped the local fuzz off. And after we paid them for their pastries, too! Bastards.

Right, this was a lot of fun to draw. I think I might have screwed up everyone’s likenesses a bit, but I’m still trying to get used to that. It would help if I had a simple comic style, but I think I’m stuck with this for now. Anyway, let me know what you think! Do you like my gaming comics? I know they’re rather obscure systems/characters/settings and things, but I still like them a lot. Let me know if you have any suggestions for how I can get better!

Drawn first with blue mechanical pencil, inked, scanned, and removed the blue lines in Photoshop CS. It took about 2 hours to finish; just under one hour to plan it and draw it, a bit of a break, then the rest of the time to ink.

I’m not sure if I ever really explained who Creature is on this journal… so let me do that really quick.

Creature is a weird canine-ish animal thing that I drew a lot when I was a kid, mostly in highschool. Actually, he first started out as more of a demon-ish thing, as is evident in the first few pictures I drew of him. I hadn’t ever really had anything that I drew more than once, not even a character, but for some reason he stuck in my mind, and I ended up drawing him all the time.

I still don’t know what he is, really. I’m terrified people think of him as one of those many numerous canine-ish “fursonas” out there, or even worse, a sparkle dog. But he’s not me, nor is he an extension of who I am; he’s separate, and I just like drawing him. He doesn’t have a set personality, or any kind of a story or background. He’s just there.

Anyway, I hadn’t drawn him for ages, so I sat down tonight, opened up Photoshop, and sketched him out and coloured him in about an hour and a half. I’m trying to get used to doing these quick Photoshop drawings, and I really do think I’m getting better. I just have to work on my shading and colouring, and definitely my backgrounds as well…

Right, enough rambling. Hope you like the picture. =)

EDIT: Here’s another animated .gif layer run through. I let it linger a little on the sketch layer, since I find that the most interesting part. =) Click on the picture below to see it animate for you.

Polly the clone, working on an information console. Hacking is what she does best. =)

A page showing some sketches of d7’s character, Mercy Junius. And a small sketch of Polly too. =)

Tali’Zorah nar Rayyah (damn, forgot the “h” in the picture) from Mass Effect. I’m currently addicted to that game. Drawn using references from Creative Uncut (specifically this one). I haven’t done a detailed ink picture in ages, so this was tonnes of fun to do.

I hadn’t drawn a dragon in a while. I love dragons. I also love muscles. Some day I’ll learn how to draw both properly. Inked with a brush pen.

Was going to be a picture of a Brinchie character from our Shaintar game, ended up turning into a referenceless body study. I really need to do more figure drawing, oi.

A page of Bambi deer (drawn from references on the official model sheets, with the bottom one being from my own head so-to-speak) and a southern belle. We were watching “Little Women” on Christmas, and the dresses were itching at me to be drawn.

And Dennis suggested “A person lying in snow” as a drawing prompt, and it turned into this. I’m planning on playing around with it in Photoshop to see what I can make of it. Rushed and crappy inking job ftw!

Right, that’s all I’ve got so far. Hope you all had a lovely holiday, and I wish you all the best for the coming New Year! Thanks for reading. =)

I’ve been doing a few fun things here and there throughout the last couple of weeks. Been doing school stuff, which is fun, been doing some silly web-building/designing projects at home wherin I make a complete fool of myself and multiple others for the glory of another (you’ll hear about that shortly!), been helping a friend move, and watching numerous silly Disney shorts (mostly Donald Duck because he’s mah faaavee) on Youtube around also trying to keep up with my blogroll on Google Reader and devART to boot.

But really, it’s mostly school and working on the weekends that’s been taking up all of my time. I get, if I’m lucky, one day a week to myself that doesn’t involve either of the two, and usually I try to spend it socializing, which leaves little room for anything else!

But, I have been getting a couple little art-y things done, so I thought I’d share them. First, the ones that are a part of that website project I was hinting at…

So I was chatting a couple weeks ago with Losmios, aka. Mia and one silly comment lead to another until I was in the midst of coding up an ultra silly fan page for her (Beware!! That link is poison for the eyes!). I ended up working on it for about three or four days straight over my weekend until I was literally being kept awake at night due to crazy coding dreams. I decided to take a bit of a break from it, which I am still in just because I haven’t found the chance to get back to it. I hope everyone that wanted to contribute hasn’t grown bored of it too in my absence…

Anyway, other than doing the website and all the coding and everything I also wanted to contribute some Mia fan art, so I sketched up a couple of things. Here’s the first:

This intellectual piece of work was sketched directly in Photoshop CS and coloured in about an hour and a half. Because I’m all slow and out of practice with Photoshop stuff, hehe! Also, I was having issues with the pressure sensitivity on my tablet, which I still have to go and fix…

Anyway, yes, that was one of my oh-so awesome tributes to Mia. Here’s the second, which is in decidedly worse taste:

Oh joy. The quality is overwhelming me.

This one was done with markers and watercolour. Yes. and I deliberately tried to make it look bad, though I’m sure I could have done a worse job if I tried. I did too good a job of staying in the lines. It’s a hard habit to break!!

Yes. So those were done last week. Since then I haven’t done much by way of drawing, usually just the odd scribble here and there that I don’t like and don’t really want to share. =) But today the awe-inspiring Michael Sporn uploaded some original Bambi storyboards and model sheets and I just about died from happiness. I have previously attempted to draw Bambi on a few occasions in the past, but never have I had such beautiful references. So tonight I sat down and tried my hand at drawing baby Bambi.

These sketches are a mixture of direct reference to get the form figured out, and attempting my own poses. I’m sure you can tell which are which.

I could use more practice, and even now I’m feeling an urge to get back to it. I just wish I had more creativity in terms of poses to draw from! I’m seeing even now that the urge to make his legs shorter/more proportional in real world terms is great, I really have to fight that and stick to the proportions on the model sheet. Also, I tend to make him too stiff; I need to loosen up, though that’s been the trend in my artwork for a while. Always too stiff! Hehe!

Sketching Bambi is a delight, though. Not only is he outrageously cute, but he also has those beautiful, long, thin legs that I absolutely adore. The rhythm, angles and negative spaces made by thin and spindly legs has always been like crack to me, which I love to explore. Hmm, maybe I should get back to sketching. One page is hardly enough!

They were drawn with blue pencil, by the way, but I tinted them in Photoshop in order to make them more visible. I’ll have to experiment with drawing him in other media. Maybe a darker, softer lead might be fun to try… or even brush pen when I get a little more confidant!

Anyway, go explore Michael Sporn’s splog; he has tags for his stuff, here’s the one for his model sheets. They make me squee with joy! Oh, if only I could draw like the Disney animators of old…

Right, I’m off to sketch. =) Turrah!

The first were some sketches I drew while waiting for a recent The Gruff concert to start (check them out; they rock. Seriously). The starting time for the concert advertised on all their posters turned out to be a little optimistic; they started about an hour and a half later than they said. I finished reading a book and sketched these in that time.

This was a day or two after I drew those Donald Duck sketches in my last post, so the ones on this page are a couple I sketched up from memory. I should have done more people drawing; the one of the girl in the hat and striped shirt was interesting. A guy sitting in a table behind me tapped me on the shoulder between songs, saying he had watched me draw it and thought it was awesome. At the end of the show the girl got up and left, but a couple minutes later came back and said “Hey, I heard you drew a picture of me!” Word gets around… haha! I showed her the picture and she really liked it. She told me her name was Melissa. So there you go. =)

Next we’ve got… urm… a couple portrait-y pictures of me. I stumbled across Thundercake’s Time Warp Art Meme and thought it would be fun to try! I’m still not pleased with my drawings/portraits of me, though, even if these were the results after a couple failed attempts… anyway, here’s the one of me from highschool:

Like everybody on devART it seems, I wore baggy clothes and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Well, half the people on DA looked like this when they were teens; the other half were goth. Hahaha, I kid. No, seriously, take a look for yourselves, it’s rather scary.

Anyway, this is a pretty accurate representation of me from the middle of highschool; my ugly fleece “Reckless” hat, my old, threadbare thrice hand-me-down’ed Adidas jacket, a baggy sweatshirt, hand-me-down’ed jeans with holes in the knees, an old backpack filled with freaking EVERYTHING and weighed seriously about twenty-odd pounds or more, my poor old clarinet, my cheap Saan-store bought boots that were the most comfortable things on the planet… yeah. I look rather… high or something in this sketch, but I just wanted to illustrate how sleep deprived I was, spending all hours of the early morning online rather than getting the much needed sleep a 15-year old needs.

Anyway, this isn’t the first time I’ve revisited my old self, but it could be called either a) the most honest, or b) the most pessimistic/critical. Not too fond of the drawing or the style, but I really found it difficult to loosen up and do anything more cartoony. I want to tackle it again soon.

Right, now for present day (aka. 21 years):

Skinny as all hell (like I was in highschool, but it’s more noticeable now due to not-so-baggy clothes), my Union Jack hat, black zip-up sweater (I seriously wear this thing EVERYWHERE), my brown cargo pants (sadly now nearing the end of their lifespan, though I wish to replace them), sandals, geeky t-shirts, my little hand bag that was made in Thailand (fair trade, ftw)… yeah. I’m more boring now, I think, haha. You can tell my hair hasn’t changed a bit. Still trying to pluck up the courage to do something more interesting with it.

Like I said, I’m not all that pleased with these two drawings; I’d like them to be more stylized, more positive and silly. I need to work on that. For now, though, my best model is myself, so I’ll probably be doing more of these sketches until I come up with something I like well enough to post.

Now for some watercolour ACTION!

Warning: The following image will completely kill the souls to anyone who has any affinity or love for watercolour whatsoever. It is not good, it’s not even interesting in that “Huh, that’s, um… interesting” kind of way. It’s terrible. But it’s “art”, so I am obliged to post it…

Using my cheap watercolours, cheap watercolour paper, and cheap brushes I came up with this!! Ta-daaa! Yay, giraffes! I just figured, you know, I have all these watercolour things sitting around, but I never use them, even though I keep telling myself to. So how do I fix that? I use them, of course! Even if it’s with terrible things like this!

Still… he’s kind of grown on me. He kills the eyes, but…. maybe he’s cute?

Did a wet “wash” for the background, completely soaked the not-stretched paper, hence the buckling. Used salt and paper towels to add texture; not sure why I needed to add texture to the freaking sky, but there you go. Did a “shadow” layer in blue on the giraffe; should have chosen a different colour, like purple, so he didn’t melt into the background so much. Went over the shadows with a yellow-y wash which made him look rather green, then went over him again with a wet-on-dry technique for the brown spots and details. I have no idea what the heck I’m doing, but it was fun.

Right, I have school tomorrow (yippee!) so I must head to bed. Thanks for looking!

Anyway, when we started playing, I hyped up Turdrick’s racism to an absolutely ridiculous level. Not only did he refuse to drink ale (it made you stink like a dwarf), and figured that all elves were homosexuals and had “relationships” with trees (“It’s unnatural!”), but he also exclaimed loudly, and was absolutely adamant, that all halflings were crackheads; that their tendency to be employed in the theif and rogue classes were so they could make quick cash to feed their drug habits, and that their short stature was due to stunted growth on account of malnutrition associated with their addictions. Oh yes, Turdrick Wankersmith was living up to his name.

So while we were playing and trying to figure out the mechanics of the game I sat down and sketched out our characters. Here’s what I came up with.

Here Turdrick is undoubtably whispering something else bigoted and outrageously inappropriate to Alan, possibly about the parental heritage of the barkeeper or something. It was a lot of fun to draw, I enjoyed making them look silly, and drawing the expressions on their faces. =)

Drawn with 0.7 blue lead (clicker pencil-wise) and both a .5 and a .01 micron pen to ink.

I can’t wait to play more HackMaster, it seemed to be just the right mix of silly and beating things up to make it almost the perfect “just for fun” game for me. I’d like to draw more funny and ridiculous characters like this, they’re so relaxing, because you don’t have to be perfect by all means. =) Roleplaying has always been such a big inspiration for my art; I first got into art on the internet looking up fantasy/roleplaying stuff with my sister when she used to play a lot of D&D. Maybe I’ll turn to this kind of thing more often when I’m finding it difficult to find inspiration.

Right, enough of the roleplaying gush. Now I’m going to go… do some laundry. Yes. Then… um… watch Star Trek? Oh, no, I’m not a nerd, honestly! I just pretend to be one very well.

Right, first we have a random sketch page (there are a couple of these in this post!):

I’ve been trying to work on my cartoony stuff, especially cartoony representations of myself and my friends. I’ve been reading a lot of webcomics and watching a lot of really awesome cartoony artists and the want to be able to do that kind of cartoony stuff for myself is overwhelming! So here I tried a couple versions of “me” (both none too great), one of another friend of mine, d7,  and then a couple random sketches (bleeechh). Oh, and the stereotypical French Guy (or Zombie Mime, as Dennis likes to call him). I like him a lot.

While waiting for a class to start I pulled out my sketchbook and my brush pen and sketched out a phoenix-looking bird-thing. I think it’s kinda pretty. Wings are all screwed up though, haha; I think I have the feathers on backwards.

Then I went to the Mission Folk Music Festival. We go every year, and every time I bring my sketchbook with me hoping to find interesting people and things to sketch. Past years have been nice and prolific on that front, but this year was a little… dry. Anyway, here’s what I came up with.

#1: Ancient Maple Tree:

Right next to the audience area by the main stage in Heritage Park is a beautiful old Maple Tree. While sitting around during performances, I decided to do some sketching of it. Didn’t do it any kind of justice, but I don’t mind the sketch, either. =) Done with my brush pen; quick, and expressive.

#2: Terrifying Baby Sketches:

I did some sketches of my friends’ son. Trust me, he isn’t this scary in real life. Actually, he’s really goddamn adorable. But anyway… yeah. Kids are hard to draw.

#3: Ziggy!!

On the second day of the festival a huge thunder storm came through and shut the whole thing down. Rather than weather it out in our tent, we went and stayed at the parent’s place of one of my friends. They had an absolutely adorable old wire-haired jack russell terrier named Ziggy. I did a couple sketches of her, but I left my favourite there to give to the parents when they got back, and didn’t take a picture of it. Here’s the second one I did. She was so much fun to sketch; so scruffy. =)

#6: *sigh* More Hitler…

Trust me. Despite how it may seem, I do not have a secret fondness for Hitler. I loathe him just as much as the next well-adjusted (that is: sane) and well-educated person. Yet I seem to be drawing him a lot lately. Why? Because my friends keep suggesting to me humourous situations in which to make fun of him when I ask for drawing prompts. Here’s another one. When I asked for prompts, someone suggested “a horse!” and someone else suggested “a fish!” And then they put those together and said: “A horse and a fish having tea!” And then a third friend came up and said “…with Hitler!” *sigh* So, here you go. I wasn’t going to share this because it sucks ass and it’s not going anywhere, but ah well…

I can’t draw fish. =(

So that was the extent of what I drew the three days I was at the Folk Fest. Here’s what I drew afterwards:

I was thinking more about that want to draw cartoony stuff, and was also thinking a lot about my sweetie, so I sat down and doodled this out. It actually made me feel a little nervous, because I’ve never really drawn anything lovey-dovey before, and wasn’t sure if I was being inappropriate. So I waited until I could show it to Dennis before I scanned it. I forgot I left it open on my bed though, so when Dennis came over he saw it and immediately exclaimed “Oh my god, I love it!” So… yay!

There’s a lot wrong with it; I drew it late at night when I was exhausted but too hot to sleep (freaking heat wave!), so there are lines that go everywhere, stupid mistakes, really sloppy inking… but ah well. It’s cute. And that’s all that matters.

Right, one more thing I wanted to show off. My doodle pages at the back of my Latin American Studies notebook:

All right! So… we’ve got some Wilmer the Anteater, robots, bratty kids, mermaids, copious amounts of ugly people… these have been slowly filling my book for the past three months or so, hehe.

When I showed these to Dennis he turned to me and said: “You know, you’re really good at drawing ugly people.” Looking these over I think he’s right, haha. Ugly people are just so much fun; you can play around with weird shapes and facial features, cover them up with wrinkles, jowls, big noses, knobbly bones, bald heads, big ears… it’s so much fun, and so much more expressive than trying to make everything conform to some crazy standard of beauty where the fewer the lines the more “beautiful” it is. That’s boring to me.

So… yeah. That’s all I’ve got right now. I have plans to go have a shower and then retreat to a cafe round-abouts to surf the webs and sketch, so that should be fun. A better way of spending the day than sitting at home surfing the webs and being boring… hehe. Have a good long weekend, my fellow British Columbians!

All right, let’s get started. #1 on our list: Crazy Star Trek fanart and other randomness!

All right! Shake it, Riker! *cough* I think some explanations are in order… my friends and I have been watching a lot of Star Trek: TNG lately. And I mean a lot. And obviously one of my friends found the links to the Jandrew Edits… and now I have a couple more life-long scars. Anyway! That’s where the disapproving Klingon comes from. And the scary “dancing” Riker. Yup. I swear. The rest? I have no clue. Hey, let’s have a close-up of the Klingon dude!

There, that’s better. This guy was drawn from memory; Here’s a picture of the actual disapproving Klingon.*shiver*

Okay, moving on! #2, more Star Trek crap:

That there is a portrait of Captain Heather of the U.S.S. Enterprise. She’s probably staring critically at young Ensign Crusher right now and thinking: “I’m gonna kill that kid. I’m gonna kill him.” Ah, adolescent fan-fiction… We also have a pygmy jerboa, and a beet being chased by a potato peeler, suggested by Dennis. I love Dennis.

#3! A couple girls.

I’ve been inspired by some awesome cartoony artists such as Kt Shy and feeling woefully incompetent at the whole fashionable cartoony women thing.  Not getting too far, but hey, practice.

# 4! Cartoony Portraits!

Dennis is such a unique looking person. So here I am attempting to make him look less unique through cartoons. A few different attempts, still not there; man, I wish I had awesome rad cartoon skillz. Like Aido. *sigh* There are also attempts at cartooning myself, but again, need practice.

Right! Next, #5 and #6, are Matrix-y!

Right! So, a looooong time ago I drew myself as a Matrix character. After showing this to Dennis recently we began talking about what he might look like if he existed in the Matrix; and then I visited friends and it’s spread to them too. Here we have Dennis and d7; both of which are unfinished. I’m more satisfied with Dennis’ than d7’s; I’ll probably redo his at some point. Either way, you other guys need to send me ideas for your Matrix versions; I’m looking at you, Darthmaus and Dabrota! Oh, and can you brainstorm Ben’s too? I’ll have to ask some other friends as well…

Right. Now, here’s where it gets good! #7: Six-headed Giraffe Hydra!!

This is another Dennis-ism. While hanging out with friends (and after drawing the Matrix!d7) I asked for some silly suggestions for a drawing and Dennis suggested a “six-headed hydra giraffe.” Here we go. I love silly suggestions.

Talking about silly; are you ready for this? Here we go! The pièce de résistance! #8: Hitler. On rollerskates. Being chased by a rhinoceros.

I freaking love you, Dennis. You guys have no idea how much fun I had drawing this. I think the proudest moment of my life was finishing this sketch.

Right. That was so liberating. Now I’m going to bugger off and go play some Sims 3; or watch some Star Trek: TNG. Or draw som’more. Hot damn, I love my life.

So when I pulled out one of my pens the other week and started randomly sketching on a whim, I was very excited when I actually managed to draw something. Something other than a mess of confused and irritated scribbles! Yay!

So here is the result of that sketch fest that lasted about a half-hour:

No references, and certainly no ideas. Just random sketching. Had some issues with the character in the lower left corner, as you can see; I have a tendency to deface the sketches I immediately hate. The horse at the bottom of the page and the figure with it’s back towards the viewer on the right were contour line drawings; drawn with a single line, without lifting my pen. I thought it would be fun!

Here’s my favourite part:

Creature. =)

A day later I did a second page:

I used a reference picture from DeviantART for that eye there, but I have since lost the link to it and my searches are turning up nothing. How unprofessional of me.

The mermaid was a remix from an old design of mermaid I used to draw constantly when I was fourteen. I must say, they’ve gotten a lot creepier since then!

My favourite part:

I really do enjoy drawing with ink. There’s something so beautiful about a single line, and being forced to use what you put down without the ability to erase. The drawings seem so much purer somehow, and it’s always fun to add more and more detail. They come out looking so delicate, and it really helps to teach you how to steady your hands.

Next we have a drawing of a horse I sketched with blue col-erase pencil a couple months ago. I inlcude this because I am known for drawing horses, and I thought I’d show people the fruits of my labour in all things equine from the past year or so:

‘Eh. Could be better. I’ve fallen behind a lot in my quest to be better at drawing equines, though I hope to try and pick it back up again! I have done better than this, and I want to get back to that.

Next is what I came up with yesterday, after watching “Enchanted” and “Mary Poppins” and being inspired by memories from my youth spent incessantly rewinding VHS tapes in front of the TV. Didn’t draw anything reminiscent of my youth, or anything really pertaining to the movies (except for a bad cartoony bust of Mary Poppins), but I’m glad I had the drive and the patience to draw anything at all!

I apologise for the vulgar language- er, actually, no I don’t. I’m actually quite proud of that there derierre, I’ve been trying for the longest time to catch those curves and I think I might have acheived it this time.

I love caricatures and stereotypes, and love drawing them. The lady in the center is one of my attempts at depicting a stereotype, and I’m quite proud of her. I imagine her name is Mabel, and she works in the office of an elementary school. Perhaps she brings in home-made cookies every Friday for the staff and her favourite students to munch on. I imagine she’d be the kind to play favourites, while doggedly asserting her fair nature. Hey, everyone has to have faults!

That’s it for my first sketch-dump. I promise, future entries will be smaller; at least, I hope they will be. I just wanted to share all these things at once, and see what happens.

Thanks for reading. =) We’ll see what I come up with next!