The first is a gift for a good friend of mine, TheTazza, of her character Tex. Tazza is a friend of mine in my Fine Arts program, and she is an awesome person as well as a talented artist. This is her belated Christmas present.

It was drawn with nib/dip pens that my sweetie got me for Christmas. I’ve never used nib pens for inking before, so this was a real treat! I have used fountain pens before, but that was mostly playing around with caligraphy. This “dipping” thing was very new to me!

Here was a page of practice scribbles I did with it, trying out some of the dozen or so nibs that Dennis got me, before I started on the picture of Tex:

Tex himself was done with only one nib, and I only very rarely went back over a line with it. It’s amazing the amount of variation in line you can get with a nib pen, especially for someone like me who’s used to technical pens.

Right, onwards!

This is just a little unicorn I sketched back in October at the height of school insanity, just to make sure I still remembered how to sketch. I just liked some of the lines on it.

A weird Alien Dignitary or summat that I sketched a couple of months ago. I thought it looked rather neat. Originally done with blue mechanical pencil, but I tinted it in Photoshop.

This sketch was done over Christmas break at my mum’s place. I was trying to do something productive rather than just sitting around watching TV. I used a photo I found on the Flickr Commons for reference for the dress (it was over 100 years old and in the public domain; I can’t seem to find it again, hehe!). I loved the corset belt thing she was wearing; it looked so cool. I had fun inking her hair. I still need to work on noses, though.

This is a picture of Celes from FFVI that Dennis told me to draw when I was asking for ideas. I had a lot of fun with it, drawing in all the details and trying to get the pose/anatomy right. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better than I’ve done freehand for a while. F pencil, tinted again in Photoshop.

And that’s it! Hope you enjoyed. I hope to get another post up soon showcasing some of the work I did at school last semester; we’ll see how long it takes me to get around to that. Happy New Year!

Oh, yes. School happened. But really, it’s okay! It’s art school! It’s a very good thing! It just means that I’m extra busy nowadays, and I have less time and less drive to actually work on any of my own stuff outside of class. But, it does mean I have some in-school assignments and things I can show off. That’s always nice, huh?

I have already uploaded some of these to my LJ, so I apologize for cross posting for those who read both. Probably not many of you.

Read below the cut to see them. Be warned; there are lots and lots of images under here, some of them Not Safe For Work (NSFW).

Okay! We’ll start with some drawing class drawings. Self-portrait:

Contour-line drawings:

Gesture Drawing:

More contour-line:

A free-form exercise (I drew the tree shape, then this was passed around to about five other artists. This is what was given back to me!):

Negative/positive space drawings:

Contour line using negative space principles:

Right, now onto the ceramics work!

We had to make a coil pot. This is made usually by starting out with a flat base, then rolling out coils made out of clay and wrapping them around the edge and stacking more coils on top of that one. This creates the wall of the pot. Here was my pot after about 20 hour’s work:

When we were done coiling/finishing the pot, we let it harden to a rather stiff leather-hard stage, then took a metal spoon to it and polished it up, what is called “burnishing”. This closes up the pores in the clay and makes it shine. We also carved designs into it at leatherhard stage, if that’s what we wanted to do; I chose a pseudo-mesoamerican pattern. This was mine after about two to three hours of burnishing (the dark marks came from the metal rubbing off the spoon; the clay was rather hard!):

After that the pots were thrown into a kiln to bisque; or, get hot enough to harden up a little, but not fully fire. This makes them a little more resilient for the the eventual pit firing. Bone-dry clay is extremely brittle, so we usually bisque before going on with glazing or any other post construction work to minimize the chance of damage. This is what it looked like after bisque-ing:

After that came the fun part! We all traipsed down to the parking lot where there were a couple old, metal oil drums set up. We loaded the pots inside, all stacked one on top of the other, then filled the drums with sawdust. This was set on fire and let to smolder for about twelve hours; the resulting heat and smoke further hardened the pots and also gave them some absolutely amazing smoke textures, which were all different depending on its position in the drum in relation to other pots. Here is my finished pot after the pit firing:

Isn’t it perdy? I can’t wait to take it home!

The next ceramics assignment is a slab project that we haven’t finished yet. The idea was to make a geometric vessel of some sort (though it certainly doesn’t have to be functional). The few restrictions were it had to have 6 sides, an opening that could be closed, and some sort of foot. We constructed these using leather-hard clay slabs, out of which we cut out the shapes of the pieces we need and fit them together to form our vessel. Once formed we used different coloured slips (very watered down clay of different makes, almost like glazes) to add colour and design to our forms. Here was mine with the slip added:

Can’t wait to see what this looks like after it’s bisqued, varnished, then fired. So excited.

Next: Painting class! First up: Self-portrait. Here’s a bunch of successive WIP pictures:

And then the finished product (or close to it, anyway):And let me just get this out of my system now: Painting is hard. Holy crap. This is one of the most frustrating classes I’ve ever had to take, no joke. I think I’m improving, but I still can’t understand how people would work with such and unwilling and unwieldy medium out of choice!

There. Now I can move on.

The next painting was the one I did today in painting class, a total of 4 hour’s work. We had a few restrictions; the subject matter had to be a combination of interior x exterior; that is, something from inside ourselves, with something from the outside world. We were told to go out into the school, find something to paint, and then add a fantastical element to it from our own imagination. We had to limit ourselves to a certain colour scheme (whether it was analagous, complimentary, triads, etc.) and a certain composition (triangular, spiral, L-shaped, cruciform, etc.).

I chose to paint a door in the hallway and added trees and bunnies. I used an analagous-complimentary colour scheme (green/yellow/orange and purple) with an L-shaped composition. Here’s what I came up with:
Considering this is the first time I’ve ever painted in that class without gnashing my teeth and seething in frustration, I think it’s a winner. Bunnies!

Right, so that’s all I have to show for now! I’ll try to keep up with adding more as it develops. I hope you enjoyed this little foray into my schoolwork; I’m certainly having fun doing it. Thanks for looking, and let me know what you think!

So I chose to draw some Disney girls. Here they are.

This one I drew last night. The next one I drew after dinner today while listening to my awesome new roommates say silly things (which were also awesome). This is also the first time I’ve ever drawn Snow White.

First time I’ve ever really drawn Belle, also. Belle is, of course, my favourite Disney “princess”. I can’t think of a better role model (in the Disney pantheon) for a young girl than her, and even when I was little “The Beauty and the Beast” was one of my favourites (second only to “Dumbo”). I used to love the idea that looks totally didn’t matter. I also love reading (though I’ve been slowing down on it a lot while doing the college thing, bad me). Right, that’s enough comments in parentheses (no, really, I know they’re annoying).

Anyway! Blah blah. Drew these with blue pencil, “inked” them with HB pencil. Dennis says I should colour them, so maybe I will. =) Hope you like!

This was the result of an experiment. The carousel horse on the right was drawn and inked with a brushpen a few weeks ago. I drew the dog back then too, but only just got around to inking it today; with an actual, honest to god bottle of india ink and a paint brush! (Can you tell any difference?)

I’m so excited about it. I’d love to do more with brush-inked lines. The dog was a fun experiment. Obviously I need to practice a bit with it, work on keeping a steady hand.

Here’s a sketch of Donald Duck I drew without reference, also a couple weeks ago. I think I’m getting better!

Watched “The Big Sleep”, which of course had me drawing 1940-style Private Dicks and saucy ladies.

More ladies. Film Noir ladies are hard, for some reason. Anyway, still had fun sketchin’.

That’s it!

Are you ready?

Comic!

Drawn while watching the amazing Evan Dahm of Rice Boy make some art one night on Ustream. What to do when you’re watching someone draw? Draw, of course!

True story! I still have a ways to go with these “comic” things, but I think I’m getting there. I think I’m only hindered by my own laziness, which is more than evident in this comic. Still, I think it came out pretty well, considering I’ve never drawn an inside of a bus like that before.

Oh, and the song is “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads, if it’s not immediately apparent. I apologize if I got the lyrics messed up, it was hard trying to fit it all in there. Man, sometimes I love the Vancouver transit system, especially the antics of the #99.

Hit the cut for more; I’m going to spam you with some thumbnails, hope you don’t mind!

Right! And then a little while ago I got together with Osama, am awesome guy who works at my local craft store, for some epic drawin’ times. We drew some comics together. Here’s a mash of thumbnails for you.

He drew most of the panels on those; the majority of what I drew was in his sketchbook. It shouldn’t be too hard to tell whose is whose, since he has such awesome expressions in his drawings (and a darker pencil). The basic premise was that we’d draw a character in each other’s sketchbook, and then we had to make a comic around the character given us. We ended up switching back and forth a lot though, adding more and more frames. It was so much fun.

I’m going to spam you now with more (yes, I’m sorry) thumbnails. These are random maps/landforms I’ve started drawing at school waiting for classes to start. It’s a fun and relaxing sort of stream-of-consciousness thing, where I just let my pen go and see what happens.

Some of them turned out neat, so I thought I’d scan them in case anybody needed a random map for a story or a roleplaying game or something and didn’t feel like drawing one themselves. Anyway, I’m going to stop yackin’ and just post them already.

I dunno, what do you think? Think I should keep making these and uploading them as a random map-ish resource for GM’s or writers? I figure people can mix and match different land forms that they like, or alter them how they see fit. I’m a big fan of wiggly coastlines and random islands and inlets and some people might not be into that so much.

Anyway! Stuff. Let me know what you think of all the latest comic-y goodness. The maps, too, I’m interested to know what people think about those. I love doing them, and it would be nice if perhaps others could make use of them too.

Too lazy to scan, so you get a terrible photo until I’m not so lazy. I really need another couple of lamps or something.

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.

More Donald Duck because, hey, let’s face it, Donald duck is freaking awesome. What’s also awesome, is Michael Sporn, who’s been sharing a lot of gorgeous Donald Duck model sheets on his blog. Thank you so much Michael.

And this is trying to use what I’ve learned in designing/drawing my own old-timey animation character, Roy the Numbat. Of course, I’m using a lot of old Mickey Mouse in his design until I’m confidant enough to try something else. =)

His nemesis, Wilmer the Anteater, can be seen a few posts back. Roy’s a young orphan during the depression. Wilmer has a job as a construction worker. Hilarious (and rather sad) antics ensue as Roy tries to steal Wilmer’s lunch.

That’s the idea, anyway. =)

Edit: Oh crap! I just realized I’ve still been signing my work ‘09 instead of ‘10… darn! Will have to fix that.

I’m really enjoying my anthropology class. We were watching this video: The Nuer, and I couldn’t get over how beautiful the people were. I wish I had better references for their scarification patterns, then I might have given this lady some.

I was too frustrated after redrawing her left leg about a dozen times, so I just left it as is. Please try to ignore it? One of these days I’ll have the time to actually sit down with an anatomy book and figure out how to draw these things.

A sketch done tonight when I should have been doing homework. Man, I have so much I need to do it’s not even funny. That should explain some of the lack of art that’s been happening the past month or so, I apologize.

Here I’ve done some more Donald sketches. I hadn’t seen the references for a while, had just watched a couple Donald Duck shorts, and felt like drawing him. He’s hard. That beak keeps changing, agh! Surely more practice and study is needed.

Next:

I wanted to draw a quick picture of the Last Unicorn of “The Last Unicorn” fame, so I did, sans reference. I keep trying to give her proper anatomy, what’s wrong with me? One of these days, I’ll be able to grasp that grace that I’ve never been able to capture.

The bottom sketch is just a cute one suggested by my sweetie. He suggested “A person building a humanoid robot,” and this is the scene that came to my head. =) I’m trying to think of a way to skew this into a Christmas card…

Here’s a bigger version of those two:

They’re just pencil with micron ink over top, size .05 and .01. =)

Next!

Well I went ahead and coloured that Picard sketch I posted a while ago. I’m still really fond of it, there’s just something so appealing about that man’s face… that, and I’ve been watching a lot of ST:TNG lately. Anyway, I coloured this on my Erlkonig, my laptop, using my poor, ancient and huge Intuos 2 12×12 Wacom tablet. I don’t think I’ve mentioned which tablet I own on here yet, so I thought I would. =)

That’s all for that, really! Next…

This is a picture of a boy monk, also suggested by my sweetie. I was complaining, as I often do, about not doing enough art, so he kicked my ass and told me to draw something in the hour I had before bed. So I opened up photoshop and asked him for a prompt, so he told me “a monk in orange and yellow robes.” I came up with this in just under an hour.

I made a fun little animated .gif to go with it. =)

You might just see a big blank box; if you click on it, it will open the full .gif file and it will animate for you. It basically just cycles through the layers I used to make the picture. Not a real walkthrough, but close enough, since it shows you my initial sketch layers and how I refined them over time. I might have made them cycle a bit fast, though, so you might have to open it up and step through it to see the layers more clearly.

Animated .gifs are fun as hell. I can stare at them for hours.

What else do I have… Ah, right!

Sorry for the horrid scan. I had the urge to draw Ariel the other night for some strange reason. Strange because I really don’t like her very much at all as a character and always found her to be rather bratty, childish, and simply a bad role-model for kids to begin with (I thought so when I was a kid, too, so I haven’t just grown up to be a prude, I promise! I’ve always been one. . So to satisfy my urge and to also placate my gut, I tried to draw her looking all bratty and pouty, using model sheets found at the Disney Animation Archive. Clicking through more model sheets I found the ones for “The Emperor’s New Groove”, one of my favourite Disney movies, so I had a go at quickly sketching Kuzco as well. I figured, he being such a sleaze, he’d totally be one to hit on an overly sexualized 16 year old mermaid-girl (but hell, since I was the antithesis of sexuality when I was 16, perhaps I’m just jealous =P). So I came up with this.

K, enough rambling about that.

Hmm, you know, I think I might have run out of things to show off. No, wait! I have some sketches in a ratty notebook in my schoolbag, but I haven’t scanned those yet. Another entry, then. =)

The final few weeks of school are hell. Thanks for putting up with me! I hope you like what you see.