Pencil Lines

Right, so something new to report!

Since I was fairly bored one afternoon and procrastinating heavily on studying for final exams, I had enough drive and motivation to create a new page and customized layout for my comics:

Allegro: Random comics by Rheall

I had a lot of fun working on the CSS and uploading my comics and such. It’s so satisfying to see them all laid out with “next” and “previous” buttons. Sometimes I am very easily pleased.

Like it says on the main page, this doesn’t mean I’m taking those comics seriously or anything. I’m not going to have a specific update schedule for them, and they aren’t meant to be any kind of serious foray into the webcomics world, not by a long shot. It’s just for fun. I draw comics now and again, and it’s fun to have someplace to show them off once in a while!

So yes, that’s that! As for art stuff, I haven’t really been drawing much this month, or even this summer. However, I did sit down and bang out a couple sketches tonight, so I’ll see about scanning those in the morning. I now have two weeks free of any sort of schedule or responsibility, so maybe I can make myself churn out some art. Or at least get sketching again!

Hope y’all have been having a wonderful summer!

Yesterday Dennis came over again, and once more told me that I should go ahead and do another quick photoshop sketch, kind of like the one I did of the monk boy in my last post. He said I should draw my character concept for an upcoming game of Diaspora that we’ll be playing soon, so I did!

Polly comes from a system named Andy’s Left Foot, a very boring system with one homeworld where they are one of the technological centres of the cluster. The upper class rules with an iron fist, but the planet is overrun with people and pollution, so the upper class likes to get away as often as possible. As such, they are known as the cluster’s Tourists. Anyone who can afford it, mostly the cream of the upper class crop, can make clones of themselves to take care of their business while they’re on vacation, sometimes for years at a time. Sometimes the rich make clones of themselves just to do the work they don’t want to do, but which would be too improper to hire someone else do for them. When the Primes come back from vacation, or the clones wear out, they are recycled back into the system.

Anyway, Polly was one of these clones. Her Prime (the person she was cloned from) was a high-level politician of some kind, and as such Polly was taught all the things her prime knew during Escalated Development. However, she managed to slip through the cracks during the behavioural conditioning and cybernetic imprinting process, and found herself with her own free will and ambition, something that was supposed to be suppressed and stamped out. Being probably the fiftieth clone of this important person, she wasn’t really watched much, nor was she important, making it possible for her to coast through her duties until she was able to engineer a plan to escape.

So, she escapes, and spends her life on the run, jumping from ship to ship, system to system. Her lack of hair makes it difficult, since that’s a sure sign you’re a clone, so she wears a lot of bright make-up and ghastly wigs to try and disguise that fact. Thankfully, fashion in the cluster is such that this makes her blend in rather than stand out.

Here she’s in her room, alone, crying over a love she lost tragically just a little earlier. Clones have no hope of developing any kind of relationships with people, let alone falling in love, so the experience really affected her a lot. All she wants is to live her own life, though a rogue clone is one of the most dangerous things to the people of Andy’s Left Foot due to the knowledge they would hold of the important individuals and their doings. The are hunted down like plague dogs.

Polly isn’t her real name. Indeed, as a clone she wouldn’t have a name, probably an identification number of some sort. I figured Polly was fitting, though, since it is a popular name for parrots, something that copies/mimics others. Since that’s a clone’s entire purpose, I thought she’d be the kind of person who would allude to that fact when choosing a name for herself.

Right… so, yeah, sketched up in Photoshop and inked and coloured there. Again on my laptop. I made another animated .gif to show the different layers of sketch, ink, colour, etc.:

Again you’ll see a blank box; click on it to see the animation. =)

It’s been a long time since I cel-shaded anything, so please forgive any sloppiness or blazing errors you might find. It just takes practice, and I am rather happy with what I came up with in this picture, especially on her face. =) Though I probably should have chosen different colours… the colour scheme is exactly the same as that Monk Boy picture; orange, red, and purple. Oi vey. Ah well! It still looks neat.

I have to head to class now. Enjoy!

Today I have been doing a lot of looking at art. Well, that is, looking at art after having my mum come over and do my laundry for me and cook me lunch and make me tea before scurrying away again. But hey, what else could I do after all that but look at art?

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Recently got back from a trip/vacation to Victoria, BC over the weekend. =) It was soooo much fun, and I did get a chance to sketch a couple things, so I’m here to share them.

First I’ll show you a page of sketches I did just before we left.

I got my episodes of Star Trek: TNG back, so I was on another kick. I think I drew these after finishing off season 3. I’ve been trying to get into the habit of inking my sketches once I’m done drawing them, to get better at inking and also to stop being so afraid of ruining things. My favourite on this page is that sketch of the random balding commander and his crazy side. =D Soooo much fun to draw crazy cartoony people!

While in Victoria we went to a bunch of bookstores and in one of them I found a book I didn’t know I’ve been looking for for years: An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists. I remember when I was first getting serious into drawing horses and dogs and I’d search Google for reference images and come up with these anatomical plates and drawings that were so beautiful and detailed, but at the time were so small in resolution and hard to find. I remember I printed these out whenever I found them and used them constantly as reference material until they were so badly crumpled and ripped as to be unrecognizable. I had no idea these were enclosed in an actual book that I could actually buy!

But then I found this book, and they were all there, and so many different positions and views as well. It as so perfect, I had to pick it up. I spent the rest of the night pouring over it, admiring the technical mastery of the images, and amusing myself with the differences in anatomy between dogs and horses and humans and all manner of different things.

If you do any animal drawing (particularly horses or dogs), and you see this book, pick it up. I guarantee, you will not be disappointed, and it will become a staple of your artistic resources.

Anyway, so I drew a couple sketches (only a couple, because I suck like that. ):

Just some blue pencil sketches of deer, a horse, a horse skull, and a tired/bored looking creature at the top. The main thing I wanted to show off was that deer, though. Here it is closer:

I also changed the hue and darkened it up a bit so you could see the details. After staring at the skeletons and anatomical drawings of the deer in that book for so long, I had to draw one. It was so much fun! I love skinny animals where you an see the bones sticking out and stuff, agh! Also, I’m sure this is the best drawing of a deer I’ve ever done. Compare it to my old favourite and you can see how much I’ve improved in their anatomy, just by staring at the drawings in that book. =)

I still need to work on deer heads (it’s difficult as hell to draw a deer head and not have it look like a dog), but I’m really glad with my progress, and I love this little sketch. Just tooting my own horn here, move along…

The next one was a quick horse sketch, in which at least I notice that the anatomy has gotten better looking at that book than my other drawings, but others might not notice:

Again, it’s still very noticeably in my style, but the anatomy is much better compared to my old attempts at this position. Now I just need to get off my butt and draw things that actually mean something, and draw them often, and actually finish them, and then I’ll be golden!

While walking around the markets in Victoria I saw a lot of artists. I got my portrait/caricature done by this awesome guy, John D. Beveridge (and it was absolutely excellent!); there were dozens of other portrait artists holding booths at various markets and squares; there were numerous local craftsman ranging anywhere between jewelry, native art, glass blowing, metal working, toy making, and painting; and there was even this girl who looked like my age or younger, who had a table set up at the local Artist’s Market. She was just sitting there drawing marker pictures of centaurs and unicorns, and then ripping up each page as she finished it and placing them in a basket in front of her for sale. I kept thinking “What the hell? Why can’t I do this?”

It’s something to think about, anyway. I just need to get off my butt and do something about it.

Right, back to doing “back from vacation” chores. Turrah!

I’m hoping this entry doesn’t make me sound like a pompous witch who is full of herself, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Please take any arrogant sounding remarks with a grain of salt; I don’t mean it, I’m just trying to communicate some rather abstract thoughts.

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