Osama drew the first two panels plus the guy in the third, and I did the rest. So much fun.

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.

I’m not sure if I have to explain this one or not; but sure, why not. I’m not sure if it reads well enough, so I might as well spell it out. =)

In Pokémon, obviously the point is to catch as many pokémon as possible. You do this by going out, walking around in long grass for a while, until a wild pokémon attacks you. At this point, your job is to get its HP to as low as you can possibly get it without allowing it to faint. If it faints, the fight is over, you win, you go home. You have to get its HP as low as possible, chuck a pokéball at it, and hope that it’s now weak enough to not be able to break out.

The thing I’m wondering is; why can’t you catch a pokémon that has fainted? Is there some ethical, chivalrous rule saying that a fainted pokémon is now off limits, or something? You’d think that a fainted pokémon would be really damn easy to catch. All you really need is a sack or something.

Anyway, so that’s what I’m trying to make fun of here. And even though I make fun, I must say, I am one of those oldschool Pokétards. I was ten years old when Pokémon was released in North America; I was the target demographic, and hooooo boy, did they hook me good. I knew everything there was to know about pokémon and the games from Pokémon Red through to Crystal; when Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald came out I was in highschool, and trying desperately to pretend that I wasn’t that much of a geek anymore, and I couldn’t afford a GB Advance anyway, so I never played them. I did, however, replay Pokémon Red and Crystal dozens of times on my old GB Colour…

But now they’ve re-released my favourite games of the series; Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver for the DS (it’s so hard to believe those were released ten years ago!!). So now I’m reliving my childhood again, going on epic adventures with my Quilava and having a gay old time.

Anyway, yeah, that’s what inspired the comic. I needed to get my pokémon excitement out somehow, since none of my current friends are even remotely interested in it. So yeah! Hope this is still amusing for those who don’t give a damn about Pokémon stuff.

I do have a few other sketches, but it’s really hard to pluck up the energy to scan them at the moment. Maybe I’ll share them a bit later. Until then… I’m going to see if adding colour to this comic makes it any easier to read.

Another comic! This time featuring my friends. From left to right: Me, Dennis, d7(the GM) and Nigel.

This is a scene that happened in our second game of Savage Worlds setting Shaintar. I play a Brinchie (aka. cat person, aka. Khajiit) named Lii who has an absolutely wicked high agility score, and edges to make it even better.  To illustrate: there were no D20’s involved. So a score of 27 is pretty damn wicked.

Also: I only needed a 4.

As a result, she chased down a guy from a ridiculous way away and when she caught him she pasted him into a tree. It was awesome. I tried to capture that awesomeness in this comic, but I’m afraid I might have failed. Any crits or advice would be appreciated!

So yes, I drew and inked this in two hours last night when I should have been sleeping. I’ve got to stop doing that…

Anyway, if you have any opinions, feel free to drop them on me. =)

Today I have a lot of silly little sketches for you.

I drew these two about a month ago when visiting at a friend’s place. I didn’t have any of my usual drawing stuff with me, so I just sketched in a small notebook I had on me with a blue ballpoint pen. You’ll actually see a lot of ballpoint pen in this post; I seem to have reached a bit of a renaissance with it. =)

Anyway, I decided to sketch a really scary looking stereotypical 80’s/90’s girl, complete with the sideways pigtail, crazy bead necklaces/earrings/bracelets, too-big lavender (always lavender!) kitten with yarn t-shirt (preferably with sparkles on it), and baggy sweatsocks. Oh, and some weird missing teeth. I thought she was great. As you can see, I also drew her invisible friend Ashley next to her; every little girl had an invisible friend in the 80’s/90’s! (And don’t you dare call them “imaginary” friends!!!)

The boy was an afterthought after I finished drawing the girl, but I still think he turned out cute. =) I’m not so hip with little boy 80’s/90’s fashion, having no brothers or male friends when I was a little kid…

Right, next!

Dennis said I should draw a “man with a turban”. So I did! And I had tonnes of fun drawing him! I started with the big pointy nose and everything went from there. Blue pencil with micron pen over top. I still think I should have drawn him smiling and showing some big crooked teeth… man, stereotypes are so much fun!

Another one!

Sorry for the dirty looking scan. It’s so hard to scan that blue pencil stuff and have it still be legible. Anyway, this is a WWI doughboy, that is, soldier. Also suggested by Dennis. I used references for this one, though not really any directly. I really am interested in this era in history, so I wanted to show his enthusiasm for being a soldier; the whole “Look ma, I’m goin’ t’war!!” mindset which turned out to be a horrid mistake. Oh, WWI… you taught us so much, and yet we didn’t seem to learn.

Aaaaaaand, for our next number…

I’m actually really not that fond of this one… I still wanted to include it though, for continuity’s sake, and to contrast it with the next picture. Anyway, another image of Polly, my soon-to-be Diaspora roleplaying character if all goes well. I just wanted to point out that this is often the fate of a lot of drawings I try to do, especially of humans of this variety. I sit down with a pencil and try to draw without anything really clear in mind, without a huge drive for much, and it turns out boring, tame, and really… ugh, boring. And bad. It doesn’t even look like her, even though I did have the ability to erase and could make her look like anything I wanted. I was just lazy.

And here’s what happens when I have an idea that’s driving my drawing, and I’m using a ballpoint pen that means I can’t erase and go over things, honing and re-honing until it’s boring as hell:

Yes the anatomy is weirder, but on the whole the pose is much more interesting, it’s filled with energy, and it’s just so much more interesting. I draw with ballpoint pen a lot when I don’t have my drawing stuff around me (hence the kid pictures at the beginning of this post) but I’ve never deliberately used it in one of my sketchbooks when I had my actual supplies. This time I tried it, for just this reason; to force myself to clearly visualize what I’m drawing and get it down quickly, without restraint. I think I’m on a ballpoint pen kick now.

KLINGON!

K, now that the obligatory Star Trek fan art is done…

More Polly! And Dennis’ Diaspora character Miles Tessevel, a galactic merchant. Dennis sat down with me and described his character and I sketched it out for him, asking him at odd intervals “Okay, so what do you want his nose to be like? Large, straight, hooked…?”, “What shape is his jaw? Round? Square?”, “Does he have noticeable cheekbones?” and others like that. It was a lot of fun, and Dennis was rather satisfied with the result. I hope to do at least one sketch like this for everyone’s character in the game. =)

Right! I think that’s all I have to show you for now. Not much, since the last few weeks I’ve been inundated by school assignments and final exams. But now that’s done! I’m free! So here’s hoping I’ll use some of that free time to draw, and not simply watch Star Trek and be boring as hell.

Later on in the night I started looking up corsets on Wikipedia, which lead to hours of fascinated clicking through a couple centuries of historical fashion. SO RAD.

Anyway, here are the sketches I came up with last night.w00t! Look at that dashing character… with his goatee and his tights. Mraow.

I had SOMUCHFUN with the little fashion sketches. Bwahahaha!! Women used to dress so silly… yet for some reason it’s still so compelling.

I love my little black permanent marker pens. Whee!

That’s all for me right now… off to do some homework. *sigh*

I don’t know if it did any good to look at art all day, since I didn’t do any art myself, I didn’t get any grandiose ideas for my own artistic projects, I wasn’t driven off my lap-top by the urge to sketch, I didn’t spend any money to support any of the wonderful art I was looking at, and my headache has slowly gotten bigger over the evening even after taking tylenol. So perhaps that should be a lesson to me.

But seriously, I couldn’t look away. It started with me going through my list of watched accounts on DA and cleaning it up; meaning, removing the watch of any accounts that are old or inactive or otherwise not in my interest anymore. I only got from A – K, but hey, that’s better than nothing. Through the Daily Deviations I found this one, a so-called Luisa M. Kelle, and I was held utterly rapt. I spent hours moseying through her gallery, admiring her beautiful linework, her whimsical subjects, her fanciful perception of life. Her artwork is like candy for my inner seven year old, who used to love Beatrix Potter, the Wind in the Willows, and thought that Rupert the Bear would be the very best friend ever. (Oh, and we can’t forget Babar either!) Anyway, she reminds me a lot of another of my favourite artists, Luve (aka. Lauren Henderson), who may be a little more cartoony and wholesome, but still full of awesome in the anthro animal respect. Le sigh.

So then my inner critic (his name is Joe) starts arguing, saying that this is real art, this is where the money is; look at how talented this person is, with her beautiful characters, stunning backgrounds and moving scenes, and where am I getting off in drawing all those funny-faced big-eyed ugly people? And ponies? Anthro animals in humanoid settings is where it’s at, people! Whimsy! Charm! Children’s stories! There’s money, story, and fun in that!

Then I did some more clicking around, and stumbled on Loish’s (aka. Lois van Baarle) website again, which floored me with her beautiful girls in such amazing retro textured goodness. This is my generation’s thing, neon colours, girls with big hair, fashion, retro motifs and awesome animation. This stuff looks great, and it sells. Ooooh, it’s so good I can almost taste it, and I can’t look away! The urge to sketch up beautiful girls in interesting clothes in stylish poses is rising…

But then (oh snap!) I click another link, and stumble upon… yes!! Another favourite artist of mine! Erica Moen, of DAR, and I happily read through her comic archives again and marvel at her honesty and humourous lifestyle, squee over her romance with her (relatively) newlywed husband (Congrats!!), and once again just admire the sheer force of will it must have taken her to continue with her comic for so long. I also admire how unique a person she is, how unwilling she is to cowl away and hide her intricacies, and how proud she is to be herself. And she, being the awesome person she is connected with so many awesome people, swung me over to ANOTHER favourite artist (say it isn’t so!), the one and only Dylan Meconis!

Oh yeah, these are the people to idolize, these are the bread and butter winners not only for themselves, but for female cartoonists/artists of the world! They draw comics about issues that mean something, they speak their mind, and they further on the influence of their medium as they do it. They have dozens of friends within their faculty, they do it for a living, and by god, if only I was one of them who could also draw pictures and sell them and things for a living, even if it’s a not so glamourous a lifestyle…

That was about the time I looked at Joe (though not really, you know, him not existing and all) and said “Look, shut up, you. I’m going to make some pizza.” So I did. Now I’m here typing about these wonderful artists, for no real good reason. Oh! I do have art¹ though!

Drawn while watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus yesterday with Dennis! There’s Mr. Raymond Luxury Yacht (Pronounced Throat Warbler Mangrove) with his fake nose, some kind of crazy Amish dude (not a ninja), and some saucy minx who stole some fine gentleman’s hat. The wench.

Next is a picture I drew today (I lied, I didn’t spend the whole day looking at art, though very near it) after looking online for ages for some sort of acceptable drawing program to use with my tablet on my Macbook. The GIMP wasn’t accepting pressure sensitivity for some reason, so I went through a variety of so called free “alternatives” and stumbled upon Art Rage, which I downloaded and tried briefly by drawing this picture.

I don’t know what my deal is lately with the late 1800’s/early 1900’s and those cute little straw hats recently, but there you go. Didn’t like the program much, but that’s just me. Was still fun for half an hour or so. Look! It looks like pencil!

So that’s it for me… just wanted to share some of these wonderful artists and their works, and also do something other than just sit around all day. Hopefully tomorrow I can open my eyes without getting light-headed. Stupid flu.

^{1. This is open to debate, of course.}

Dennis has been bugging me to put these up, so now that my scanner’s hooked up again I finally can! Here goes.

First is one last page of Bambi sketches I did before the Great Flood which kind of destroyed my inspiration for it a bit… The only sketch I really like on this page is the one of Bambi sitting looking surprised. =) Still way too much of my own style in them, but ah well!

Some random chicas I drew a few days ago. The lady in the bottom left corner was sketched from a photo from LIFE Magazine’s website. =) Sometimes I need to remind myself that I can still draw from reference.

I was eating with Dennis at The Eatery two nights ago (Thanksgiving Monday, actually!), and since I had all my stuff with me (was moving back home) I pulled out my sketchbook and started to draw. I sketched the chick there first. The Eatery has some really awesome pop-culture-ish woodcuts on the wall, and one of them is a bust of Dick Tracy, and without knowing what else to draw I started to draw him. It looked like he was eyeing her up at a party, and things just lead from there…

The dialogue is: “How d’you like them gams, Dick?” He replies: “I like ‘em swell, Charlie.” Etc. I’m so silly.

Forgive the language in the writing there; I was giving an example of my cursive handwriting (first paragraph) versus my printing (last paragraph). The middle paragraph is Dennis’ usual scrawl. =) Dennis is the one that provided the passage. Heehee.

And the Shit-Bot 2000. Again, forgive the language! I think he’s quite cute, actually…

And now for something completely different:

A random map I drew in Geography class because I was bored and I love drawing maps. =) Drawn with a blue bic ballpoint pen. Ignore the pencil lines; I was trying to figure out tectonic forces, but that was way after drawing it, so it makes no sense whatsoever.

And Galactic Space Newfies. Long story. They’re wearing those big rubber rain hats, by the way, and wellies. The dialogue is: “But how can you tell he’s the captian?” Response: “Idiot, he has the biggest hat!”

Right. Now that I’ve proven my artistic genius, I’m going to go watch more Monty Python. *poofs*

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!