Screw it, it's Friday!

Finally the month of May is over. OMfrigginG what a month. There were so many deadlines running one after another that at one point I literally lost track of days, almost going into a panic attack on sending stuff out to clients. But it's all done, and thank goodness for that. That's not to say we're out of the woods yet, in fact, not by a long shot. We still have cons to prep for this summer, a couple of big ones to boot, and commission work that still needs finishing. Today though I was bad...I took a few hours off and worked on something silly just because I wanted to. So I came up with this

Our reaction after buying new art supplies lol!

It's SO silly and meme'd to hell but I couldn't help it, it was just too funny to me, lol! And with that out of my system, I think I'm ready to tackle actual work artwork, lol!

Miriam

Sunday sketchy Sunday

Woke up feeling cruddy; too awake to sleep but too tired to be productive. So, instead of staying lazy I spent the morning sketching on PS to warm myself up to get commissions done. Decided to venture into some unfamiliar brushes (the ones that actually looked like brushes on the left side of the screen when I clicked on them) and I really liked some of the results!

some fuzzy charcoal brushes with varying roughness. It took forever to get a mark!

Wetter, smudgier. Much easier to mark. Square charcoal pencil. I think, LOL!

Wanted to draw another dude since that last one was fugly. More of the charcoal pencil, with another charcoal texture.

What's a sketch without the typical eye sketch? LOL! I was playing strictly with the pencils. I love love love the layering effects with them!! The pit oil pencil I think is one of my favorites. Love the texture it gives!

Softer pencil, but still had a real light touch to it. After a few minutes, I liked where it was going, so I decided to flesh it out some more.

Still using the pencils just varying the size and angle of the brush, using color this time. It ended up very fashion sketchy!

All in all I'm very happy with the experiments and I'm looking forward to playing with these new brushes some more! Maybe even save some with custom presets; I keep forgetting how to save altered brush settings, then I forget which brush I was using that I really liked and what I did to it. I spend half my time trying to find it, and when I do I forget to save again! It's a vicious cycle LOL

Miriam

Show and tell

I've come to the realization that I don't put up nearly as much art as I should. Sometimes I get self conscious, or get all like, "it's gotta be finished and pretty before anyone can see!"

Sometimes though, it takes forever to get something "finished and pretty" and then nothing gets put up because of it. But while I'm waiting for that perfect finished piece, I sketch. A whole, whole lot; and I kinda think there's alot of character in something that's still being roughed out and in that respect, might still worth showing.

I love seeing sketches and progress work, yet I rarely post any of my own; which is weird considering alot of my friends love the sketchy stuff too, lol! So here's me, braving the embarrassment and showing off some sketches:

Sketch I did from MCO to JFK. My goal was to do a drawing from start to finish within the time of the flight.

Same goal, from JFK to MCO. Not quite as gestural as I'd wanted but it was still fun!

Jenny and Wind spoiled me rotten with art supplies from Kinokuniya! One of the awesome new toys were these calligraphy brush pens. The page is a whole lotta warm up and then a quickie sketch with them. OMG so much fun!

This is what I do when I'm bored out of my mind at work. I paint. The sketch took me about an hour to do, the painting took another hour and a half. Didn't get to the teeth and tongue on time. GRRR!

Inspired from a Linkin Park song Castle of Glass. I'm totally loving my anatomy fail with her wrist. It's so broken, LOL!

Throwing around some ideas for some paintings. Merida, Rapunzel (although it doesn't really look like her, lol!) and Pocahontas. The other two on the bottom are some spray paint concepts that I cannot wait to try!

Another spray paint concept. I'm really hoping they come out well!

Miriam =)

What to wear, what to wear!

I don't think I've ever had this much fun drawing clothes since high school. I also haven't done this much research into styles and trends stuff in like...ever! Ami has much more possibilities dress wise than Mochi, and it was very hard not to make an entire wardrobe for her, lol! But I managed to whittle the 9 or so outfits down to 3 and from those made different color sets for them. Which do you think look the best?

Breathing new life into an old project

Sometimes I hate looking at old work. I'm beginning to think there are reasons why certain artists don't like to revisit it. One tweak leads to another and another, and before you even realize it you've changed almost everything about it.

Well, that's kind of where I'm at currently.

I came across a project that I had really wanted to do while at school, but ended up having to pitch it because I wouldn't finish it on time. At least, not at the level I wanted (senior year and all that). Initially I thought that since I had all my preliminaries done I could just jump right in and start running some tests, but after not seeing for almost 2 years, I noticed lots of things that could (or needed) to be altered.

So I'm revisiting every aspect about this project. Because of this, I need your guys' help.

I need some serious critiquing on several aspects of this project. Are these characters convincing? Does their appearance resemble the personality I'm trying to achieve based on the description? I don't expect many really to know where the origins of the story came from, but I would like to have some thing to tie in to their corresponding gods besides their personalities, so I'm playing with color as well. Any kind of observations you can provide me would be awesome. I think this has a lot of potential to be something really fantastic and I want to have the best finished product achievable. But I won't draw a single frame until everything about this, the story, the characters, all the stuff that may never see the light of day, is convincing and as great as it can be.

The story itself is set to be a high school drama loosely based on a Japanese creation myth.
here's a shortened version of the original and here's a prettier, longer version. Unfortunately, neither of these match the original story I got it from (all my books about it are in storage) but these are a close fit, at least to get the gist of the story about.

So I guess I should bring out some of these sketches right?

This is Ukemochi:

In most of these, she's seen with glasses, but that's because her original character design has her with
them.

First attempt at face and body shapes to make sure all of them look different.

Initial gestures, trying to get a feel for her outward character.

Here though, she's shown without them, to see her expressions clearly and to kind of see what she looks like without them in the first place, lol!

concepts for her school outfit. More muted earthy tones (save for one or two on there)

This girl is an amazing chef. That's where she really shines, what she's totally passionate about. She loves how it brings people together. To try new things, for comfort, to relax and let their guard down and have a great meal. For her, food is the best weapon for bad days, first impressions, thank-you's, awkward silences...pretty much everything.

Thing is no one really knows about it. She's super shy, hides behind her hair and her glasses (although I'm quite torn with them; she looks nice with or w/o them) doesn't say much if anything at all to anyone. Most people don't like her, but we're really not quite sure why. It's one of those clique things I guess; she's not made of money, not fru-fru about everything in life, not superficial or vain like many in the school can be. There is however, one person that she confides in and opens up to.

That person is Amaterasu:

Hair ideas. Trying for something simple, but still fashionable. Is that even possible? LOL!

Concepts for her school outfit. Not sure which one I like the best.

In the who's who of rank and status, she's the first on everyone's list. She's very much involved with different student activities and events, often taking the lead of many at once. A stickler for academia, her record's damn near stellar, the epitome of a model student. Add to that her ridiculous wealth and connections through her father and you've got one hell of an elite, making her admired and sought after from anyone and everyone on and off school grounds.

Despite all the fawning though, she's never been one to flaunt her status in anyone's face. In fact, she's super humble about it. She friendly with everyone she's come across, always willing to help however she can. She is quite reserved though. While she downplays her position, she's not blind to the reality of it, or that many don't want to befriend her so much as wanting to use her status to help their own.

There's also the issue of keeping appearances, making sure no one is aware of her own burdens, like her crumbling family, her father that's never around, leaving her to raise her brothers Susano-wo and Tsukuyomi (for this story though, it's only the latter) that are bloated with entitlement. Because of this, she keeps many of her peers at arms length. The only person she's ever been able to let her guard down with, completely and totally has been Ukemochi. This bothers Tsukuyomi immensely.


This is what I've got so far. Once I've got a decision on the hairstyle I can work on an expression sheet for her. I'm working on Tsukuyomi as we speak and can't wait to get him done up. I think he's gonna be my most challenging. I can't wait!

To all that have already put in your two cents, thank you so very much for the thoughtful input. You have no idea how much this is helping me right now and I cannot thank you enough for taking time out of your day to help me out!

FINALLY I have more than one sketch that's worth posting up! I feel real bad doing single dose sketch dumping and since I've been doing alot of work for other people (paid client work thank god, LOL!) I haven't really been able to create much of anything that was truly mine or anything I can release publicly. But now I do so hooray!!

First one was at a convention I attended a couple months ago. I'm really looking forward to moving this piece on to better paper to be watercolored. It looks like it'll be tedious, but a helluvalotta fun!

The next couple were the only sketches I was able to manage while on our cruise a few weeks back. We had one day where we were out at sea all day so Dee Jay and I took advantage of it to catch up on comic work and other art things. When we were winding down I still wanted to draw, so I sketched a few minutes longer before I called in for the day. 2 things; I really miss portrait drawing and 2, I really have to stop eating food with charcoal covered hands, LOL!

This one though...I was so giddy working on this one. We had gone to the art of animation area at Disney and got to take an art session at the animation studio with a bunch of other guests. Normally, they'd do Mickey or any of the rest of the gang, but we had a bunch of people that have already drawn them before. So as the lead was going down the list and came to Flynn's name, everybody swooned (men included!!) So Flynn Rider it is!

I was super anxious to get started and super nervous about it messing up, but I was determined to not suck at art that day, LOL!

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

 

finally a breather! it's short, but I'll take it, LOL

Conventions have been keeping us rather busy lately. Our last (and by far busiest) was Megacon! OMG was that ever fun...and frightening! I remember we were setting up Thursday night and I was looking at the other set ups and feeling my blood completely cold because of all the wonderful art up and all over the place. I was actually heavily second guessing whether this convention was a wise choice. Maybe we're not ready for something so big? Maybe we're not at that level yet to compete with vets and newbies alike of this kind of caliber? I was having a borderline panic attack, LOL!

But of course, we've already sunk money into the table so good or bad, we were there all 3 days. OMG I'm so glad we stayed, because it turned out to be a big ball of wonderful! I had no idea we had known so many people from other conventions; and we got to meet lots of new people as well! Got some real good commission requests, sold an original piece of artwork...omg that was one of my favorite pieces too. I miss it alot, but it went to a good friend of mine, so I'm extremely relived that it went to a good happy home!!

We've got alot of work to do now that Mega madness is behind us all. We don't have another con to worry about until april, but that doesn't mean I get a break until then. I've got commissions coming out of my ears and while I'm thrilled that people are nabbing original art, that also means I've got to fill those slots with new stuff! We're gonna be hella busy, but I seriously cannot be any more excited! Things are happening! With the wootness!!