Sometimes I Wonder...

...if I'll ever get better at blogging.

But I'm drawing a thing! Look at what I'm working on!

A cutesy drawing of Matthew and Anya, walking/stopping at a bridge. There is a particular bridge in Brugge, Belgium that I really want to go back to some day. I didn't even get a picture of it, since it was while I had my film camera and didn't want to throw pictures around. I really wish I had spent a picture on it. :/

Style

I am encountering a slight issue with drawing for ACen this year. The issue is not motivation for once--in fact, I'm almost done.

You know how when you start learning a skill, it's very easy to improve. The learning curve is a very forgiving slant. But then once you get to a certain point, the curve becomes a plateau. As you get better and better the plateaus become more frequent and longer and the jumps, while more infrequent, are much more significant.

Anyway. I think I may have finally hit another jump. It's been a long time, honestly. I could probably have hit this jump sooner if I had worked on in more, but either way, it's here now. Right in the middle of drawing for ACen. What this means is that my earlier stuff looks different than my newer stuff. I mean, that always happens. But I'm drawing completely differently. I'm coloring my lines now. I know more about shading now. I'm using techniques I learned.

The issue is this: I'm making a lot of sets. A set of X-Men bookmarks. A set of Pokemon buttons. A set of Avatar buttons. Since I'm dumb, I didn't draw the entire set at once. So I have to style-check in the middle of sets.

For example: I drew my Squirtle button about a month ago. It has black lines and fairly minimal shading. Between then, I started my Avatar set. They all have colored lines. I then made my Tentacular  button, which has no lines at all. Today, I am drawing my new Charmander button. If I drew it in my new style, it would look odd. Not odd in and of itself, but odd compared to the rest of the set. Or rather, Squirtle would look odd, since that's the one with black lines and Charmander and Bulbasaur would have colored lines.

So basically, I have to pay a lot more attention when I'm drawing this stuff. It's strange.

SokkaFace

Remember the drawing I posted the other day? I'm almost done with it! I'm very happy with how Sokka's face came out. Though TBH Photoshop is acting quite oddly, so I might have to reinstall or something. I don't know what that has to do with the drawing, but still.

Long Time No See

Yeah.. sorry. :/ I have no excuse--I've been drawing all the freaking time. Getting ready for ACen and stuff.

The ACen prep goes well. I'm getting new stuff printed later today (this will be printing run #3), but I wanted to share a snippet from a new print I'm still working on:

Unedited screen shot is very unedited, but I am wicked happy with how this is looking right now. So happy!

FO

I know that "FO" ("Finished Object") is normally reserved for knitting, but still.

I finished the chibi lineup drawing. You can look at it Here, at my deviantART. :D

Scan Fest

I went in and scanned in a bunch of drawing yesterday. Here are two that I'm working on right now:

That first one is a lineup of three chibis that I actually drew scattered around the page. You can actually see the towel and the fancy girl's boot poking in to each other's drawings. 

I've finished the flat colors, obviously, and am getting ready to do the shading and to finish it up. There will also be at least colors in the background.

This one is a sketch I did at a D&D game I was playing with some friends. I like how it looks so far. I intentionally made the characters look more.. elongated and thin than normal. I am obviously still in the lineart stage of the drawing. I actually put the rope (inside joke in the game) on a separate layer than the rest of the lineart, which I like.

I intend to post a few more sketches as I get around to working on them, so keep an eye out for those! :D

I have also been working on a couple of drawings for ACen, which I am... really nervous for. Depending on how they turn out, I might make this D&D one into a print and I might to a similar chibi lineup, but with fanart.

News!

Ahoy-hoy!

So, I've been absolutely terrible about posting, and I apologize about that. I don't really have an excuse, I've just been bad about it. :/

But! I learned a thing yesterday! A good thing, too! A couple of weeks ago, I applied for a table in the artist alley at Anime Central. Yesterday, I got a confirmation email saying that I got the table! Yaaaay! I'm so excited! So I'll be working super hard and drawing a bunch of fanart (and "original" art) over the next couple of weeks. I don't think I'll know exactly where in the alley I'm located until I actually get there, but I will try to post when I do, for anyone who goes to ACen.

I have nearly finished my first new drawing today, after working for about an hour and a half or so:

Aang! ..The avatar! I'm quite happy with how this looks so far. :D

Harley!

I've always loved Harley Quinn so much. <3
I wanted to draw some fanart, but had no idea what to do, exactly. So... Harley! Yay!
It was really nice to draw, especially considering that the last drawing I finished was on August 10th. :< I haven't really drawn anything for myself since then. Man, I hate my drawing class. D:

ShadowCat!

Oh man, I love Shadowcat. I don't really draw a whole lot of fanart, especially not of very many different characters, but I'm having fun with this. Drawing Kitty is FREAKING HARD, if you show her using her powers. Urgh, so hard. I'm only sort of happy with it, but I love the character so much that I don't really care. :D

D'Aawwwwww

I drew a sketch of Anya, Matthew, and their future child while I was bored. Then I inked it.
I'm gonna color this. I'm working on it right now, actually.It's quite wonky, but I don't particularly care. I still like it. I had a really hard time getting the tattoos to work out how I wanted. Also, my "scan" didn't work very well, so I had to improvise some of the lines.

Life Drawing

I am not dead. Also, I did an art today. I recently joined an art guild on Gaia, and I feel very inferior to most of the people in there, who are hella good. So I did a life drawing. It's John! Yay! Playing L4D over at Mike's house. Um.. yeah.

I can't find my tablet pen! D:

Opacity Sketches

I finally decided to make a .PSD that's just for sketching. Now that Detour's over and summer is nearly here, I think I'll actually have time to use it.

I've been drawing a more realistic eye for a while, now. I just think that eyes are super gorgeous. I've always had trouble making eyes look good when I only have one color, though. So, I played with the opacity a little bit. Then.. colored it. Sort of.


And then I have one that looks like it could be GWS fanart, but this girl's a bit thinner than Jamie. I set the brush to 50% opacity and sketched with it. It was really fun!

I hope to do more of these in the future.

Cute thing

I just thought this was cute and wanted to share. Detour is in 8 days and I still have a ton to do.


It's one of the bookmarks I'm working on. I'll share them all once I'm finished with this one. Three more after this!

Characters

I have two drawings today.


This first one was for John for Valentine's Day. It's Anya and Matthew, from SciFi 3. I did it in Copic Markers and it was really difficult.


Then this one is of my Mage character. John's gonna run Mage next. She's a virtual adept, but I don't know much about her more than that. I'm really happy this drawing, even though I did it in like 20 minutes and I didn't shade it or anything.

Adorable WIP

I'm working on the cast page for Loser Corner, and happened to draw this for Ellie:I just thought it was really cute, and I'm super happy with it. The full version is just as adorable, but I'm saving that for the actual page. I guess.

I'll link it when it's done.

Art Class Update

Just a quick thing to show what I've been doing in my art class...

It looks better in person, I promise. My phone's camera made it look sort of.. stringy? That's not even the right word. Either way, this is it.

Our assignment was to use ink and oil pastels to create a self-portrait, and it had to have at least one 3D looking part to it. It could be anywhere on the spectrum of realistic to abstract. I've never really used oil pastels before, and I'm really happy with how this came out. Ms. Lora actually used my drawing as an example of how to do 3D coloring, and had me explain to the class how I did it. It was scary. D:

Reference Sheet!

Look, I made a thing!
I've drawn other things recently, but a lot of them have been for Detour, which is at the end of April. I intend to post all of my Detour stuff together in one entry.

Anyway, it's Anya! Yaaay reference sheet! :D

Busy Busy Busy

Man, did anyone else watch that animated version of Frosty the Snowman? I loved that movie when I was little, even though the GIGANTIC FEET bugged the crap out of me. (Sorry, that's what the title of this post reminded me of...)

Anyway. I've been super busy with school. I have piles and piles of homework, plus I have to try and work on cleaning my room, attempt to have a social life, knit, and--oh right--sleep. Basically, if it weren't for art class, I would rarely get a chance to draw at all. Sort of. xP

Speaking of art class, this is what we're working on right now.
(Sorry for the terrible quality. I had to take a photo with my phone, since I'm leaving my gigantor sketchbook at school unless I have to.)

It's a negative space drawing! Or, it will be, at least! See how some of the parts have started being blacked in? Yeah. We have all of the next class period to work on it, and I didn't want to start filling in huge spaces without charcoal if I couldn't fix it, and I can't really fix it until it's done.
But I'm really proud of this one! And! And! And! My professor used my drawing as an example for some of the students who weren't getting it for what a negative space drawing "should" look like. I was super proud of myself. :)

I also did a continuous line drawing of John in my class sketchbook that I'm super proud of. If I get the chance, I'll upload it. I just need to figure out how to scan it in or something without tearing it out.

Oodles of Doodles

I compiled a buncha doodles/sketches from the first half of my sketchbook, and put them all together. :) I then colored some of them in photoshop by way of the "multiply" option.
There are a bunch of drawings of Anya and Maja, my two main RP characters. Then there's some fanart, some more RP drawings, and some life drawings. If you want to know more about a specific drawing, ask! That's what the numbers are for! ...Though I think there's two 13's or 12's or something. =3=

Update by Way of Art Dump

HEY GUESS WHAT.
Art Dump.


This first one is my D&D character for the campaign we're sort-of-currently playing. (Our two main DMs switch off, and it's currently the other game.) She used to work in a brothel, but then she was saved by some religious type person, and decided to devote herself to a religion. Thankfully, she managed to find a goddess who . . . shares her views. She's trying really hard, she just has no idea what she's doing.This is part of my Convention Adventure series, actually. It's my friend Anna at CONvergence 2009. Most of these can be found at muffinsquire.deviantart.com, if you're interested.
This is an ID I made to use on my deviantart page. I basically traced a photograph, then modified it somewhat. This is my most current ID. Also, it's a .png, so I apologize if Blogger freaks out when you try and look at it.This drawing is going to be sold at Anime Detour 2010, and is actually a redraw of a picture I did about a year ago. Zelda, Link and Malon. :3