Invisible work

I've been working hard on what I hope will be my first children's book. As such, I don't feel it is appropriate to show online until I get this published (hopefully!). Nor will I be mentioning anything about the story. What I do want to talk about is my approach and initial thoughts on the project.

First, this project is new and shiny, thus it is in the 'fun' stage. I have a lot of enthusiasm about the project currently and I hope to maintain a degree of enthusiasm through the end of the project. I think it helps that this project is MY project for the first time, and it is exactly what I want it to be.

The storyline I'm currently working on is one of a few concepts that have always been tagging along in the back of my mind throughout school and the past couple of years. I have sketches spattered throughout many of my sketchbooks that explore ideas and possible directions, some of them more concrete then others. I am happy to say that I feel my drawing skills have improved since those initial sketches because even though I slow down and slack off, I've never stopped.

One of the key approaches I'm taking in this book is to tackle my greatest fears and weakest points in drawing. The images will be full of hands and feet, complex expressions, and--the greatest horror of them all--perspective! I want this project to be a challenge that makes me push my skills as much as I can so I can say that the result of my first book was to make me a better artist. So far I've filled up 6 pages with preliminary concept sketches, and I have multiple folders of image references ready for my use. The more I draw, the more I'm eager to come back the next evening and draw instead of watching tv or reading books. I want to see how my own story unfolds.

There is only one negative to note currently with my project: I've gone to bed with so many ideas in my head that I've lost sleep. I even woke up in the middle of the night the other day and ended up drawing for an hour.

Illustration Friday: Confined

Over the years his expression became confined to one of loathing, disdain, & disgust.

I tried something new with this sketch. After I drew it, I taped a piece of tracing paper over the sketch and inked the tracing paper. I think the results are decent, but I could do better. The heavy outlines are too heavy for the size of the sketch. Some of the more delicate linework from the sketch got obliterated. At first I was laying in the hatching very slowly and that made a heavier line, but once I started working quickly, the hatching looked much nicer. I'm not going to go back now, but I should have hatched more on the left side of the face to push it back more. It competes too much with the nose.

Daily Sketch 2: Flickr Quickdraw

I haven't done any quick sketches in a while, and it shows...the really bad ones are the first couple, but I started to get warmed up and got a bit better. In theory, these are minute long sketches, but I think I spent up to 5 minutes on some of them. I think next time I'm going to try this with my favorite ink pens, which I find I really love using when i'm in life drawing. The permanency of it tends to make me loosen up and surprisingly draw more accurately. Go figure. My favorite of the night is the guy's nose.

All these were pulled from Flickr's interesting photos from the last 7 days :) Some of these photos are absolutely gorgeous.

Links to original photos in no specific order:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mandi615/4243364480/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41827227@N03/4259448092/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/itzick/4251519364/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joel_r/4241774044/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexissmith/4246149852/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skr1993/4256605473/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreamless-qtr/4256064382/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamlowercasepeople/4249476612/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23934051@N02/4243540553/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomitapio/4246542168/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krakote/4245270108/

Daily Sketch 1: Monkeys

First of all, my IF: Renewal post (previous post) got 12 posts! WOOHOO! that's already 50% more posts then my best IF post last year. I think that's a perfect way to start the year.

Next, posts were nil the past two days because my evenings became filled: saying farewell to a coworker one evening, and taking my visiting aunt and uncle to Griffith Park Observatory.

Today's sketch is monkeys, because i'm trying to fulfill a promise to my co-worker that I'd do drawings for her child's room.

Illustration Friday: Renewal

Re-cycler Squirrel

I had fun with my little squirrel. The thumbnail at the bottom of the page is the initial sketch. There are elements from the initial that I like better, including working in the recycling symbols. If I ever do this as a finished piece, I think i'll try to work it with those arrows as the framing device. Mostly, I love his ears and the bottle cap.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone!

My first post of 2010 is both good and slightly unfortunate. Good because you get a finished artwork post; slightly unfortunate because this is the fleeting turtles illustration that I entered in the SILA Illustration West competition...it didn't get chosen. Oh well...I plan on doing better next year and hopefully enter multiple pieces. I think that will definitely help me increase my chances of getting a piece of work into the competition. I still may enter it into the Communication Arts illustration competition, but i'm not 100% sure i'm going to submit...the deadline is in just a few days.

I feel that I've improved 10-fold over the first SILA submission I entered in a few years back and I'm hopeful that my future entries will show as much or more improvement from the current piece. It probably also didn't help that I was entering into the unpublished category, which is the category with the most entries and the largest range of styles. I can't help thinking that I really need to get some artwork published, even if it is for a small publication.

I got a really awesome gift from one of my friends this year: Do it Later! A 2010 Planner (or Non-Planner) for the Creative Procrastinator. I'm excited to see if I can fill it up or use it to motivate me and keep me going strong with all my plans for the year...including of course keeping everyone entertained by my sketches/doodles/artwork :) It's going to sit right on my desk and glare at me whenever I'm sitting there, asking me why I'm writing on my blog rather than working on art... hmmm... i should go.

Without further ado, the art:

Happy Holly Days!

The old year is ending and this will be the first year I've actually created a holiday-oriented illustration! yay!

This has been a busy year with work as usual but also with all my new classes. In addition to a half year of taekwondo twice a week, I've taken many classes at The Animation Guild:

Traditional Animation Basics 1 & 2

Life drawing (twice)

Animal Drawing at the LA Zoo

Character design

I started the year strong with my sketchbook, and although it dwindled off as the year progressed, I hope to have renewed drive in the coming months. I'm planning on posting daily sketches again as well as working on my first children's book (which won't be posted)

2009 blog recap:

82 posts

115 comments! woohoo!

40 daily sketch posts

16 Illustration Friday posts

Posts with most comments: Illustration Friday Flying and IF Germs at 8 comments each; IF Germs also generated the most visits in 1 day: 54

Goals for 2010 blog:

1. Post at least 116 posts: one for each comment in 2009 plus one (for effort!)

2. Post more than 41 daily sketches

3. Post more than 16 illustration friday posts.

To everyone who has commented this year: YOU ROCK! thank you for all your feedback and I hope to grow my blog more in 2010.

Have a happy holiday season with family and friends!

Comment Moderation

Unfortunately, I've started getting spam posts on my comments, rather than actual comments about how good or bad my work is. To resolve this issue, I've had to restrict who can post comments to my site. Now only people registered with Blogger/OpenID can post, rather than any random visitor. That may result in a reduction of comments on my site, but it is really frustrating to see that you received a comment, and you get excited then you read a random piece of crap that has absolutely nothing to do with your art.

Sorry to those actual posters who want to give feedback or support but don't feel they should have to sign in/register. I wish I could leave it open to all.

Monster sketch

Found this website that records your sketches as you work: Odosketch!



The limited palette makes it all the more fun because it unifies all the various styles of sketches that appear on the website.

Will have to play around with this more when i'm not on my lunch break.

November is project-finishing month

It's been a busy two weeks, particularly Halloween weekend. I flew out to Tampa to participate in my friends' halloween/masquerade/1920's wedding. Complete with a horror movie cake. :) Fun, but incredibly hectic. The two days after I got back, I slept about 11 hours each day.

My goal for November is the completion of projects:

1. Grandfather's Memoirs - editing is coming along. about 2/3 through editing by hand (made good use of my plane flight last weekend), but I still need to enter all those edits into the digital document...and create the family tree/tables...and finalize the cover...

2. Panda animation - from my animation class last semester. I finished the backgrounds I was working on, but I have yet to make the final tweaks to my line art for the panda.

3. Dog spinning rough animation - from my character design class this semester.

4. Tentative project that I shouldn't be working on, but I couldn't help myself...if anything comes of this project, I will post more about it when I am able.

5. Possible logo design...

6. Illustration friday...since I haven't done one in a while.

As you can see, lots on my plate AND we're heading into the busy season at work.

I also want to scan some of my life drawing from the two semesters I took this year. I went through it and deemed less than a fourth of the pencil scrawls as acceptable and recognizable as a human, but it's a start.

Posting might be scant, since the major project this month is not art related in the least. But I'll try my best to start filling up my sketchbook again and posting images.

Plans...

So I'm in between art projects at the moment, but it's going to be a bit before I work on any long-term projects. I still haven't finished my Grandfather's project and I'd really like to get that finished up in time for Christmas. So I will be dedicating most of my limited free time to that for the foreseeable future.

I'll still be working on Illustration Friday drawings in my sketchbook, and hopefully something Wild Things inspired. If you're creating fan music, it's called filk; if you creating fan stories, it's fanfic; so what is fan art? fart? um...no. Whatever it's called, I want to create one to get posted on Terrible Yellow Eyes.

The good news is that I have finished another sketchbook! woohoo! This one took a bit longer then the last, and technically has a few sparse pages that I probably could fill with sketches and ideas. Still, I think I'll retire this one and start fresh this Friday with a new book. I think it will be a standard journal type book, rather than the landscape one this time. I'd like to work with a larger sketchbook, but the 6x9ish size fits so nicely in my purse.

Illustration Friday: Flying

Between reading about Koldo Barroso's flying fish, finally getting to read the first volume of Flight (one of the stories has a flying whale), and having a couple other whale and fish inspirations popping up on my blog reader recently, I've been motivated to draw my own variation. Originally, I wanted to take another stab at Steampunk a la Greg Manchess' rework of the Tor.com logo for steampunk month.

Alas, I got as far as a basic hot-air balloon...then the whale-beta fish appeared (if the fish are flying in air, they need pretty, flowing fins and all) then the koi, the angelfish (sort of) and the salmon (I think). Finally, I knew there had to be tiny people in the hot air balloon to give a sense of scale. And if you were in a hot air balloon looking at giant flying fish creatures, wouldn't you want to reach out and try to touch one?

If I ever do a finished piece of this, I think I need to fix the background color so it is the lightest around the people in the balloon so the eye focuses on them. I may color this one more, but I have a couple projects around the house I need to work on...and some homework to do.

IF: Germs

I immediately have to apologize to a particular person for this post. You know who you are, and why I'm apologizing. I didn't pick the topic... i am so sorry and will try to post many posts to get this past my homepage. :)

That being said...GERMS!!!



One thing kept popping into my head, over and over as I thought of today's topic: the computer game I played for many hours in college: WORMS! I loved that game, and the crazy landscapes and the worms perched on the smallest little tips of things not blown up (yet) and wouldn't it be cool to have a germ perched on a nose/landscape getting ready to attack with a big weapon?

Um...he's icky, I know. But he's silly, so that works for me. Plus, it really is perfect timing with the start of flu season.

Enjoy my spoof!

Teaser...

I have entered the completed Fleeting Turtles as an unpublished piece into the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles annual competition, Illustration West. It's been about 4 years since I last entered this competition. I didn't get accepted then, so I'm hoping I've improved enough to get accepted this year. I don't know whether or not I should be showing this work before the show, so I'm going to keep the finished piece a surprise until I know the results.

I will give you a teaser:

I had a lot of great feedback from friends and family on final tweaks to make my illustration as refined as possible before entering it into the competition. I thank them all for their great input and suggestions!

Character Design: homework #1

For our first homework assignment, we had to create any type of character that we REALLY wanted to draw based upon someone we know. I chose the most expressive person I know--one of our best friends, Philip. (I apologize to Phil for him unknowingly becoming my reference model and my awkward handling of any drawings resulting from his reference)

Eric wanted me to draw him as a raccoon, because of an inside joke from childhood. I tried multiple times, but couldn't get it to look right. So I turned him into a robot instead :) A gangly one, of course!

There is a character turnaround that goes with the sketchbook pages, but I'm supposed to make the legs longer and still scan it... It's late... I'm tired... Off to bed.

SketchCrawl 24: Grand Central Market

It was a beautiful day for the sketchcrawl this past weekend, and there was a great turnout! Almost double the number of people from last time. I told a bunch of my friends from the animation classes i'm taking and about 5 of them showed up. Grand Central Market was an interesting place I've never been to and there were so many things to look at. I was tempted to draw some of the neon signage (actually draw the shapes of the tubing, not just write out what the signs say) but instead I gravitated towards the GIANT gumball machine.

I drew more people this time, which I'm very proud of. I'm particularly fond of the janitor sketch, although I'm not quite sure what ended up in his left hand. It was supposed to be a lunch tray, but it just didn't work.

After sketching for a number of hours we headed over to the Bradbury building across the street. It had beautiful and incredibly intricate architecture and lots of stairs and ornate railings...and it scared me. I chickened out on the architecture and went back and added color to the sketch of one of the sketchcrawlers instead.

I stayed until about 6, although I was really done drawing around 4. I did do some crazy animal doodles during that time: monkeys, sheep, and then an awkward cow based on the Dana Lyons song "Cows with Guns". Darn you Steve and Lisa for introducing me to that song. I can't stop playing it....

Parade of Cats

I've started the next semester of art classes with my Character Design class on Tuesday. We cut out geometric shapes and put them together any way we wanted to create a cat. Then we had to do more organic thumbnail sketches based on our creation. Here is my slew of cats...and a duck.

I have art and taekwondo classes 4 days a week, so I will most likely be doing bulk postings on the weekends. Don't expect anything until this sunday. I have a concert friday, and Sketchcrawl and the Terrible Yellow Eyes gallery show on saturday. This is a very busy week for me!

Illustration Friday: Strong

It's still a work-in-progress, but i'm really having fun with this piece. My only wish is that I had scanned the pencil drawing first, but that's ok. The face matches the pencil drawing fairly closely, but the pants and the shirt are slightly different...I also didn't spend even a third of the time on those that I did on the face. I also used photo reference to help with the expression! It made things MUCH easier, and once I had the drawing done to my liking, I found I really didn't need to look at the reference again for shading, because I shaded in crucial tones, such as the brow shadow, and the puckers in the bottom lip, chin, and cheeks. I've also been reading Peter de Seve's blog, so I'm being inspired by his work.

I will finish this up later and post an update once it's done. But now, to bed!

Illustration Friday: Impatient

One month later and our house is still not back to normal. I still have no scanner/printer hookup, or webcam to call my niece and nephew. But at least our computers are off the dining room table again.

I finally did an illustration for illustration friday. It's been a while! He was inspired by my drawings of eagles from the zoo. I'm not sure if he's an eagle...he's some wacky sort of bird. I colored him with the replacement colored pencils I bought from the art store, about 7 colors in all. I just had them nearby, saw that they made a nice color palette, and proceeded to sharpen all my brand new pencils. :)

23rd Sketchcrawl: Echo Park

I participated in my first sketchcrawl yesterday! It was a lot of fun, but unfortunately I forgot to bring a camera. There happened to be a festival going on in the park this weekend, so there were MANY things to sketch. I didn't draw as many people as I wanted to, but I'd been itching to practice drawing buildings and urban scenes.

There was a group of street cleaners that I wish I had gotten a picture of to sketch later. They all had identical shirts, but different tools and different body types/postures. They would have been fun to capture in the sketchbook.

Sorry for the bad quality of the images. I don't have a scanner hooked up at the moment due to chaos in our house. I had to photograph them as best as I could with the iphone.