Nautical Lady

I have an art fair coming up this Saturday and I wanted to make something fresh to sell there. I have been sketching for days trying to come up with something I liked enough to paint and when I had finally given up and started sketching for funsies, I got this. Go figure. My scanner, computer, and printer strongly disagreed with me on my color choices but I found a compromise. Limited run of 100, signed and numbered and for sale on etsy.
Watercolor and ink on hot press watercolor paper.

Darfur Crisis

I can finally post this! Click the image for the published comic; if the title page isn't working there, click "Next"

This was really a great project to be a part of. Hopefully educational comics like this will make a difference.
Ruchir Shah was great to work with throughout this entire project and EZ Comics, the non-profit comic company he founded, is a wonderful idea.

On a technical note, this entire project was a 10 page comic (title page included) that took me a week to sketch, ink, paint, and add text to. Meeting that intense of a deadline was a challenge but was so worth it. The majority of the comic was done with Burnt Sienna ink, nib pen, and watercolor on Bristol board and edited in Photoshop CS5.

Steampunk Versus

For my latest assignment, I had to take a character and draw a cartoon version and a live action version.

 

I think I preferred the Live Action version more before I colored it but it'd be worth trying out this style again. I also LOVED making the comic version and i might so something more with this character. She's certainly practical enough to draw frequently (by design). Comic is ink lineart with a brush and Live Action is ink by nib, colored pencil and blender pen. (the green is so her leg can be replaced with a CGI steampunk leg)

Coney Island

This past weekend, I went to Coney Island to see the annual Mermaid Parade! :D I officially love that place and can't wait to go back when it's not so completely packed.

I saved the lineart for this before I painted it so I might paint it again digitally with different colors some day but I kinda love how this came out. I'm gonna sell these at a limited run of 100, signed and numbered individually. Either email me or check out my etsy if you are interested ^.^

Sailor Snarl

What started as a warmup sketch turned into a full detail painting. Go figure.

I never understood how Sailor Moon would fly through the air, slam into a boulder, then counter attack while her hair remained perfectly untangled and, well, perfect. 

Sailor Moon (c) Naoko Takeuchi

Side note, I have officially graduated. Yay me ^.^ UVM has finally given me my fancy piece of paper! :D

Lemonhead

I was on such a roll yesterday, I got a second painting done between cleaning the house and making muffins. (yes, I'm a 50s housewife at heart, this is known.) I've been wanting to play with masked out hair and splatters for awhile and this turned out better than I expected.

The drawing, inking, and painting all just sort of clicked as I was working. Even the masking, which is normally wicked nerve wracking for me, went exactly as I wanted it to. It helps that I practically poured on the masking fluid to make sure it came up cleanly once I was done painting. I'm also going to sell prints of this at Spiritual Haze, framed, signed, and numbered.

Rococo paper dolls

I made these to put together as a puppet animation and they are, pretty much, paper dolls. I'm going to edit them further in Photoshop before bringing them into After Effects. I really wanted to combine costume design and animation for this assignment.

 

I sketched, inked, and painted these entirely by hand. As much as I love digital painting and it's capabilities, I have been neglecting traditional artwork way too much for my tastes lately. My art has been kinda stale for the past few years and I'm going to make more of a point of challenging myself.

In other news, I've started hearing back from internships but no real progress yet. I also sold a painting at Spiritual Haze! :D

Hunt Storyboard

This was my final project for my storyboarding course last semester. I eventually want to complete this animation for my reel but in the meantime, this is what's done.

 Hopefully the story is pretty obvious. I'll finish the character sheets and concept art for this soon so the overall feel will be a bit more obvious before I finish the actual animation.

Character sheets WIP

 Last summer I started a project with a friend of mine. He was writing a post-apocalyptic story and will eventually need artwork for it. I started by doing character sheets for two of the characters.

 

I started by sketching the designs on tracing paper then taping the paper to the back of bristol board to transfer it through. This was before I had my epic light box so I had to hold the paper up to a glass door with a lamp behind it (>.< good times). These pics are just what I got from the scan-n-stitch. I'm going to bring it into Photoshop and clean it up, color it a bit, and add some texture to the background.  

Good News, Everyone! (did you hear that in Professor Farnsworth's voice?) My goal for this month was to get more pageviews this month than last month and as of last night and some blog trading on Etsy, I finally reached my goal with calendar days to spare!

Masquerade

This took me a lot longer than I expected and I keep changing my mind on how I feel about it but overall, I'm please enough with it to show it here.

This one isn't signed because I'm selling 25 prints, each individually signed and numbered, on Etsy. Once I find the right frame, I'll sell the currently signed original too. As stated in the previous post, this is a costume design based on Georgian fashion (think Moliere to Marie Antoinette, also referred to as Rococo. It's what Europe was doing when the U.S. was in it's Colonial period). I took some artistic license and simplified the style some. This is 5" x 7" on watercolor paper.

the first of many

Here it is, the first page of the Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" adaptation graphic novel I've been working on. When it's done, it'll be 20 pages long and pretty different from the original. I'm not going to give too much away yet but I have 5 pages to show after this so stay posted.
The colors are a bit muted but I don't want to edit it until I have some natural light coming in (or until I can use the REALLY nice scanners in the art building) so I get them as accurate as possible. I used ink and watercolor on a watercolor block. I also used masking fluid on this one in order to get the sun all shiny. I'm going to add text in later. Eventually, I'm going to publish this so keep a lookout for it ^.^

ACEO

This'll be a short post because I officially can't get to my bed, let alone sit on it.
I made a couple of Artist's Trading Cards (or ACEOs) and they're currently for sale (for cheap! buy them!) on Etsy.

Atomic

So, kinda lovin' that there are actually subsets of Steampunk called Atompunk (1945-1965) and Decopunk (1920-1950). Love it.
This picture was for the Design-A-Character challenge "Outerspace"The original is bluer but I didn't want to go back over to the art building to scan. I really like white ink. Ok, too sleepy, need breakfast and shower. <:P

Landing

I get so impatient when I have a lot of pieces at once to upload and I have to pace them out. That said, this was one of the pieces I scanned yesterday. I'm wicked proud of the light and shadow on this painting. I know I exaggerated the light on her face but she's magic so there. I'm starting to get in the mood for Halloween.
Expect another post tomorrow! :D

Oh. And prints of this painting are available for $15 each at my etsy store (link to the right). Please check it out. :D

Scaaaaanner

What a difference an amazing scanner makes. I was having some color balance issues with my scanner so I used one of the Art Department's. The colors are so crisp by comparison!! Definitely worth the hike over (and it helps that it's a gorgeous day out.) That said, I rescanned the Goldfish mermaid painting, a new steampunk painting which I'll post below, a cute witch painting which I'll try to remember to post tomorrow, and some ACEOs. All of which are for sale, either as originals or as prints, in my etsy store. I realized I forgot to post the link before so I'll add it to the site of the blog. Feel free to check that and/or my deviantart page.I call her "Goldie! Goddess of the Skies"; A WWI-era Steampunk character. I had a lot of fun painting a canvas with a similar concept recently so I wanted to keep the idea going. I think this'll become a trend.

o.o two in a row!

So I just whipped up (read: worked on for 2.5 hrs) another picture to sell on Etsy. I'm wicked proud of how this one came out. My scanner has some color balance issues so I have to trick OpenCanvas into letting me fix the color but I think I've pretty much matched the scan to the original.

I used a similar design to my Little Mermaid girl. India Ink and Watercolor on Bristol Board. Yah.

Scenes of Burlington

One day for class we went downtown and sketched out some of what we saw. Our assignment was to draw a two page story with downtown Burlington as the setting (or at least parts of Burlington). I really had to pee for this little field trip so, here's what I got.

This was the first time I used non-photo blue color pencil for the sketching part of it. I LOVE NON-PHOTO BLUE! :D I really didn't think it would work but the end result speaks for itself. I inked it with nibbed pen and india ink on Bristol board.

Tortoise and the Hare

This was one of the earlier assignments for my course. We had to do two pages to tell the story of the tortoise and the hare. Ink pen and india ink on bristol again.

Mouse Hunt

So the dramas of my first apartment lead to a story for my final project in my course. My roommate, Sheila (a.k.a. Chiatar), agrees that this is pretty true to the actual hunt. I left out some details, like trying to suffocate the mouse in a peanut butter jar (we wanted it to go out happy) or my moral dilemma over killing something that looked like my pet gerbil, Doodle. I also left out the fact that just after we gave a toast to our fallen enemy (we did what any good Irish-American would do at a funeral: we drank to the dead), we caught another, and then another a couple days later.
As a warning: I apologize for the swears if you're sensitive to that but it needed to be done. It was the only way to get the hatred we had for this mouse across. (Sorry, Mom)

It was a harsh lesson to learn but c'est la vie. We at least put them outside so the locals cats could enjoy them (they didn't though >.<). I used ink pens on bristol.