been awhile

I got back from an intense weekend of visiting people, which was lovely, but I don't have too much work to show. I saw Timon of Athens which is not one of Shakespeare's finest but this was a dark vaudeville steampunk interpretation which was GORGEOUS. I also got some beautiful books on illustration, which is where the inspiration for this came from.

I'm still not thrilled with it and I'm going to keep reworking it but I didn't have much else to show. The Darfur comic is getting published soon so I can finally show that! But in the meantime, I'll only have sketches for awhile I think.

Mixing it up

I've been debating for awhile whether or not I should post other artwork and artists that inspire me, as opposed to just my work. I really like the idea but it always seemed confusing since this blog was acting as my portfolio for awhile. Now that I've remedied that portfolio situation, I am really stoked to reference an artist I've been inspired by ever since she sketched Sailor Moon for me at Bible Camp when I was little.

Veronica Fish is an amazing illustrator who has a beautiful painterly, ethereal style. Her work is always beautiful and badass rolled up in one. She just recently finished a comic book called "Pirates of Mars" that looks absolutely epic! Please go check out her work, especially since she posts progressives on her blog (which is always helpful ^.^) and buy her comic X3!

[artwork in this post is (c) Veronica Fish]

Happy Birthday to me! :D

It's my birthday! Yay! I'm 22 now and in honor of that, I'm taking a break from studying (8 am exam tomorrow morning >.<) and posting the next page of the Little Mermaid adaptation. Not too much else to say.

second page

Yesterday, I had the privilege of meeting Jason Lutes. He's the amazing graphic novelist responsible for Jar of Fools and Berlin: City of Stones (my favorite novel in my current Graphic Novels course). "Berlin" is the first in a series of three books that takes the "clear line" technique you may recognize from the "Tin Tin" series and shows the points of view of Germans from various social classes during the Weimar republic, the time period between the World Wars. If you would like to know more about him or creating comics in general, he is currently a faculty member at The Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT.

In other news, here's the second page of the Little Mermaid adaptation. Not too much to say about it, technically, that I didn't say in the previous post. Here's the first we see of the protagonist with her grandmother and sisters. They were a lot of fun to design and individualize. Originally, I had a page for each of the sisters depicting their journeys to the surface but I had to cut them to make the story more concise. Would anyone like to see a tutorial on making a watercolor block on here? I know there are plenty out there but I need to make another block soon and I thought the viewers at home might be interested. Please let me know! ^.^

Edit: New layout! While I should have been napping to make up for lost sleep last night, I felt playing around with the blog layout was more worthwhile XD While the other one was cute, it was pretty loud and I wanted something softer that I made myself.

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 ^.^