Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas! I've been working on my proposal for a Costume History Graphic novel for McFarland & Company, Inc. and another project for EZ Comics. Since I can't post from either of those, I might as well post some old stuff.

These are two pages I worked on last year for the Little Mermaid adaptation I was working on. That project has been shelved for now but I'll eventually go back to it. (The first one is inspired by Hokusai's "Great Wave")

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.

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 ^.^

Mermaid

I found a great site that I'm now hosting my portfolio on! Click the link under the banner to check it out ^.^

After looking at Chris Sanders work on deviantart, I really wanted to try out the pencil sketching and watercolor combo. I'll try again soon.

I sold a print yesterday, or rather I sold the right to print one personalized digital version of the Enjoy Hookah poster to a photographer in the UK. It was a pretty unorthodox way to sell a print but why would anyone want to pay $20 shipping on a $15 print?

On that note, please let me know if you are interested in buying a print or original of any piece, we'll figure it out.

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.

Class Gallery Showing

I have another big (!) piece for the Body Mod series in the works but you'll have to wait on that. In the meantime, my Adv. Drawing course is working on our "Project of a project" series and we were given the chance to display our works in progress in the Colburn Gallery in Williams Hall. I set my space up as a storyboarding note-taking situation, sketching and writing notes on the wall next to my thumbnails and photocopies of the finished pages. As usual, I got a lot of slack for my work being illustrative (since when is that not "art" anyway?!) and for not being pretentious enough (I'm paraphrasing) but I'm proud of it so nyah nyah.Not a whole lot there to look at, I know, but each one of those watercolored sheets takes between 6 and 10 hours to do so this project isn't exactly something I can crank out in a night.

P.S. HUGE news! There's apparently a large flatbed scanner in the Special Collections area of my college's library that I have complete access to! I think it deserves a visit as soon as possible.

Two-fer Tuesday

As promised, I'm posting the pieces that were on display but hadn't been posted yet. I think I'm going to go back in on both of these and do some lettering but maybe not. I apologize in advance on how awful the photography is. These look a lot better in real life.The first one is one I posted the WIP of a few weeks back. The actual size is 18"x36", the largest of the series so far (but not the largest planned one. You'll see...)
Yup. Steampunk mermaid. I really wanted to do something way out there. I mean, if you were a legless marine biologist, wouldn't you want fins and gills? I tried to make it as practical as possible, though, since she would need to maintain neutral bouyancy (which means the tail would need to be weighted but also allow space for air to be reintroduced) and would need gauges (on her wrists) so she could keep an eye on her depth. This piece is 18"x~25".

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.

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.