Chamomile Witch

A little witch inspired by Japanese mori (forest) girls, with a penchant for chamomile tea!

Family Funtimes

Once upon a time, many moons ago, a little tangerine-haired girl clad in a cruddy green sweater popped up in my head, dancing to a song by the band Blonde Redhead. That last detail isn't so important to her character, but she stuck around for years later.  

Here rambunctious Angie is living it up at the carnival with her parents. One day I'll conquer my distaste for backgrounds. Look, they're standing on a patch of ground! That's one step up from floating in an aimless white abyss.

Medusa

Before I was drenched in freelance work this past summer, I DREW.  For fun.  Sometimes.  A little!

Sketch Dailies over at the Twitters produces prompts daily (who'da figured) and many moons ago, one of their prompts was Medusa.  They can really help dig you out of an art funk or if you're plain bored or out of ideas, they usually come up with great topics!

I like to think that Medusa knew how to keep her hair on point.  She could wrangle those snakes into cute updo styles!  Hmmmm that gives me some ideas....

Monkey King!

Of course I forgot his tail!

Giraffe-fashionistas!

I love animals!  I loooooooove-ish fashion, but being a lazy bum I'm not totally up n up on current trends (besides easy comfy ones like big baggy sweater, leggings, boots, DONE).  So, in this little animal world I'm developing I came up with a giraffe who's all about colorful outfits and is ~totes~ trendy!  Well, in my universe this is 'trendy'.  I just put random stuff together and hope stylists with actual taste don't run away screaming in a fit.

If there's anyone still sticking around blogspot, kudos to you!  I haven't given up on it despite the death of Google Reader (oh, Reader...why...I thought we had something special), though maybe it's a futile effort reviving this little blog.

If you're looking for a good GR replacement, I recommend Feedly!  It's similar in functionality to Reader AND it has a cute little mascot.  Really that was the selling point for me :)

Bunbuns!

Wowza!  I've managed two complete posts in one year!  A personal best!

I'll try to do better next year.  There are a few stories that I'm pretty keen on developing, one of which involves this little fellow below.  He's still fairly early in development, thus the sketchines, and he hasn't got a name yet, so we'll just call him Mr. Bunbun for now.  He works as a librarian/archivist at a library that's affiliated with a law firm.  He'd be more fond of his job if he could burrow beneath mountainous stacks of books to read than tend to fussy customers.  He tries his best to be meticulous about his job, but he's a very small rabbit in a very big library packed with very large books.

I am the best blogger....

...in all the land. My annual posts are all the rage with the kids these days.

Ahhhh I'm not making much sense right now.  You just caught me at the tail end of 2 days of AMAAAAAZING lectures of story and animation at the Pixar Masterclass in Chicago!  If you can shell out the money for tuition (and airfare if necessary) it will change how you tell and think about storytelling, acting, and human behavior.  Pretty lofty words for a 2 day lecture, but seriously.  Four years of schooling packed into an 8 hour day each.  It was intense.  It was gold!

I "whipped" up and revamped a few character studies the past few days in preparation for the class.  They seem so weak and BLAH now, after all that we covered, that I just want to trash them and apply everything that I've learned. Well ok that's too drastic; there are some salvageable bits in them.  But a TON to improve!  And there's no better feeling in the world than to have fresh eyes and actually know what you need to fix!  That you've got a road map as a guide to communicating better (through art anyway, words are still derpy) instead of just fluffy artsy fartsy "It's your art maannnnnn, create and you'll find your way!".  It wasn't just philosophy and theories, the Pixar artists gave you tools to strengthen your own style and ways of working.

Mmmmm my love for animation has been rekindled.  It's pretty daunting to dust off the pencil and light table and tackle animating again, but the itch is driving me up the wall!  I've gotta do SOMEthing, even a crappy walk cycle or a bouncing ball.  I think I'll take on the witch girl and go from there...

Monsters Monsters Everywhere

_Watercolor

Long time no see! So sorry for falling off the face of the earth. Real life got kinda busy, but now I'm here, posting more arts!

I was asked to submit some work to a charity gallery called Power In Numbers, curated by none other than Nucleus! They are the coolbeans mcGee, where all the cool kids hang out. The first watercolor isn't up just yet, though you can the see the second one on their site right now! Check it out here! I feel like a mouse amongst so many giants. The talent is crazy good!

Anyway, back to monsters again! Monsters being fuzzy and warm and monsters being helpful by eating tomato and bologna sandwiches.

Happy Bday mom!

_{Photoshop CS5}

My mom spent the majority of her childhood sneaking into her neighbor's yard and hanging out in their fruit trees, snacking away. A lot of her friends would do the same, but she was the only one wily enough to never get caught. :)

Tried pushing my color palette in a different direction (read: not throwing down every dang candy-colored hue in the world) aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I like where this is going. How about that.

"Mommy, where's Timmy...?"

Timmy's goin' for a ride, y'all!

A birthday gift for one of my besties! I...owe so many friends birthday gifts, it's sad. OR awesome that I have so many friends! Too many frieeennndddssssssss!

Brush Your Teefs

The little girl, Angie, who was featured in my first blog post makes another appearance! This time in color! I'm preparing a portfolio geared towards children's publishing (picture books, educational workbooks, magazines, etc.) showing little kids doing little kid things. Like brushing your teeth! That's very important, especially when you eat as much candy as Angie. This was originally a simple color comp for a watercolor illustration that got a little carried away.



Dalmatian sketches! One or two of these may make it to the watercolor stage. It'll be fun splashing down color against the white and black spindly little bodies.

GONNA KICK YO' FACE IN

_{Kung Fu Panda © Dreamworks Animation}

I've wanted to avoid falling into the fanart pit here, but some movies are simply too awesome to not pay tribute to! Kung Fu Panda came on t.v. last night, which got a friend and me started on some KFP doodles. I got Tigress and she got Po (who is so ADORABLY fat and roly poly!).

I was seriously all in Nico Marlet's* face, studying his way of designing, figuring out what details he'd include and how everything flows together to support one idea. A lot of my characters (and drawings in general) could use some focus, so this was a great exercise.


*_{If you don't know this guy, CHECK HIM OUT AND WORSHIP HIM. He's a designer's designer's designer!}

That kid deserves a gold star

Ahhh~ Mother's Day. They deserve at least one day out of the year for putting up with our crap. And God bless my mom, she is AWESOME and I'll never be able to paint her enough gifts to show how much she means to me. This is a start. Can't go wrong with kittens.

One of These Things Does Not Belong...

Every year for my Grandma's birthday, I make her a painting. This year I imagined how her lifelong love of elephants came to be (her house is overrun with plush pachyderms and ceramic... c..c...you get the idea). As a little girl, she worked on a farm feeding the chickens, caring for cows and such. One day, perhaps a particularly exotic animal snuck out of a traveling circus and sought refuge at her farm...

Frou Frou Finished

Added a frame to that froufrou illustration! It definitely needed something to finish it off. I don't fancy myself a decorative arts person (I commend anyone who can create beautiful non-figurative designs), but gotta admit, getting lost in the swirls and petals was therapeutic. Maybe I'll dabble in it again. :D

Bed Buddies

Just when you thought it was safe to hide under the covers...

I've had this picture in my mind forever and finally got it out. Is this creature kind or cruel? Is it an inch away from nipping off a little toe or is it as frightened of the dark as the little girl is? I'm not sure where my recent fascination with monsters popped up from, but expect more monster-themed illustrations.

I wanna be 6 again

Well, not really, but I sure do miss recess.

Kiddos have invaded my brains! They're everywhere! Especially these two gals (Chloe with the bouncy-flouncy dress, and Angie the running-pouncing-grimacing one). They tell me that they want their own stories, not just content to do random things in white space. So, it shall be, my dears.

Giraffey Taffy

WOWZERS! Two posts within the same month? What sorcery is this??

Giraffe! It's chewin' and chillin'. I had a block of hot press watercolor paper lying around, untouched, because I HATE hot press paper. Cold press is my one true love, but I've seen so many artists who are amazing at using hot press that maybe it doesn't actually require black magic and baby's tears to make good art with it.

It was really tough at first, but I managed to adapt to it and have fun! It's a different, misunderstood monster from cold press. I didn't give it a chance. Anyway, had some fun with watercolor, acrylic, ink (that bled in places), and colored pencils. Next time I wanna get looser and let the colored pencils stand out a bit more. We'll see!

Red pandas go RAAAAAAA

Red panda! I need to add more animals to my portfolio and red pandas seemed like a pretty good place to start. Messin' around with simplified lines and shapes and muted colors. A part of me feels complete now that I've introduced Payne's Grey in the mix. Oh Payne's Grey where have you beeennnn all my life. Mixed with Cadmium Yellow it makes the most pleasant greens (far better than the scan implies) mmmmm~

I need to get out more, haha.

Arts farts!

my poor poor little blog. just another one of my neglected, dusty corners of the internet, haha.

recently, i've been working on making my portfolio more cohesive and pinning down 2 or 3 styles. that way i won't look like a schizo and actually fool people into believing i have direction. it's still fun to go crazy with styles on the side though. :D


ANYWHO on to the arts hello.



turn of the century France, man, that's where it's at! i'm playing around with different frame designs to finish this one off. trying to push shapes and not be so ambiguous with shadows and colors.

this was already posted on my joint themed blog, but the concept was fun enough to post twice. there has to be some kinda clever pun involving jump roping with one's intestines, but i got nuthin.