Dec #9 - Rey

Fanart! Sometimes it happens.

This looks a lot better in real life, just like everything else in my pocket sketchbook. I wish my phone took better photos.

Honestly, I should just be happy that my old iPhone4s still works as well as it does.

Dec #8 - Croatia

Bought myself a little Windsor Newton pocket palette for Christmas. It's roughly the size of my wallet and fits perfectly in any purse. The colors are so much nicer than my last Pelican set. 

Now if I could only learn how to use watercolors properly...

Dec. #7 - Muse

Quick sketch before having to go off to spend Christmas Eve with the boyfriend's parents. 

Spitpaint #37

Topic: Dragon Lance

Back into digital, after almost 3 months! This was originally done for the facebook spitpaint group, but then I kept on going after 30min. The end product took me about an hour.

Beartopia leans
on the brink of disaster
Dragons wreak havoc
without a master.

The Bear king emerges
With the passing of fall
At the end of the day,
He'll conquer them all!

Dec #5 - Breaking Thru the Block

Did this one a couple of days ago when I was pushing through a creative dead zone. I've been doing more underpainting these days, which has been interesting. 

Too lazy to draw a wall, so just used the sketchbook spine instead.

Dec #4 - Cozy

today started off sunny
then turned kinda funny
skies thundered with hail
rain ripped down the rails
and soaked all the mail

Dec. #3 - Cool Under Fire

Pentel brush pen with watercolor, messing around whiteout this time around. I need to figure out how to take better sketchbook photos, the camera on my 4s isn't quite up to snuff.

Dec. #2 - Red Sweater

Sketching in a cafe, playing with different styles and trying to feel out what type of lines feel "right" to make. What makes my stuff look mine?

I wish I could just draw all day long...

Dec. #1 - Salon Bonsai

Sketched my stylist's bonsai in her salon while waiting for my hair to bleach a couple of weekends ago. I just colored it now, moments before Ico fell asleep on my sketchbook.

Took a 2 week break from posting, half of which was spent in Houston, then driving down through Acadian Bayou Country to New Orleans. But now it's time to get back to it - and I'm going to be ambitious and aim for 20 posts to close out the year. Wish me luck!

Garden of Versaille

I've never been, but supposedly there is a spot away from the main bustle where you can rent a rowboat.

Mermaid

Ooooh got a new brush pen...love it. Hoping it will jolt me out of a slow month creatively. In the meantime, have some bewbs.

With her fins and long green tail
Esmerelda swam off to fetch the mail.
On the way back, she took a chance
and decided to prance a footless dance.

Mushroom Umbrella

When it rains on Professor Nibbles
He grabs a shroom and skips the puddles
From the beginning and over the middles
Because rain his brains and hands befuddles.

Albino Boar Guy

Taylor got a birthday clip

and a new boxing gym membership.

He hit the bags every day

dropped the bacon, and hey! 

Now he's less pork and more ripped.

Inktober #11

"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily towards your goal." - Bruce Lee

Ah, the creation story behind this blog. Good intentions are just that; without moving into action, intentions are reduced to time thinking about a thing, never bearing the fruit of a marriage with effort.

The ol' Wacom has been collecting some serious dust this month. I have totally fallen back in love with pen and paper...shall I continue into Inkvember? Inksgiving?

Inktober #10

Why are there no good artichoke jokes on the internet? If you know any, please share.

There were referenced off of a photo I took on the side of the road in Napa this past summer. Made it to #10! I now consider my first Inktober a success.

Inktober #9

Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Inktober #8

Inky quick mountain doodle of an elk grazing at the bottom of the Yosemite Valley before bed.

Inktober #7

Although I love it seeing brush pen work, I don't get it at all...shit is hard to control. I'd rather scratch away with my fine-tipped microns or these Hi-Tec-C's that I've been loving this month. At least it was a good experiment. :P

Inktober #6

Lieutenant Birdthalemew von Vogelsang IV
reported for duty and headed up north
through desert dunes and sandy storms
he flew not by plane
but instead feathered forms.

Inktober #5

Sitting in her invisible chair
the Peacock Goddess didn't care
enough to put on any pants
all she needed were heels to dance.

Inktober #4

I've been getting really inspired by all of the fantastic sketchbooks that I see other artists do. Today's 15 minute inktober experiment was inspired by Ian McQue.

Coyote Sam, on top of a hill
howled at the moon, before getting his fill
of the countryside, fresh air and trees
he moved to the city, and now pays bridge fees.

Inktober #3

Fire-Crested Chihuahua. Started out with a Chinese-crested, and then he caught on fire, heh.

Flaming Fritzie
likes his dogbones charred
and his nails untrimmed
- in his own backyard.

Inktober #2

Been loving this!  I was really into drawing and inking comics back in high school. Haven't done pen and ink for a while, much less markers.

It was a treat to open up my prismacolors from college and find out that they're all still in good working order. :)

Inktober #1

I've been crunching my face off at work, and subsequently painting dropped to all all time low. I'm late to the party, but will be taking a break from digital and spitpainting to do Inktober.

Aiming for 10 this month!

Spitpaint #36

Topic: Mystical Rock

Oh noes she thought, "I'm in a rut!"
Always drawing the same composition, BUT
This one's in space with an astronaut finding
a magical space rock, shiny and blinding...

Spitpaint #35

Topic: Sky Kings

Oof...this one is mehhhhhhhh.

Spitpaint #34

Topic: Troy the Badass Cop

More like Troy the not-so-badass-totally-out-of-my-comfort-zone-spitpaint. Hurmph, posted anyway, because I said I would.

I am freakin' exhausted. Work crunch has killed my brain and I am full of roast chicken and asparagus. Good night.

Spitpaint #33

Topic: Medusa at a Spa

It's tough when a bad hair day bites back
with fangs 2 inches long and black
With a band-aid pack medley
this time she was ready
and wrestled her 'do back on track.

Spitpaint #32

Topic: Red Dawn

Lots of fun dorking around with random brushes today. Also, it looked more like a sunset until the very end...not sure why?

When RS9-z52 woke up from his nap
ten thousand years had passed, like a snap.
His frigid planet now orbits two suns
and he's learned to like his burgers well done.

Spitpaint #31

Topic: Waterfall Circle

Used a sinkhole swimming spot I used to frequent in Austin as inspiration.

On bright and early Summer's day
Hamilton Pool is where we'd play
waking up at crack of dawn
to beat the traffic, beers in tow
bikinis thrown on and floaties gone
to search for parking, high and low.

River Canyon Sketch

I love water and cliffs, so wanted to do a color study. ~40min

Spitpaint #30

Topic: Wise Old Tree, 30min

There once was a tall willow tree
with quite a collection of bears, you see.
Kids would always stop by
to climb up so high
before forgetting their bears absent-mindedly.

Speedpaint #29

Topic: Hive Queen, 30min

Eh. Played with shapes and silhouettes rather than form today. Turned out pretty muddy.
(Crunch is not conducive to poetry. Even really bad poetry.)

Speedpaint #28

Topic: Elf Brute (Halfway to Hades)

Lesson learned: Don't bother judging your imagination, it probably doesn't give a f**k. :D

The way the group works, we get 4 topics to choose from. I started off one way, but ended up on one of the others. 30min generally isn't enough for me to plan much, so I guess that's what happens when I go along for the ride with my twisty brain.

There once was a grumpy elf brute
wandering around searching for loot
he's usually a nice guy
but his contacts got dry
and he stubbed his big toe on a root :(

Speedpaint #27

Topic: Rising From the Sand
time: 30 min

Between two moons
she rose from dust
to gather the dunes
'till dusk, she must

Spitpaint #26

Topic: Ping Pong Smash!

I had some nasty creative block this month...it has been difficult to do anything, from painting to piano, even dancing. It was like I was a different person! For sure I couldn't paint or draw worth crap.

On the up side, my logic brain has been really active, and I've been learning how to put a lot of stuff into our game engine at work. So maybe it's not all bad?

Maybe September will be better.

Spitpaint #25

Topic: Mud Builder

I love swallows. Even if they don' t really live in the jungle or under waterfalls.

Art Camp: Environments - Homework #3 (pt. 1)

This homework was pretty challenging for me - I haven't spent as much time drawing landscapes, much less from the imagination. Oh wells, I will just plod along, slow and steady to learn whatever I can pick up.

Here are my chosen thumbnails + compositional analysis and their corresponding sketches. (slightly out of order, it's getting late). Plus we were told to draw out a quick map of our world, so here is that too. Before Wednesday, I plan to finish up this homework with 3 more sketches of a region riddled with canals at the gate to the city in the east.

Spitpaint #24

Topic: Jack the Friendly Pig

Meet Jack. He's got a good career, wife and two kids. Likes his tea with 2 sugars, one cream. Sports aficionado. Totally approachable, right?

No bad poetry for today. I spent all evening ramping up on homework 3 and am tired as shit. Maybe tomorrow.

Art Camp: Environments - Homework #2

This week's homework was to flesh out some high level game concepts according to a couple rough genre guidelines, then to do a bunch of abstract thumbnails to explore mood and composition. So after writing design docs all week, I got to go home and write some more. (I just wanna paint!!!) But yes, I do understand the mental process he's trying to teach.

My second game inspired me the most, so that's the one I picked to do the extra set of thumbnails and take forward for the rest of the class. These fast, high contrast thumbs are new to me, so I initially had a rough start and threw away a couple of sets. But now I'm really digging the process and getting a lot out of it.

Spitpaint #23

Topic: Black Teeth

(Taking a break from class)

Scaling mountains belched from the sea
a high priestess rose from the depths
flinging her arms up to cast fervently
obsidian teeth from her breath.

Art Camp: Environments - Homework #1

So I enrolled in Noah Bradley's Art Camp this past weekend, as soon as I heard about it. Specifically in the summer program, which is Environmental Concept Design with Titus Luntner.

Which would be great, but they're already on week 5.

And there was a bug on their back end, so I couldn't get into the streams until a couple of days later.

Berk...

So fast forward to me not knowing how to do thumbnails, but doing my best to watch a crap ton of videos and follow along as fast as I can. This so far is the result. I definitely like the newer ones better than the older ones. In the future I'd like to do these every day to loosen up.

Spitpaint #22

Topic: Crown of Roses

...thought I was taking a break from these, but there seems to be a problem with my account, and I can't access my courses yet. So here is yet another one.

Spitpaint #21

Topic: Liquid Fire

My nights are often filled with whiskey, cats and 30 min spitpaints. But likely not for much longer, because I just signed up for Noah Bradley's Art Camp. Can't wait for my account to get activated, soon all of my homeworks will get sketchdumped here as well, whoohoo!

Mister Muffin
always puffin
with his drink
who would've think -
er, thought?

Waterfall Villa

Taking a break from spitpaints for the rest of the month to do some more landscape studies.

Spitpaint #20

Topic: Game with Death

As a high school kid, I read a lot of Neil Gaiman's Sandman hidden in my friend's closet like a cat, listening to Faith No More while the rest of the gang watched Twin Peaks. I always thought Death would have made an awesome big sister. Lucky King of Dreams!

Spitpaint #19

Topic: Dieselpunk Mole

or as Mike called him, "some sorta middle-aged possum" :P

Harold Mole was hard of hearing
though he always attended mass.
He's always in stripey overalls
to hide his gigantic ass.