I don’t know if this one will be funny to anyone else, but I do this all the time. I guess I figure, if I get myself a drink, all I get is a drink. If CJ gets me a drink, I get a drink and a nice feeling! And vice versa. BONUS NICE FEELINGS!

Had to do a quickie comic today because I spent most of today working on art I can’t show you! Oh no!

But still.. this one = truth. I have now perfected what I call “muffinchops”, where I shave everything but right where my inner thighs meet my torso, because fuck that.

Thought up a little comic series this morning! I have a few more planned that I’ll try and post over the next few weeks or something like that. We’ll see. :)

Note on this one: This actually never happens, because CJ hates fun. But at least he doesn’t make fun of me for having it!

I actually wasn’t planning on doing it even this week, but my dear friend Chelsey Holeman mentioned it and I immediately had an idea.. and the idea just went super well. So here we are:

 Right when I read “swamp” I knew I wanted to do something based off of Swamp People. I LOVE that show, the people on it are so funny and interesting, both completely stereotypical and also breaking those stereotypes in really astonishing ways. (The guy I based this sketch on builds boats! Crazy boats WITH HIS HANDS.)

I wasn’t planning on going in quite this direction – especially on the colors – but the sketch just worked out so well and my initial block-ins for the colors had an energy to them.. and I liked my rough line on his nose and that was that. He’s a cutie!

Let me tell you, it was nice to have something come together easily. The last few pieces I’ve been working on (which I can’t wait to show you all! but it will probably be a while..) were very labored.. I missed easy spontaneity.

I’ve been doing daily drawings over on Twitter again, and while I’m trying not to post them here for fear of being redundant, this one I feel merits a bit o’ blogging.

It’s been a long, long time since I did anything with realism.. Got so caught up in my silly noodle-arm people I forgot how much I used to love portraiture! So after watching the new Sherlock show (SO excellent, by the way) and becoming enamored with the dynamics of Benedict Cumberbatch’s face (SERIOUSLY THAT IS THE ACTOR’S NAME. WHAT) I decided I’d see where my portraiture skills are at!

And here they are. I’m pretty happy with this, but I see I still do that boring thing with skin tones and purple. So I guess I’ll have to try again and push myself further. And I need to work on how I render hair.

Funny how the littlest exercises can turn into your favorite works, eh?

This was just meant to be a simple rebound off a “your favorite video game” piece on dribbble. I wanted to get it done fast and I tried out something I haven’t really done before – leaving my sketch in and painting over it. I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! It let me be looser and quicker and I think the final just looks so bold and energetic compared to my usual work. Definitely going to mess around with this more!

The piece is of Raz from Psychonauts, my favorite game of all time. (Though recently Alice: Madness Returns is seriously impressing me..) Not only is it hilarious and really fun to play (over and over…), the art direction is just fantastic. That game made me reconsider how I approach color and character design.. and I guess I’m still getting inspiration from it. :)

This is the finished illustration from my line width tutorial! I’m not going to lie – it is one of my favorite things I have done in ages.

Also just going to throw this out there-
I did a bit of fanart for my favorite show, Misfits. I do not love how it turned out (I guess I find it generic?) but I was excited to play with the line width tool some more.

But at work the other day I stumbled across a new tool that has COMPLETELY changed the way I view Adobe Illustrator and making lineart. I now bequeath this knowledge to you!

TUTORIAL AHOY!

Alright guys, I hate inking. In photoshop, my lines look wobbly no matter what I do, no matter how many times I go over it, if I use a fancy tablet, if I tape paper on it, blah blah. It’s never right.

I thought the pressure-sensitive brush tool in illustrator would make this better. It doesn’t. Sure, it smooths my lines out, but it also takes out all the character in my drawings. They look mushy, imprecise. I can’t control the line width very well, either – I have to really exaggerate my strokes to get at all the look I want, and it’s still not quite right.

Enter: the line width tool. HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS. This tool lets you draw out your lines with the pen or pencil tool (I prefer the pen tool, personally – more control once you know how to use it) and then go back and adjust the width all along the line so it’s how you want it. I should not be allowed this much control over my artwork!

If that doesn’t make sense, it’s ok. I made pictures!

First I made a beautiful drawing in photoshop! (Totally inspired by OOH, GIRL, which fills me with delight.)

Then I turned down the opacity and started tracing the lines with the pen tool. If you do not know how to use the pen tool, you should learn. It really takes less time than the pencil tool once you’ve got it down. But if you don’t have wobble-hand like me and the pencil gives you nice results, then use that if you like!

Ok it’s inked enough for now. Yes, I know it looks ridiculous. Let me introduce you to our new friend, though:

You never would have guessed that such a silly icon would be so useful, huh? Yet IT IS THE BEST LET ME TELL YOU.

Ok, here I’ve selected that tool, and then grabbed a spot on my line. (It doesn’t have the be a point already, you can pick anywhere.) Then I dragged a little to the side… (this can be finicky, it helps to zoom in a lot.)

And voila! The line has variation!

Here I’ve done a bit more, but I don’t like how fat the end of that line is. So I grab the end with my width tool..

And I make it thinner! Yay! But I don’t like the way it’s making so MUCH of the line thinner..

So I use my width tool on a point close to the tip to widen the line again!

And I do that a bunch more until I’m done inking! You can click the image to see more close up the quality of lines you can get this way. And this was just a quicky tutorial drawing!

Now, it does take a while to use this method – but it’s not nearly so fiddly as you think. And, in my opinion, it is completely worth it. The level of control you have over your final art is just ridiculous. And remember, they’re all pen lines, so you can tweak and move the lines themselves even as your adjusting their thickness.

This has opened an entire new world of working, for me. I’ve avoided lines and things with lineart, or disliked my lineart, for YEARS. Now I can’t wait to do comics and silly drawings and experiment with line and get even better with this tool!

The blog is on a temporary hiatus while I move ACROSS THE COUNTRY!

I got a new full-time job in Roanoke, VA, which I’m sure I will talk about more later. Hopefully semi-regular posting can begin again in mid-october, november at the latest.

See you all on the other side!

I love fall. So much! I used to love the feeling of new beginnings from going back to school… but now I am not going back to school. Which is a weird thing.

So anyway, I have actually been busy working on art for various projects that I can’t post yet. (How exciting is THAT?) But I felt bad for not having anything to put on the blog, and I really liked miss Chelsey Holeman’s doodle from the other day, so I thought I’d do a little “back to school” drawing.

I recently purchased and read Anya’s Ghost, so I’ve been totally inspired by Vera Brosgol’s art. So, more of those pencily lines I was messing with.