Just posting this real quick. haven't posted in a long time. Someday soonish I'll revamp this blog and make an effort to keep it up to date.

As far as subject matter goes. I just got a fantasy artist reference book, that has people dressed up in archetypal fantasy costumes in archetypal poses. It doesnt help for unique characters or non-humanoid ones, but its good if you want to figure out how to draw a barbarian warrior swinging a sword or a princess who is dragon bait. The scenery image I just drew for fun one night, inspired again by Mercedes Lackeys Hawbrother vales. The crouching girl is just a random doodle. The muffin moutain is a bit of an inside joke, involving a mischevious bear character that really likes muffins. a lot.

I havent posted in forever, I know. Been busy with my job and just feeling like I don't have a life. I have been drawing a little, but I just never get around to scanning it. So i'm doing a couple of drawing posts, in no particular order, udpating what I've done the past few months. This isn't everything, this is just what I had in two sketchbooks that I felt like scanning out of.

This is Harm, a character I designed. He's a big strong guy who's a real sweetie. I'm pretty happy with the shading of his face, but he looks a bit child-like. Also, I think i want to change his eyes. when I originally drew them they were more tilted up and i think that might help him not look so young, too. But that's something i'll work on later, detail work. I want to move on to the rest of him. And I have to give him feet. My sketch book was too short for how tall I made him. woops.

Ok, it's been a long time since I posted. I've been drawing some, but I've also been really busy. Work extended my hours from about 28 to 37 hours a week. On weekends I've been going off to cedar point in october, up to my old school, to friends, had my boyfriend over ect. Plus now that it's november, it's time for NaNoWriMo. I'm making a valient attempt at it this year, but I'm already behind. I have about 7,400 some words, and i should have about 19,000 at this point. But at least I'm finally writing the story i've been thinking about since LAST november. But unfortunately, since i'm now working three nine hour days a week, and have been having really busy weekends, I don't have a lot of free time in the evening. Drawing this month is falling a bit behind writing.

So on to a breif explanation of the drawings. Blogger posted them out of order for some reason, and i'm too lazy to try to fix it. The top one was done this weekend, it's a drawing of a dragon candle i have, and a little chinese dish that sits next to it. I got tired of drawing about the time i started on the dish, if you couldn't tell.

Next down are two cyborgs from the story i'm writing for nanowrimo. It didn't turn out at all like i wanted it to. I think i might take a figure drawing class. I didn't while i was in school, i didn't have the time and my school had weird rules about the number of art credits you could take if they did not apply directly to your major.

Next one was a really lame doodle that I spent no time at all on. It was really just a "i should draw, but i don't really feel like it" attempt, and probably wasn't worth posting, except that i figured since i was scanning things, I might as well.

Next down was from a couple weekends ago. My boyfriend and brother were playing video games and I felt like drawing, so this is a model out of a magazine. Her face isn't quite right, i think her mouth's lopsided. But since i only spent about an hour on it, i'm pretty happy with it.

The next three were from several weekends ago, at a friend's house. I felt like drawing at about 2 am but really lacked the mental capabilites to think of anything interesting, or draw with any finesse. So they are also pretty lame. So really in this whole batch there were only two drawings worth posting, but oh well. At least anyone who still bothers to read this knows i'm alive.

worked on my salamanders a bit more. I havent really been in the creative groove lately, and when i've been making myself draw, it's been pretty bad. Still trying to figure out what to be for halloween, not having much luck there either. It just feels like all my creativity's gone away.

Just a tribaly thing i drew, a really bad face, and some girl who looks kinda shy. basically just tv-watching doodles. I've not been in the groove lately. this post and the last, the drawings are in no particular order since i got so backlogged.

Ok blogger's been giving me severe issues with not wanting to load pictures into my blog so i'm posting 5 pictures at once. 3 will be here, 2 in another post just so it doesnt balk to much at actually posting this. These are some tenative sketches for Alice again. Nothing too impressive, still feeling her out as a character. Sorry for the lack of posting. having lots of computer problems and lots of work. but i quit toys r us, so i should have more drawing time in the future, hence more posting.

Two characters I drew. The top's Ramona, an assassin. The bottom is Alice a rocker chick. She's got purple hair, you just don't know it yet. Still working on my character design abilites. The poses aren't real exciting, but I'm still getting the feel for how I want them to look, and it's hard to do that with extreme angles or action shots. Eventually I'll break them down into the face and expressions and the spread arms and legs postion doing front and back and side views. But for now just working on basic looks and feel.

Just some bears I drew. They're all inside jokes with my boyfriend and I. Their names from top left down are Squishy Wimpkins, Bonus bear, Bonus Hamster (he's a bear, really. it's on his shirt), Betsy Bearkins, Francesca in a cinnamon roll hat, Bubble Bear, and Pickle Bear.

Did a quick little sketch, had the image in my head and I felt like drawing. No reference photos or anything, so the gun's just a vague shape, and i know the hat's not right. And yes it's a girl with her hair pinned up, not a feminine guy.

Sorry I haven't posted a while. I started my second job monday, it was a lot longer day then expected. Then i've been working the rest of the week while fighting being sick. I really didn't feel like being creative today, so I just worked on coloring my salamandar picture. I didn't get real far but i feel pretty bad right now. I have to work all day tomorrow so there won't be a post tomorrow, i didn't know when else i'd get to post something. Don't expect a lot of updates in the next week or so, until i get used to my new schedual and get over being sick.

More mythological creatures. This is my selkie man. The books I read say selkies in human form aren't much different than any other human, except they'll be walking along the beach for hours with their hems still wet and water and seaweed pooled in their footprints. This was hard to caputre in just a rough pencil sketch. I find water really hard to convey with just greyscale, and particularly with pencil. Maybe if I get a bit more spare time and inspiration I'll clean it up a lot and make it much more detailed. I also had some trouble with the angle. Forshortening from behind and all that. I'll have to use some photo references or make someone model for me if I do a full illustration of it. Maybe I'll add a selkie lass next to him with her skirt hems all wet as well.

I've been reading Mercedes Lackey's fairy tale books lately. I just finished reading Pheonix from Ashes, which is a cinderella re-mix with elemental magic. I liked the little salamandar fire elementals so i thought i would draw a couple as I imagine them. Little salamandars that curl up in the flames. I might color this in photoshop sometime.

Just a quick dragon sketch. It's based off a dragon figurine I painted a while back. I wasn't in the mood to do a fully rendered image. Today was all gray and gloomy, I wanted to draw I just couldn't muster up the energy to care. Plus the easer on my pencil was bad and I couldnt' find my good mechanical eraser so I didn't feel like getting overly detailed when I couldn't even erase my mistakes.

I spent about 2 hours finishing this up. So probably around 4 hours on the whole drawing. I know sketch books are usually places to do quick drawings, not really thorough rendered peices, but I feel I'm learning a lot from these studies. Working on getting different textures like stone, metal, plants, water ect. I'm really proud how this turned out. I like the little guy. I have a few more gargoyle pictures, maybe sometime i'll give them a try too. I think i'm going to take a break from really thorough drawings for a bit, however, and go back to some quick sketching studies.

I like gargoyles. I like the buildings in New York that still have little ones hidden away. I think it's a shame how boring modern buildings are. Just big walls of concrete with windows thrown in. I like all the gothic architecture with the swooping arches, gargoyles, intricate carvings and everything. It makes buildings so much more interesting. I found some stock photos of gargoyles, I decided to start drawing this one because I like the expression on his face. Rather than doing smooth shading with lots of smudging, i decided to use a quasi-pointilism shading to give it more stone-like texture. It's not done yet, my hand was wearing out. I'll finish and post it tomorrow probably. Hopefully i'll have more than one image tomorrow, since it's my day off.

I finished my engine picture. It turned out ok i guess. I think i'm going to give myself lead poisoning one of these days. Fingers work so much better for smudging then those little paper stick things or tissues or anything else. this probably took about 4 hours all together.

This isn't done yet, but it's about 2 hours worth of sketching. I decided that since I'm not very good at drawing mechanical stuff, maybe i should work on it. As you can see, it's very sketchy and not very mechanical looking yet. hopefully it'll get better as i work. Maybe i'll start a new trend of organic machinery. But anyway, i'm tired of working on it now and its late, so i'm calling it good for a night.

I've been slacking a bit this week, haven't had a lot to post. So I made myself draw tonight. Not terribly impressed with the results. Its funny how things go. The waterfall sketch I meant to be more of a doodle to pass time turned into this really elaborate drawing that i got really into. I wanted this to be this big dramatic cloudscape full of subtle shadings and i just got bored with it. I also discovred conte crayons are really not my favorite medium, i greatly prefer charcoal. They dont smudge well enough and layer on too thick too fast. I couldnt get the smudgin to go dark enough, but the initial marks to lay down color wouldn't smudge into blobs, they stayed too sharp. So it looks more like blobs of black instead of a dramatically lit cloudscape.