Postponed Ghost Entry

I had originally intended for this piece to be a part of a collection of ghost-themed pictures. Unfortunately, time and my procrastination skills (and sudden fixation with my boyfriend's birthday gift) ended up shelving this. I just recently came back to this today so I could get it to a spot where I actually liked it.

I know I said I would get back to updating.

And I've meant to. I really have. But you know how the holidays are. Plus I wanted to show you guys something actually worthwhile. You'll have to stick with this for the time being.

Recently between tutoring and the part-time seasonality, I mentioned working on a comic. At the moment I've got one chapter scripted and thumbed out, so now it's down to actually making the characters on the page. I decided to help myself out with different issues I've had, I'd work on doing a character turnaround. For easy costume reference, and because once I end up getting into newer items, the clothing might change. I've got another piece for this character I haven't even started yet. I'm still trying to figure out the seams.

Anyway, thanks for staying patient, and here's something to (slightly) hold you over in the meantime.

From the Artist, Life Happens.

So yes, it's been a little over a month or so since I updated. I had gotten really good at keeping this posted with a bunch of stuff I've been working on, but a few things have happened in the meantime. Mostly part-time jobs and one hell of a recovery timeframe. I am glad to start updating this once again because of a few ideas that I've come up with, that I hope will work. Sad to say a lot of my self-publishing ideas usually fall through, but I think it's a matter of finding something that sticks.

Lately I've been working in my spare time (re: those boring moments where no customers show up) and writing together a little idea for a comic. I hope to use this as a springboard mostly to try to help my skills expand with completing backgrounds, writing, and composition. Plus I'm a sucker for trying to craft new characters and my brain has suffered a woeful drought as of late.

This is a rare text post among pictures, so I will gather up my mess from the last month and have at it!

I know this'll post the day of my surgery.

Remember the swatches back in April? Yeah, I decided to take my current logo and fix it up.
Hopefully I should be resting right now. If not, you all have every right to tell me t'sleep.

Self Portrait fix-up.

I've got a couple of things I'm putting in the queue that I've fixed up today on account of getting stuff settled for portfolio work. It's also kind of a way to see how far I've gotten in even just a few short months. The next week I'll be out of it, so art-art-art this week.

Dance, boy...

Small weekend doodle before I get ready for surgery next week. I had a bunch to get ouf of my system. 

The Mage

Hello to the biggest freaking piece I've done in awhile. I've tried to learn backgrounds, and trying to improve my skills from there. It's been a long process, but I'm happy with what I've done. 

Another bust.

Comic Style Dribble.

I'm working on ideas for a series of banners for another site that I'm on, and just decided to try out a design style for them. I'm still working on improving my realism or...rather, my ability to put together a piece without lines being the main part of the story. At the same time, I'm very happy with how this turned out. 

More tea for me!

I bought tea last week, and it finally came in on Monday! I've already written reviews on all of them and they're absolutely amazing. I had to draw this to celebrate.

An Interlude. WIP Composition Pieces.

I work pretty well with a photo reference to start off for a character. I was trying to do a lack of line/blended line test. I went through about twelve sketches of various heads before I finally decided to look up one. Now that I look at him...he kinda resembles Spike. That's cool with me.

Day Five - Mermaid

I really, really like how she turned out.

Day Four - Naga

It feels like halfway through I decided that I should make the framing a little more pretty. This and the next one have this kind of framing, but I ran out of time on the other one so I cheated and did a cropped version.

Day Three - Slime

This one seems to be a favorite. Not sure why. I've seen a lot of people do the "cliche" slime girl before...but all I could think of is the Gleatinous Cube from Dungeons and Dragons.

Day Two - Centaur

I'll be fixing this one the most, I think. Color palette didn't work too well on this one. 

Day One - Harpy

The more I draw a lot of these, the more I think that at some point, I'm gonna go back and make these "print" worthy. If anyone's interested in that, please, lemme know!

Monster Girls: A primer

Hey! Just wanted to say something before I started posting these pics. A little while ago I decided as a challenge to myself I'd take on a challenge going around tumblr.  Since then I've been working on each of these pieces as a warm up, just drawing figures and creatures I haven't before. I also decided to do them in full color, thinking I'd try to work on color as well as my depiction of the female form. Not all of the critters will be depicted, but I'll try to do as many as I can.

Normal post out of the way, stay tuned for the first week!

Updating Logo Ideas.

Working on updating the sketch I had - refining and making a little smoother form. I'm also trying to get used to a shading technique I picked up a little while ago.

Weekend Warm-Up

Trying to do more with color, I just started sketching this over the weekend after I'd been sick.

Should I post warm-up sketches?

In another one of those efforts to become a better artist I've gone back to doing what my life drawing class was all about - figure drawing. I picked up via a couple other artists this great site where you can set up timers for a warmup and just go at it. Or, do a thirty-minute class style session with images picked at random. I was thinking about posting them here in weekly batches - as long as you don't mind that they're slightly NSFW. Nude models and whatnot. I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this, thanks!

Indie Project!

Thanks to the magical prowess that is Reddit, I've found a small project gig as a concept artist with an indie group. I'm not sure how far it's going to go, but in the last week I did some environments around a very hectic schedule.

In the middle of working on some logo designs. Why didn't I do more of that in college...

Commission - Kelpie

Commission I did of a Kelpie.

Commission: Black Widow

Another commission for the same guy who asked for the Black Canary piece. I'm really happy with how she turned out, I might give another one shot in the future.

WIP: A total bust.

It's been about a year since I've done 3D modeling to this extent. I have about a week or so that I want to finish this bust in, and this is three days total work so far.

You want to know who this is? You'll have to wait until I add the hair.

Commission: Black Canary

Digital Sketch: Stranger than Fiction

This started out as something similar to the Coulson sketch, but ended up going in another direction entirely. I'm not sure why. It looks awesome, though. 

Digital Sketch: Coulson Lives.

I've been working on just some impromptu busts lately inbetween projects. I really, REALLY like how this one turned out. 

Sketch: Fortune Teller

Anyone ever played Talisman? It's a wonderful game. I grew up playing it for the longest time. My favorite character to use was the Fortune teller back in the day, so I started scribbling it. 

Sketch: Addicted to Coffee.

From here on out, gonna be posting just some various single-sketches. This one was done as a self portrait awhile back from my first moleskine. I was having a bad day so I tried peace and serenity with coffee and art as well. I think it works! 

Rumblings in the Works.

I can't say too much at the moment simply because I don't have everything ready yet to unveil the full launch, but this week has been spent less on the two dimensional nature and more on the third. I'm somewhat proud of myself because I'm learning to model in a new program from the ground up. I would definitely recommend it 100% - between the wonderful support community and the bevy of online tutorials, Blender is one of the best 3D rendering software there is out there. Mainly because the damn thing is 100% free. 

There are more than a few things I haven't gotten into yet with modeling (A line of figurines to start with) but there will be time soon when I unveil this mess! Soon! 

Sketchdump #3 - A Tarot, Reworked.

Part of me says I should wait and release these in a looong time from now but since I've switched major projects from this to another, the thought occurred just to throw these sketches out now. (That and I'm still doodling compositionally til hell freezes over.)

A long time ago at the beginning of this sketchbook I've been posting pictures from I decided that I wanted to do a tarot deck based on Marvel characters. And not "just" Marvel, movie Marvel characters. For most of this deck, that proved very little issue. But there were a few characters from the normal universe that fit all-too-well into certain cards (aside from the FFFUUUU what do you mean Hank and Jan aren't going to be in the Avengers moment). So I took it as a fun design challenge to try to do some weird scribbles of costumes for the Maximoff siblings. I wanted to combine key elements of their normal costume design and the design of costumes like Hawkeye and Black Widow from the movie universe. And hell, just for the challenge, throw in the Ultimates line for good measure. I will probably revisit these in a better (*cough*digital*cough*) format when I get some spare time.

Yoga Loki

I know this one seems particularly strange, but let me explain. When I started working out last year I had done itinitatially with the idea of getting into making a version of Loki's costume. I've had some awful luck with trying to stick to a diet and exercise plan, so I created a blog for it. Thus, for some reason, the moniker caffeinated-loki was used and has been used ever since. I was playing around with the idea of making a new icon for the blog. And flailing about with poses. You'd think after a few months of trying to do these poses I'd think of a better (and draw it better) one to use.

I also attempted to test out colored pencils on my pieces. Result? On the left I used an ink pen, pencils, then shaded in ballpoint. I think I enjoy that version far more...even if the pages are yellow and I'm not used to it just yet.

Sketchdump #2 - We Work in the Darkness to Serve the Light.

The next big sketch-dump is a RP environment that is part fan-based but wholly a labor of love to the setting and the history. I'm a big fan of Assassin's Creed, no lie in that. But a few friends and I decided to do a setting based in the universe around the turn of the 20th century in London. The height of the Industrial Revolution. The Age of Jack the Ripper and the original Sherlock Holmes. As such, I wanted to work on developing an outfit for my character that would hide his distinctive features (the prominent scars on his cheek and lips) while keeping in tune with both 19th century fashion and Assassin design. 

The funny thing about this whole piece? About three weeks after I finished a design that I really liked for my character here, Ubisoft came out with the promotional art/Alex Ross's piece for Assassin's Creed 3. The similarities between this outfit and Connor's 18th Century gear were readily apparent. 

I might tweak with the design slightly and do some environment scribbles, but for the most part you can see I was trying to mess with folds of fabric/gravity.Still need to. 

I Should Be Resting More.

I should be sleeping since I still feel like ass, but I've been doing enough research into working on a site relaunch for my portfolio that I wanted to test something while I still had enough energy in me to do so. This is what came of it so far. I'm digging the side on the left, although I will always be partial to green. It's just trying to find a balance between interesting design and not distracting from the actual work being placed in the site.

Rambling, yes. Back to bed for me.

Drink for Thought.

Wait, this looks familiar. 

Design Musings.

The first sketch inspired some wireframes in my graph book, and the second was one I thought about using as a corner piece for the gallery section. I'm still coming up with ideas for this new site, but with the second picture I can take a still life of those objects. Around Christmas I acquired a skull usb hub and it's been a lovely addition to my desk area ever since. 

Sketchdump #1

I need to get a bit better at organizing a sketchdump, but here is one of many to come. These are sketches of two characters from a world I've been idly building (ie, occasionally filling another book with information) for about a year or two. In this world, the elves have split off into two separate races since the big Cataclysmal event that happened. One has become ultra-conservative, coming back to the tribal roots of old. The other have embraced technology 100%. Not much more to say at this point.

I really need a better title.

Hello, hey there, all that other fun stuff. I'm not sure why I like this layout a lot more than some of the others. Despite all my desires and dark layouts and macabre urls, I'm leaning towards a cleaner, more clear layout design. Even now as I'm redoing thumbnails for my portfolio I find myself leaning towards more white-based layouts. Maybe it's because I'm getting older. I dunno, it's kind of strange.

Anyway I needed a blog that was just artwork. Not reblogs, maybe a few musings but just. Artwork. Tumblr really wasn't working for me aside from a great place to find resources. Seriously, I've found so many tips and such just from following people. I believe that this will forward my posts to Google+, so I think I'm killing two birds with one stone by using this. Who knows, might be useful after all.

I've been keeping a sketchbook to fill with my WIP, my thoughts, and a lot of design ideas for random and (most likely) pointless things. Look to see more of this in the future. Until then, don't do anything I won't.