Daily Draw February and 30 Day Monster Girl Challenge

I'm doing Daily Draw and a 30 day challenge over on my tumblr. I'll be posting recaps here at the end of each week but if you'd like to follow along as I go click the "daily draw" button at the top of my blog spot.

For now, here's the start, a raven harpy.

Block printing

Tried my hand at lino block printing for the first time since high school. I got about 7 good prints thus far. These are some of my favourites, a pair done on textured paper. The slight translucence of the paper didn't scan but you can see the texture in the black ink.
For some reason I think that lino prints should be macabre (probably because of the graphic nature and the fact that I only have black ink right now) so all my ideas for prints are horror-inspired.

Threadless 2

After some technical difficulties this one's finally up too. Please vote HERE if you have the time. Thanks!

Year's end

Little early but might as well post now! First something new to set the year off right,

An Art Nouveau (specifically Mucha) inspired illustration that I'll be submitting to Threadless for consideration. I'll post again once I submit and would appreciate any votes my few followers might be willing to provide (nudgenudgewinkwink).

Aaannnddd a compilation of my favourites from the year:

Mini post

Hey everyone, I'm not dead, just a bit under the weather. I probably won't be posting as frequently over the next month or two. Such a drag as I was really in a good groove this semester. Anyways, here's a couple of sketched done over the past few weeks.

Inspirations - birds, always birds. I love those little guys, as if that wasn't obvious by now. African wooden masks as well as pretty much any kind of mask that I've encountered in my trips to museums like the ROM and the Menil Collection.
Red col-erase, 2 weeks ago?
Amelia's face is off in the profile. Her jaw does not look like that. I'm not sold on Rodrigo's owl mask. I think I'll be fiddling around with that one some more.

Inspirations - mongolian boots (because they are so incredibly awesome), the hair styles I came up with for the Rapunzel pair, some old sketches
Red col-erase, 1 week ago
Been writing a lot for the All Hail universe thanks to the short story I'm working on for class. I decided that I needed a good look for the Northern Tribes that was very different from the look of Sentrans like Amelia, Rodrigo, and Adrian. I ended up using a lot of old sketch ideas and working with simpler, more angular lines than the puffy Sentran look. Lots of layers of wool to combat the cold. I think I need to incorporate the design on their boots into their clothes more.

Year's End

Happy New Year one and all. Hope you had a good time last night and I hope your hangovers are not too difficult to deal with today. I've decided to do a big post to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another; the following will have bits and pieces from my backlog of art that I never got around to posting as well as what I consider the best of the year. Thank you to everyone who's visited this blog over the course of 2011! I look forward to the beginnings of 2012!

Backlog

Dec 30th 

Draw this while waiting for my plane to board. About 15 minutes, no references. I think it's pretty obvious that I had a big anime phase as a kid; her eyes are huge, haha. Clearly my favourite way of passing the time is drawing pretty ladies, because honestly, what else do people do with their time? Watch TV? Pfft.

Inspirations - an article in Times magazine

Dec 27 or 28th

While at home (Houston with the parents) I read an interesting article in Times discussing how there hasn't been a major shift in clothing over the last 20 years, which greatly contradicts the historical patterns. I have my own theories about this (including that fact that my generation has had everything handed to us on a silver platter, case in point: hipsters) but I found it interesting that no one's really tried to make a new style of clothing for the modern era. This is my take. Sci-fi infused clothing with poofy pants because skinny jeans, and jeans as a whole, need to go die in a fire. They're SO OLD and BORING. We really need a new pant style.

 

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

August 2011

A friend of mine Kat (you can find her under wkobra on dA and blogspot) had a theme drawing week where each day we had to do at least one drawing (doodle to full illustration) based off of the day's theme. I did Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander for films. Moderately successful; her mouth is off, as is the overall length of her face. Single colour and opacity on a white background.

Inspirations - birds, masks, blood
April 2011
4 layers, black background, white, two red (blood on hands and background red). I find it a lot easier to draw by thinking about form and then shaping it than line + fill. This was done by blocking everything out with white and then erasing to get the proper shape. This is related to All Hail; the mark at the bottom is one of my signatures (I go by "black koi" on a few websites).

Regina - Ghosts by Ibsen

Inspirations - taken primarily from a close reading of the text. The historical accuracy is so horribly off. Hair inspired by Wendy from Disney's Peter Pan.

January 2011

Watercolour, ink, pencil

1 of 2 illustrations for a class assignment back in January, Regina from Ibsen's Ghosts. I'm a huge fan of Ibsen, his work is so detailed and really lends itself to bold visual interpretations. The focus for Regina was that she was Oswald's "light" to save him from his venereal disease, she is, however, a child and cannot do these things for him. She's supposed to be a mild-mannered young woman, but she is easily tempted (flash of red after a certain scene). I'd like to revisit this design and make it more accurate (bustle is so off).

Oswald - Ghosts by Ibsen

Inspirations - same as Regina, Japanese kimono

January 2011

Watercolour, ink, pencil

2 or 2. Oswald is a failed painter whose primary characteristic is that his views are clouded and that he can no longer paint like he used to, at first this just seems like an artistic block but it is revealed that he's dying of syphilis like his late father. Red (lust) hidden by his artistic persona, a persona which is clouded (print on kimono). In the text he wears a smoking coat. I changed this to a kimono; they were trendy at the time. Colours to match Regina suggesting a connection between the two.

Summer 2010 - 2011

This was the first thing I drew when I started using photoshop. As I learned more about the program I worked on it more and more. I still visit it every so often to tweak things. A lot of it was just experimenting with brushes, painting styles, and the general mechanics of the program, which is why different parts are done in different methods. Painted over an old sketch from February 2010. Also related to All Hail, Alia from a previous post.

Faves of the Year

I'll hopefully be drawing some new things over the next week. I've got a week before school starts (yay!) but first I have to do some design work for my parents.

I'm alive; I'm just busy!

I still live and what-not. I've been busy with school work and illustrations/comic pages (I've joined a comic making group on campus, what joy). I've been doing very little costume/design work as I've been working on larger projects with my spare time. Here's a few drawings I've been working on. I've got a backlog of old drawings to scan, I'll get to that soon.

Rowan and the Spider - "Rowan and the Spider"

Inspirations - very little actually, wait no, nothing comes to mind, that's a change.

November 2011

Character sketches for a comic I'm working on. It's a 9 page story about Rowan, a young girl, based off a story I wrote for my creative writing class. I wrote the story in late October right before Halloween and really liked it, so I decided to make it into a comic for my group's publication. Thus far only one page is done. In case you're wondering why Rowan's naked (SPOILERS), I've never understood why people's clothing goes with them in the afterlife so she's naked in the comic, obviously her body will not have detail beyond outlines and a bellybutton seeing as how she's very young.

Inspirations - birds, women, you know, the usual, and the Tortall series by Tamora Pierce

October 2011?

Sketch from late one night continuing my never-ending obsession with birds and curvy ladies. I'd like to paint this one some time. Or possibly make something about her. I really like her. We can ignore the fact that birds are not mammals and therefore should not have mammaries, or hips for that matter.

Inspirations - Chinese and Korean clothing, pleated gowns, a skirt from the Qing Dynasty

Sometime in the last couple months

Another late night drawing, one I forgot about until I opened the notebook next to my bed to draw the bird lady. It was before the monk lady from back when I started this blog... so... June? Another drawing I'd like to paint (maybe digitally). Palette of purple-red, black, and gold.