Le fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain

One of my favorite characters in cinema has to be Amelie Poulain. And so, of course, a portrait of her.

Sketchy Sketches from Thanksgiving Weekend

Coming back to The Lamp Post at Fillmore and Pine sketches! I would still love to do this short, and if I'm actually going to attempt that, I definitely need to work on my character designs for animating it. So here's the new redesign of Persephone and a street for the style of the layout design.

And for yuks, a sketch I drew of Ryan while we were watching John Adams. Err I mean, a telling portrait of a young president. Yeah, that's it.

I love Halloween.

Yay for dressing up like a cat for Halloween!

(And no, I don't think this will be my costume this year...).

Missing my boy.

So what is a girl to do? Draw him of course.

I'm such a nerd-o-tron.

*GASP!* Bro-Bot!

Just doing some fun little character designs.

Robots rock. Even if they are "bros".

Concept Character Sketches

Coffee Shop Continued...

::UPDATE::

Still going!!

::/UPDATE::

Just so you know....

Still working on it!

The Bear and the Bow was a better name... but still!

Maybe I'm late to the party, but damn, if I'm not excited about this...

Brave (formerly called The Bear and the Bow) is a new animated film from Pixar that will be coming out in 2012 set in 18th century Scotland about a Scottish princess who dreams of becoming an archer (according to the BBC). And if you can believe this, it's directed by Brenda Chapman, who was the first American woman to directed an animated feature film in 1998 for The Prince of Egypt. Knowing that the first American woman to direct a feature animated film was only 12 years ago really makes my blood boil. There are thousands of talented female directors, animators, storyboard artists and character designers and 1998 was the first time one of them was given a chance to prove it to the world? Sometimes the film industry disgusts me. I hope that this gives a boost to the confidence of all women in animation to keep pushing ahead in their paths to doing what they want to accomplish. Sexism in the art and entertainment industry needs to be stamped out.

I can't wait to see this movie.

All about the Atmosphere

I'm trying to get my digital painting up to bar and aside from the fact that I just love colors, I want to be able to paint characters without so much a reliance on lines and more on texture and color instead. This is yet another work-in-progress. I plan to finish this one for sure since it seems to be coming along really well and that's always inspiration to continue working.

Atmosphere

Just Digitally Painting...

I'm not really doing much that I can post but I figured I'd post a little color study, digital painting that I'm working on. It's for a character age meme. This is a character I randomly made up for it called Audrey. This is her at 13.

Brown Bagging It... sort of...!

Not quite finished with the shadows yet, but I wanted to post it already because I'm feeling antsy like that.

Pen and digital colouuuuuuuurs.

Pocohantas?

Sketched today from a magazine photograph. I really want to work on my perspective when drawing people. Thought this was a good place to start.

Black Kitties Are Good Luck

Finally got around to coloring this Halloween Card that I drew for a friend last autumn.

Halloween is the bestest holiday ever... clearly, as I'm posting about it in June!

PROOF!

...that I haven't fallen off of the face of the earth!




I just had a dryspell of drawing for about a week and a half and couldn't draw much I was actually okay with having drawn. So here is proof that I have drawn some things and that they weren't all bad.

I've been daydreaming about getting a vespa, and it reminds me of Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn zipping around Rome. So that's where this one sketch came from. The other sketch is a Victorian house here in SF, via the reflection of it in the window of The Grove, while sipping lavender lemonade with my boyfriend on Saturday morning... :)

I like to draw Fruits!

I love to sketch from the Japanese magazine Fruits. It's a street fashion magazine that has high res, full-body photos of lots of crazy and overly stylish girls in Japan. It's a great way to push my outfit design, and hair styles. Unfortunately most of the poses they are in are pigeon-toed with surprised expressions on their faces, but sometimes you find some poses that are real gems. Either way, fun to draw, and always the full-body, which for me is important. I don't like drawing just heads. I need more work on arms and hands. Feet and legs are probably my favorite thing to draw anyways, so getting to draw them is always a plus! (Wow, that was probably the dorkiest sentence I've written in months...).



Obviously the kitty wasn't in the magazine.... =^.^=

Progressive measures must be taken...

...And by that I mean, I shall post a progress of my (insanely slow) coloring process. Okay, I'm being a bit harsh on myself, I was and have been feeling sick since last Friday, and I'm also experimenting with new coloring processes so it's not as if I'm just naturally slow at this stuff. I can whip out watercolor paintings in a couple of hours. So, just give me time to get over my perfectionista personality while I figure this stuff out and get to feeling better in the process. I've also been researching a lot of Mary Blair art to get help on how much linework I should include in the illustration as opposed to just flat color.



On the other side of things I have a few sketches from Sketch Bomb! on Saturday. I was feeling okay enough to make it out to that which was nice because I got to meet some awesome new people, and do this awesome sketch that I'm turning into an illustration; the theme was take something from a film for grown-ups and make it for kids. Naturally I turned to the most icky things I could think of.... severed limbs... wood-chipper... Steve Buscemi...



...there is a pink rainbow in the colored version! Betcha just can't wait to see that!

Sketches from yesterdays.

Sketches from reference from National Geographic.

Just so you know I'm not a loser...

A progression of my slow coloring skillz! Here is Marie Antoinette on her way to being colorful!

So you see, I am in fact still working on art! I've just been super busy the last few days! I spent Sunday and Monday traveling on a trip to Yosemite with my boyfriend and his brother and his roommate. It was tons of fun! By the employee lodges there were all these cool trees with flowers growing upwards on the branches so it looked like they were lillypads floating in the air. So here's a couple, little photos from the trip that I thought was really pretty... obviously taken with my crappy camera on my phone! I really wanted that blue bike in the background....... mmmmm bike....





(There was a bear at the bottom of this waterfall and no one ran away screaming! ...People are pretty dumb in national parks!)

Etchy-Sketch

Watched Marie Antoinette last night while I was sketching, so the first thing I ended up drawing was her in her Austrian outfit because I love the simplicity of it and the colors. The whole over-the-top French style is just gaudy most of the time. Plus she had the cutest little pug, Mops!

I also wanted to work on a drawing meme which was draw a character age 5, 13, 17 and 25. I only got to 17, so tonight, I have another sketch to do, then color them and post the meme probably on Saturday.

Uncanny Rogue!

So the other night, Ryan, and I were sketching at Cup-a-Joe's and I decided that it was time to start doing some fan-art to get more people to find my stuff. I've always been iffy on drawing fan-based art because I don't like using other people's characters for my own benefit. Though it seemed like a good idea to at least just draw characters I love, so Rogue was the first one to pop into my head.

She has always been my favorite X-Men character, and I love her sassy expressions, not to mention her bold, white streak of hair. So this is my little tribute to Rogue. Ryan is supposed to post the sketch he drew of Gambit sometime so we can both be super nerds together. <3




Also... I sketched the Dalai Lama.



Yay Buhddism!

Prudence Final Colors. FOR SERIOUS.

I just had to make a decision on Prudence's design. This seems simple and easy for me to draw consistantly. Also a semi-final design of Simon. I just gotta settle on some designs or I'll never get to the animation part!

Next time, more character pages of these two and hopefully a final drawing of the merman!

Drunk Sketches!

I don't usually draw when I've been drinking but last night I was at a pub with Ryan, Laura and Mike and there was a minute where I was all alone at the table while people were getting drinks and so I busted out my sketchbook. It sort of turned into a random drunken sketch jam!

Thinking about drawing hands while drunk is really probably the hardest thing I've tried to do, so I attempted to draw my right hand... it didn't turn out so bad drawing from life strangely enough o.O

Florence + the Machine

Now I realize that I said I was going to post a progression of the viking, and I will, but I was sketching last night and it turned out pretty uncool so I had to fix it this morning and I feel better about the drawing now. I'm going to turn this into an illustration so I'm trying to get it to be perfect and when I try to make things "perfect" it turns me into a crazy person. Swearing at lines and eraser shavings and such.

Anyhoo, been listening to Florence + the Machine a lot lately and I <3 that girl's voice and songs so much I had to just do an illustration of her, so this is the starting point.

Listen to Florence + the Machine sing "Dog Days Are Over" here! You won't regret it.

Viking Sketch from Sketch Bomb

Drew this a couple of weekends ago for Sketch Bomb and I really liked how the character came out so I really want to do something with him.

I'm too sleepy to really get started on this coloring, but I just cleaned up most of the lines (not quite really with the giant mallet or the squished dragon...) and I want to post a progression of how this goes. I'm really trying to do the post something every day thingamaroo and since I probably won't be working on anything tomorrow after work because Ryan gets back from LA tomorrow morning <3 <3 <3 and I haven't seen him for three whole days. (I'm a goober, I know this.)

So yay... pencils and beginning layout....

So sleepy....

ZZzzzZzZzZzzZzzZZzZzZZZzzzzzz......... .... .. .

Colormania.

Okay maybe not mania. I still suck at doing colors digitally. Here's a test. Hmmmm.... :-/

Not Halloween? So what!

"Blah blah blah blah..."

Sometimes when I'm sketching at cafes there are very chatty people I end up getting stuck next to. Last night was one of those nights. Ryan and I were sketching at The Grove and these two girls next to us were having a completely contrived conversation about guys and how scumbaggy they all are. I ended up sketching the really obnoxious one because this girl would just not stop talking about all of her ex's and how "stupid" she was when she was 20 and how boys don't have feelings and all about Chicago and how she was "sooooo over it. Seriously, I'm like SO, SO, SO over Chi-Town."

Like I said, an awful conversation to have to be sat next to, and exaccerbated by the fact that she was speaking at a volume usually reserved for Ringmasters in a circus.

But either way, I got a hilarious sketch out of her antics and a bunch of others that made me feel pretty happy. So, yay. Oh and one mini-self-portrait of me trying to think of what to draw because I couldn't think of what to draw. Mmm paradoxicalities.

New Bugses and Colors!

I'm trying to figure out how to actually do color well so that it's not just flat colored blah-zay-blah typical stuff that I do.

The reason I haven't been posting things every day is because I got myself stuck on this picture and I'm finally close enough to finishing it that I feel like I can post it. I'll probably fix it up some more, but for now, it's in a semi-final state of being.

Yay for Bugses.





Here's the original pencils...

Half-Done

So I promised to try and put something up every day. That obviously hasn't quite happened, but to at least keep up something while I work on other art projects, here's a half inked sketch, that was ruined by me starting to ink it.

I'm not that great at inking super cartoony stuff - if it's more in the illustrative side I'm all good, but for some reason, smooth lines with pen are my current nemesis.

I might just make this into an Illustrator project...

Lighten up!

So obviously I've adjusted my blogger to be more light-hearted with the change of the seasons to spring. (And the fact that I hadn't changed my layout design in over two years!).

So to celebrate, here are my random sketches that I've been doing on card paper lately.

They are markedly attemps at making my drawing skills stronger by forcing myself to deal with the lines I draw and not being able to erase. Also, these are practice for birthday cards I've been making lately (apparently half of my friends were born in April or late March!).

Anyways, here we go again, gotta post a sketch or something every day.

I always dream too big, but at least I dream, right?

Keith's Birthday Card!

It's not quite his birthday yet but I jus finished my adorable boyfriend's birthday card! Last month in December he and I both had the same idea to go ice skating on the same night (without mentioning it to the other until we were about to meet up). I've always loved ice skating - I'm not great or anything, but I took lessons when I was nine and 10 and I used to go every year for my birthday; Keith on the other hand was not exactly Dorthay Hamill on the ice. So I helped him around and we had a lot of fun going in circles, trying to avoid overly-confident Cal kids who kept running into walls (or each other) in Union Square while the big, Christmas Tree was being strung up with lights.

Happy birthday, Sweetcheeks! ;)