Welcome to my little corner of the world.

Hey all.

Yeah, I know. Yet another lapse in updates. I was in a car accident the beginning of January, and needless to say, having bruised up ribs kinda takes the fun out of sitting at a desk. I’m feeling better, however, and as a result I’ve been doodling again.

So, to get things going again, I thought I’d dump a whole bunch of work in progress sketches. The first two are illustrations I was working on when the accident happened. The other two are from the past day. I’m trying to tell myself to finish those old images before I get distracted with the new ideas, but the imp girl turned out to be much more playful than I indented. She wants me to finish her first. The mermaid will also be fun as I want to base her and her surroundings on koi fish.

I guess I’ll have to let them all duke it out. As long as I work on something, that’s what counts, I suppose.

(right click and view image if they’re getting cut off. . . )

I finally got around to completing my seasonal faeries series. Here’s spring – I had a lot of fun working on her.

I’m considering doing another series of faeries, perhaps with an elemental theme. We shall see. I’m going to spend a bit of time getting some other ideas out of my head, but I may eventually circle back around to more girlie things like this.

Here is Alex from the manga Nightschool. This wonderful series is drawn and written by Svetlana Chmakova, whose art I have adored for many years now. Cheers on her success and this great series! Please check out Nightschool for yourself and support a very sweet and talented artist.

Here’s a little fanart of Polgara, a beloved character of author David Eddings. I adore her immensely. She’s a bit young in this sketch, but perhaps this takes place back in her days of living at the Vail. I loved how she would interact with birds in The Belgarion, and how they would become overwhelmed with excitement and sing constantly in her presence.

Should at least touch this up and splash some color on, but I’m not feeling motivated at the moment. So, fresh from the scanner with a texture overlay and uncorrected flaws it is.

Anyone who’s known me for any amount of time will know that I have a fairly emotional fondness of wings. They are a symbol of freedom and power for me. They can either be pure and just or calculating and cruel, but they are always there to carry you to where you need to go.

I seem to be stuck in a new half-art rut. I can pick up a sketch pad and I feel extremely happy to be sketching, but I cannot for the life of me get my booty to stay in front of the computer long enough to color anything I draw. I have several pieces prepped for outlines and color, and they’re just sitting. I know it has to do with the fact that I’m on the computer 8+ hours each weekday for work, pretending I’m a decent designer and that I can make whatever I’m creating good enough to make both my internal and external clients happy on the first try. Anyone who’s worked a full time creative position knows that’s usually not how it goes, and that your expectations of yourself alone can drain you some weeks. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit on the computer with Photoshop open for a couple more hours. I usually just want the company of a good book and a blanket.

We’ll see how things go. I’ll just try to keep myself going with the drawing, and who knows – maybe I’ll get comfortable enough with my lines again that I’ll break out my neglected colored pencils and Tria markers.

Don’t stand there watching me
Follow me
Show me what you can do

Preview for the piece I’m currently putting together.

PS – I’m alive!

I’ll go into the story behind this next week. I will be coloring this over the week ahead – I think I want to try a more realistic shading on her. I basically just had a desire to draw a mask of some sort and play with costuming. Who knows how her outfit will look once I fix this up and start to color it. Right now she’s a little big in the shoulders/body, but I just scanned this baby straight and dropped some color on. Fine-tuning comes after scanning.

I haven’t forgotten about the spring faerie. She’ll be completed whenever I finally get inspiration for the rest of her posing.

Pretty self explanatory. I still enjoy drawing these characters after all of these years. 20 minute sketch with a quick splash of Photoshop color.

The redesign of my portfolio site is finally live. It took longer than I really should have let it, but I feel like this design suits my personality much more than previous designs did.

Things have been pretty busy at my job, and so I haven’t been able to touch the sketch book lately. I’m hoping to sit myself down and make up two weeks this weekend. They likely won’t be posted as finished, polished pieces, but I’ll see how far I can push them. I also might be a bit sporadic with the weekly updates for a month or so; I’m going to try and not let that happen, but we’ll see how it goes. Regardless, I will be seeing this project through the whole 52 weeks, even if I may need to pause and a week for work once and a while.

I hope all is well, and I hope to be updating again by the end of the weekend.