In which I’m late by any count.

Oh man, guys, I’m sorry that this post is so late. Monday was completely overwhelming–I was up all night again working on my posters for an upcoming presentation (more on that later), had a class session that was all about critiquing our work (so no brain break there), had to pack while completely exhausted, and got between three and four hours of sleep before spending the next day driving to Manchester and flying home for Thanksgiving. I had meant to update on time (well, on time by West Coast standards, at least), but I haven’t seen my family in what feels like ages so we took some time catching up. Also, I was busy catching up on this:

By “this” I definitely mean “sleep” and not “inking and watercoloring”, because oh my god do I have a lot of that to do still. On top of the comics I’m working on, all the seniors at CCS have to do a sort of mini-visiting-artist lecture during the next two weeks in which we give a brief rundown of the details of our thesis, our goals for the year, our advisor, and our progress so far. As part of this presentation, we have to create one or two posters that includes similar information. These are the posters that took me all of Sunday night….and they’re still not done! I have a lot of watercoloring left to do, as well as one or two design tweaks, plus a bunch of original art for the Powerpoint to accompany my presentation. In short, I have a hell of a lot to do in the next few days. On the plus side, though, that means I should have a fair amount of art to post here…as long as I don’t just pass out face down on the keyboard when I try to update.

Well, it’s pretty late here, so I think I’ll go to bed so that I can have a clear head for cooking tomorrow. I feel bad updating late with only one sketch, though, so here’s a little yeti picture to tide you over until Friday.

I hope you guys have a great holiday (that is, if Thanksgiving is your thing)! See y’all on Friday–on time this time!

Necesito verte un día más.

Sorry this update is late, you guys. I’ve had a week of crazy ups and downs–good art days, bad art days, great portfolio reviews, frustration with current projects, fun with friends, sad news from family, etc.–and I’ve been finding myself a little distracted. I’ll be back on the ball by Monday, I think, but right now I think I’m gonna stick with a quiet sort of update.

Anyway, here’s the Día de los Muertos print that I’ve been promising:

This was another experiment with the G-nib, with the added challenge of using gouache. I feel like it turned out pretty well but not exactly right. In my portfolio review, Scott C. pointed out that by watering down the gouache I’m basically just using it like regular watercolors, so he recommended that I try using watercolors so that I’m not fighting against the medium. That makes a lot of sense, so I think I’ll give it a shot sometime soon.

In other news, I’ve been loving Boardwalk Empire like crazy lately (at least, when it hasn’t been really gruesome). I really want to do something 1920s-inspired, but I don’t know what yet. “I want to draw flappers and dapper hats” isn’t much of a story premise, but I feel like a period piece with really simple character design and a nice muted watercolor palette would be really relaxing and fun to do. I picked up a copy of Sin in the Second City a little while ago, so maybe I’ll call that this week’s research. IDEAS AHOY

All right…I’ll see you guys on Monday, hopefully in slightly better spirits. Have a good weekend! :)

Halloween time is zombie time!

Seeing as how Halloween is in just a few days, I figured it was time for some theme-appropriate sketches. I’m a total zombie fan, even though I am a super huge wimp and hate hate hate blood and gore. I think it’s an interesting idea, and it was totally my go-to Halloween costume all through undergrad. I even drew 23 pages of a zombie comic for a final project in undergrad. Given all that, how could I resist the chance to draw some Halloween zombies?

This is the as-of-yet-unnamed protagonist of the aforementioned zombie comic. I haven’t drawn her in ages, so this was fun to do! I love coming back to old characters and redrawing them; it’s a friendly, familiar feeling. She’s in a little worse shape here than she is in most other drawings of her–I figure this is her later in life when she’s worn out a little.

I don’t know who this is, really, but I like how she came out. You don’t see a lot of chubby zombies in the grand scheme of things, which seems a shame. I had a lot of fun drawing her, especially her belly and ripped pants.

I’m trying something new with both these drawings. I sketched them in my normal way–with a drafting pencil during a lecture–but inked them with a G-nib. I haven’t inked with a nib since last year, when we were required to do it for a class assignment, and I hated it! I didn’t feel in control of my pen, I got ink all over myself, and I even made myself bleed a few times (not that that’s a normal experience with a nib; I just have a fantastic talent for accidentally injuring myself with my art tools). Some of my classmates swear by the G-nib, and Aaron also recommended I try it, so I picked one up earlier this week when I couldn’t find refills for my Pocket Brush. And here’s the thing: I kind of love it. I don’t want to, since pens and the Pocket Brush are way more convenient and travel-friendly, but I really like how much detail and line variation the G-nib allows. I’ll keep working with it, probably in conjunction with my other tools, but for a first experiment I feel like this went pretty well. I’m going to a Halloween event at Comic Boom! in Keene on Saturday and am thinking about doing some Halloween-themed pin-ups for that, so those’ll probably be my next experiment. I’ll post ’em on Friday if they work out!

In the meantime, though, I’d love to hear if/what you guys are dressing up as for Halloween. In keeping with the zombie theme of this post, I’m thinking of going as a zombie hipster, but man am I open to other suggestions!