Well, here it is. Finals week. I've been lucky and had some time off of work to relax and work on my last few projects as well as get studying for my final exam on thur (yikes!). In the mean time I've been catching up with my friends, doing some writing, and doodling... a lot. Here I thought I was all drawn out and all I can do right now is draw, draw, draw....

So, I thought I'd share something with you guys. I had fun with it, it's extremely experimental but I felt like it was taking on the same vibe as my Gyspy and Nix piece. Myserious! ooo!!

This is my character Daerua...she's summoning...a...bright purple blob! Oh noooes! Cower! Or something.  I dunno. I found some new brushes so I was testing them out. Haha. Little over 3 hours from sketch to what I'm calling finished color. I know there are some issues (mainly the feet which are driving me nuts but I dont want to fix cause my hand hurts from clenching my pen).

Here :D

I can proudly say I am just about done with my first semester of my last year. With 2/4 projects completed, I am heading into finals week a little less stressed....key word 'little'. Anyway, I'm completely unsatisfied with the print quality from Kinko's and should probably find another place to print my stuff out...but I'm currently poor and Kinko's is right around the corner. However, I do have my eyes on two different printers to invest in after graduation.

The first is the Epson Stylus Photo R3000 13" printer. My teacher has the R2400 and it produces amaaaazing prints. Waaay better than anything I got from Kinkos and is priced at 849.99....though it's on sale right now for 649.99 and if I didn't have a car payment, I'd be all over that. The second one is the HP Design Jet 111 24" printer for 895.00. The advantage to the HP is that's it's bigger and is a roll printer, meaning I could print really long stuff if I wanted! The disadvantage is I haven't seen it print anything! So, We'll see. Maybe something will come out in the next few months that'll top even that. I still have my eyes on the Wacom Cintiq, which just got a new upgrade to HD! How awesome...but also 2500.00. PAH. So much money I don't have. Soon enough, though. Soon enough.

So, without further adieu I have some projects to fill you guys in on!

My last project for my Composition class came out shy of what I was hoping to produce. Something got lost in my vision, and I think it was stress related. Perhaps if this was the third or fourth project it could have come out better. Inspired by "When the Day met the Night" by Panic! At The Disco. This print came  out terrible. :(

So, that's that. I'm taking a little break and then getting back to work! Only have a few days left to finish that self portrait! Ack!

It's the final countdown! Down to the last final weeks in the semesters and it seems like I'm still on schedule. Though, it's going to get a bit tighter. I need to manage my time well so that I can fit in more sleep than I did last night and not get into a habit of night-time naps.

Here is what I'm calling finished for my project 4 in my illustration class. Enjoy. (Also, that's a chunk of the moon, not a part of the earth. didn't realize it was that unreadable. I'll fix it someday)

I also hate the spot. THE END.

Oh man, all this prep work is so much work and I'm getting so much practice. Despite that, it's still tedious and boring.





And the Color Comp of the one I chose. I'm only doing one this time, It's detailed and I know I'll burn myself out before I even get started if I do another one.

It's that time again! Time is becoming limited and should be used wisely in order to pass classes and get all these projects done.

Instead of being responsible and using a rare day off to my advantage, I decided to take on a small side project. Someone asked me to draw their character. Cool! They asked me to make it a male. Do able...They also asked for me to place them in a plate suit of armor. Say what? I had a rather hard time with it since it was my first time ever drawing armor but I think it came out alright.

So, instead of school updates, I'll show you this. It took me 6-7 hours to complete, from sketching to finishing touches. :D


I'm hoping that perhaps I'll build a little clientele, do some free sketches, then begin to hone in on the skill of doing these a little faster, say 4 hours? and charge some monies! Wouldn't that be great? I sure think so. Well, anyway, we'll see what happens.

Alright, well, that was a nice surprise. I'm nearly done with project 4 in my Composition class. It went along fairly easily with maybe 5 hours of work. I think I still have one or two more left for clean up but as of right now I am about 90% done. I really liked the feeling of this, but it's still a bit too heavy for what I had envisioned. Different,but still good. As you can see, I have some work to do on the ground.


This is a weird size... 10" X 6.6" haha. Anyway, I'm really liking the color I'm using in this one and for my final project hope to really continue to use more color variance. I haven't a clue what I'm going to do next. We'll see.


 Other than that, I've been doing some doodles with a new custom brush that I made. They're nothing impressive, just simple brush strokes. Here's an example of one. Kind of painterly in a way. I wasn't worried about proportions or anything, so I know it's off. Haha.


I also did some sketches that I have yet to scan in, so, maybe I'll get some of those up over the weekend.

So, I took most the weekend up to catchup on my much needed rest. By rest, I mean not going to work or working on school projects. So, that in turn, made me need to catch up to revisions and things tonight. That's alright though, cause I think I have done a really good job.


Here are the revisions for the Gypsy piece. I really hope it's not incredibly dark on your screen, I've checked it on three other screens and it seems fine, but the one in class really hated it.  I also gave you a peek at the background. Yea, I painted most of it in....that's why it took so damn long. I think I've put in 45-55 hours. I kind of lost track. Anyhoo, I might revisit it at a different time but for all intents and purposes...it's le fin!










I also thought I'd post some of my preliminary work for my next piece in Composition. It's going to be a lot less heavy in color and values, and hopefully aim more for a children's book illustration. We'll see.

This is the one I'm going with. They're not rabbits, they're a chimera I came up with(that look cute and cuddly, huh?).


  These are the other sets I had to do.

Dang! I can't believe it's already november! This year has flown right by me.

Anyway, how was Halloween for you guys? It was pretty low key for me, hardly any trick or treaters came by and I was all dressed up! Boo! Ah well, it was a monday so It's kind of understandable...I think...maybe? Right, on to artwork.

So, the one for Illustration 2 came out alright, It's apparently kind of dark on some screens and I have some /more/ work to do (dies) but It's about 95% done.

Yaaaaaaaay. I kind of want to kill myself. I've sunk so much time and detail into this I dont even want to look at it anymore. All I can see are my mistakes (it's the claaaaw) and I need to finish it up by monday. Maybe I'll attack it tomorrow...or friday.

Other than that, we're already heading into project 4 in both classes with the preliminary stuff done for Composition and about to get started on preliminary stuff for Illustration. I've actually got a few sketches that aren't school related. They're not great, but proof that I do,in fact, still believe in the use of paper and pencil.

This is another sour faced Cora.This is one of the outfits she wears under her cloak...that she normally never takes off. You'd never guess she was attractive under all that frump. Not exactly thrilled with this, but it was nice to draw for myself.

I'm not really sure what the hell this is. It's a man, woman,snake...thing? I dunno, I was just doodling in class instead of doing thumbnails like a good little student. My bad. I wish I had brought my pens with me, I would have inked...it.

Who was supposed to be working on projects today but decided that she'd draw Rapunzel from Tangled dressed as Cinderella?


THIS GIRL! Didn't come out that great but I didn't spend a great deal of time on it, 3 hours off an on I think.

Happy Halloween~
Rapunzel is copyrighted to Disney, Image copyrighted to me...herpderp.

Phew. Okay. Just about done with this, the only thing left is to do some clean up (which I already started to do). I'm pretty darn proud of this. It has a strong composition and strong embodiment of the theme (Serpentine and Arabesques) It's been pretty well received. The Gypsy one is gonna be next, I'll work more on it tomorrow and probably post it next week.

Enjoy.