girly crap

i felt like doing something super girly today. maybe it's cause i'm wearing the pink shirt my sister got me for christmas, of which i rudely told her that i hate pink.

it's not that i'm totally against pink, i just don't like to wear it personally. it was ruined by my insanely pink room that my mom made for me and my sis when we were kids. it was way cute, for a 3 year old. then when you're a teenager, you're getting kinda sick of seeing all that pink. then when you're in college and you come home for the weekend and it still looks like a kid's room you swear pink is the worst color in the world.

bah humbug!

did this really quick while sitting in the airport. if you're flying this holiday season, good luck to you!

Merry Christmas!

I leave tomorrow night to visit family in Pennsylvania for the holidays. May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white!

snow white 3

snow white is SO goth.

snow white 2

Here's a different one i did today. i think i may try to paint up both of these.

snow white

a cleaned-up version of the sketch i did today for the next drawergeeks assignment. don't know how i feel about it right now, i guess i'll decided after some color!

Try the coffee...or else.

here's a quick sketch i did of one of the guys i work with...renowned for his love of Vivace's coffee. he's a bit of a pusher for it. i think he's never forgiven me or Joe for saying we like Starbuck's better.

Sierra all decked out!

did a quick drawing of Sierra today. at the oscars...or something.

i just noticed that i forgot to post yesterday. my bad!

Santa!

here he is, in color! i cut out the M&M guy...santa just looked better without him.

Jingle bells

did a few sketches of our cat Jingle when i was bored the other day. i especially like to draw her all angry because we've put her special Christmas collar on.

now, (disclaimer) i'm not one for dressing your animal all up. it usually makes me feel a pang of pity when i go out and see one of those fluffy, unreal looking tiny dogs with the little sweater and booties and pink ribbons in their fur. but...with a cat as evil as Jingle, it gives me great satisfaction to put this stupid velvety fluff on her neck and make her look like a circus clown. and she takes it pretty well. she usually gives me one look of utter disdain, and then goes about her business as usual. whatever cat business is like. maybe eating plants and knocking things over.

here's a picture of the real Jingle with her Christmas finery on from last year.

Here comes Santa Claus

Here's the line drawing for next week's drawergeeks.

Magical peoples part 2 - painting

here's the finished product. did the paint in Photoshop Elements, kept it simple. for this look i made lots of layers. here it is broken down:

1. take the original drawing, put that in the top layer. make sure to change the layer's attribute from "normal" to "multiply". this will allow you to paint all you want underneath, and the drawing still shows thru. all of the other layers can be left on normal.

2. background layer, the bottom-most layer.

3. flat color layer. just to get the basic color scheme in. looks like a painted animation cell at this point.
4. highlights layer. think of your lights and darks as shapes. know where your light source is coming from!
5. shadows layer. same as the lights!

6. effects layer. this made it easier for me, as if i messed up any of the "lightning", i could erase without touching the rest of the drawing.
7. glow layer. just a few glowy touches to finish her off! (see the first image again)

this isn't really a guideline on how anyone should work...just how i approach a project like this. this was a fun few days of work! hope that these past few posts helped if you're looking for a process of digital painting.

Magical peoples part 2 - clean up drawing

so here's our girly with the lines all cleaned up....i did this in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. it's a great drawing program and you can get incredibly clean lines with it. i like Photoshop, but the lines don't have nearly the same quality for stuff like this. basically, took the original drawing, created another layer over it, and went over it to create a new drawing. the trick to cleaning up a drawing is not to just 'trace' your original drawing. keeping the line quality, and keeping life in the drawing with one clean line is not as easy to do as it would seem. i had some practice at this stuff when i worked at Calabash Animation (for an illustrious 3 week stint!) as a clean-up animator. tricky!

Magical peoples part 2 - rough sketch

here's a quick, messy drawing i did today for some friends that i play games with. you can see how many times i went over the same drawing to get it right. looks pretty rough right now, eh? i wanted to scan in the original drawing without cleaning it up, and do a series on how it ends up all crisp-lined and colored.

Snow monster with color

here he is with color...this may be my Christmas card this year....

Ava vs. The Grumpy Santa

Here's a very bad scan of a very cute picture of my little niece....hereby dubbed as "The Happiest Baby Ever!". I mean, come on. If a baby can look that happy while sitting on the lap of a Santa that cross-looking, she has to be something special!

snow monsters

snowmen can just be so mundane...

was gonna color this but my wacom tablet pooped out again. *sigh* guess i'm just gonna have to buy that cintiq monitor, eh?

Raggedy Ann and Andy!

For this week's drawergeeks! i tried something a little different with this one, and i have decided that photoshop is not good for getting clean, crisp lines. but what the heck...this was a fun assignment and i like the cheerful colors.

3 o'clock meetings

why oh why do people schedule meetings at 3 in the afternoon? right when i'm at my sleepiest? and the only way i know how to reduce the number of times my head bobs noticeably forward is to open my eyes as wide as i can and keep fidgeting. so i probably look pretty scary in these meetings..... i need more coffee...


also, woke up this morning to more snow! huzzah! it's a pretty pathetic dusting compared to Edinboro, PA snows.... but from what i hear Portland hardly ever gets snow, so i'll be happy with any. here's a few pictures of our little community with the snow this morning. the first is our "backyard". i liked the way that little juniper looked with snow on it. gets me in the Christmas spirit!


Jingle actually liked the snow...now she keeps begging to go outside.

Here's a picture from our front porch.

work in progress...

here's something i'm working on for this week's drawergeeks. raggedy ann and andy!

thanksgiving here was awesome and we had a bunch of good friends come visit. we also had a ton of food....i don't think i'll want turkey for a long time. well, at least not until christmas anyway.

also, it snowed today in portland! hooray for snow! i was rather giddy as we drove home thru a gorgeous snowfall. maybe we'll put up our christmas lights tonight!

magical peoples..in color!

had time to color it tonight :)

magical peoples

this little gnome guy is about to teach you a lesson. or maybe he's happy. i dunno. it's hard to tell what he's thinking with those big glasses on.

these boots are made for walkin'

saw this girl at the arcade in Portland this weekend with the coolest big boots. so i drew her.

i was gonna color it but my tablet decided to stop working tonight. bah! hopefully i can get it working again.

secret agent...um...penguin

i drew this today while thinking about 2 movies that came out that i'd like to see - Happy Feet and Casino Royale. so i made a silly bond-esque penguin.

i was presented with the opportunity to work on Happy Feet earlier this year and wanted to take it, but it came at the most inconvienient time possible, and i had to turn it down. i would've loved the chance to live in Sydney, Australia for a while.

...what comes after Q, mateys??

AAARRRR, pirates!

I had a dream the other night that I was kidnapped by pirates. But they weren't too happy because I thought it was totally cool that I had been kidnapped by pirates. I have wierd dreams.

meh...

fixed my funky werewolf's arm and painted it....i think it looks so-so. i need to learn how to give things nicer color.

Jawas!

i think those things in the first star wars movie that said, "bee-deep!" were called jawas. i was always highly amused by them. i got to thinking that if they lived as scavengers in the desert, they probably all wouldn't be wearing the same thing. why have a company uniform when you're ripping off lost droids? so i made up some of my own today.

the one is pointing to a droid or something, and the one in the middle is getting ready to zap it. at least, that's how i see the scene playing out. this was so much fun to do that i thinks i might try to paint it.

Sleeping in...

Got back from an exhausting but very fun trip. It was worth it, but I'd really love to sleep for about 4 days straight now.

Wedding Bells!

I'm off on a trip to the opposite coast for my sister-in-law Jackie's wedding. Congratulations and God Bless, Jackie!

Queen of the Nile

my sister told me that she once had a student in her class named Nefertiti...and her nickname was Nefi. i thought that was really cute.

ps. joe asked me what she was sitting on. i told him, "i dunno...a big bean bag?" this is just the way the drawing came out. i don't think about it too hard. :)

Rainy season

Portland is in it's full blown rainy season now. actually, it's more so than normal, as the rainy season usually consists of a constant drizzle whereas today it was pouring. of course, today was the day i forgot my lunch and had to run down the street to get something to eat on my lunch hour. i learned that i should always carry an umbrella in my car and that wet jeans are really uncomfortable to work in all day. i think i'm gonna go to the bus stop and wait for Totoro to come and visit me.

Who's afraid of the....

the next topic of drawergeeks is werewolves, which i'm kinda excited about. because once again, it's something i normally wouldn't draw. i get sucked into drawing all kinds of cutesy girly crap if i don't think about my doodling. here are two i drew yesterday....the first one i really liked till i screwed up his arm. what the heck happened to that arm? i think maybe it got mangled in a fight.

the second came out better, but still pretty rough. i usually have to draw things like this about 5 or 6 times before i get one i like anyway. well, i have two weeks to screw up a whole bunch more before i get a good one!

more Mii

joe and i are going crazy with the Mii creator today. we made a bunch of our friends after we made ourselves. here's another one i did while work was slow. guess who this is...

to see joe's go to www.greendude.com

This's awesome....

I checked out my friend Andrew Burke's blog today, and he had a section on the Wii system's Mii character creation. it was so much fun to make my Wii avatar. i can't wait to sii what nintendo does with this system, it looks really good so far.

you can check out Andrew's website at http://www.3dburke.com/

Monster Madness!

Here's the newest one for drawergeeks.com - the wolfman!!! arrr!!! click the image above for a bigger version. the assignment was to take a kid's drawing and make a painting of it, keeping as true to the original as possible. with the limited version of photoshop i have, this was what i came up with. at first i thought it was pretty cool...then i didn't like it. then i thought it was ok again. now i'm not sure what to think. eh, whatever, it was loads of fun to do!

Bird shapes

I have an interest in birds at the moment. the fat peep looking one was my favorite today.

Happy Halloween!

Go stuff yourselves with lots of sugar!

Halloween in the North

if you grew up in the north...you know how annoying it is as a kid to have a cool costume all picked out only to have your mom ruin it by making you put on a winter coat and scarf and moon boots over it. how am i supposed to be a fairy/superhero/whatever with a coat covering it up??!?!?

Just Cloud...

Just got around to Cloud tonight...i thought he was a much stronger drawing than Seph anyway.

Sephiroth vs. Cloud

I liked this game. I didn't like the movie so much.

Final Fantasy 7 had a lot of great characters that I used to draw a lot back when it came out. Cloud is fun to draw because of his crazy hair. And I always thought Seph was one of the best bad guys ever. I'm gonna try to give this a little color tomorrow.