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!