Sketch Diary: Inked - Portrait of a girl in my mind

Little bit of a hiatus there - vacation and then heavy workload (doing my team manager's job while she was out unexpectedly). Anyway, back on the tracks here.

Feel free to download this pic to color it in... under one condition: I wanna see it! For realz. Also, please give me credit for the original drawing if you decide to post your colored version somewhere. Thanks a bunch!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Fairy Princess from Faeriecon East

Ah an oldie but a goodie. I sketched this during Faeriecon East 2010 after seeing a beautiful cosplayer there. This sketch only has a small amount of the detail she had put into her costume though. It was really impressive at the time. So I just scribbled down the stuff I could remember. Then I colored this while in Japan, 2011. Not a whole lot of color though... I think I would definitely color it differently nowadays haha. Just because a costume seems white as snow, that doesn't mean there are no colors there.

I miss costuming. But I like that I've incorporated some of my costume pieces and style into my day to day wardrobe. Win some, lose some.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Stargazer redo

Guh. This is what happens when I try to force myself to draw when I'm too tired. I didn't bother to give myself a reference to use for the figure posture and I didn't stop when I could plainly see this wasn't going where I wanted it to go. I didn't even do warm up sketches. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?! I hate it when I don't do the very things that I recommend to other people.

Inevitably, my brain decided to sort of recreate an old sketch from highschool (over a decade ago). I've been sorting through old sketch books because I have too many papers and too many sketch books taking up space. I organized everything and am no slowly going through them all and scanning them. So I must have seen this old sketch and gone - huh, I should try to redo that. And after staring at a blank page for OVER an hour the other night, this is the disaster that happened.

I know, I KNOW. At least I drew SOMETHING. I keep telling that to myself. Joel keeps reminding me, too, bless his little heart. But that's all this sketch is to me. I promised myself I would not burn any drawings... I promised... BUT HE LOOKS LIKE HE'S HOLDING IN A FART?!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Ram's horn guide and her ward

At the time, I had some kind of story in mind for these two. They never made it so far as to have names but they had personalities. The girl/woman there with the horns was this kids guide, his guardian. I think the idea was that she could only be seen him and other people that had their own guardians. Now in my defense, this was before I knew about Deathnote and such so no, I was not pulling my idea from there. It was more of a Faerie world kind of thing.

The young man pictured here, clasping his papers tight was supposed to be a bit melancholy and his counterpart was the opposite. She was realistic, however, about his chances of not making it ie. being killed by some monster or another sometime soon. She just had a good hold on making peace with whatever might happen before it actually happened or something like that. Something I find myself aspiring to quite a bit nowadays interestingly... Maybe I should revisit the idea.

Oh and she isn't really a she... or he. Just a being. No private bits to speak of and no need for that sort of thing for any of the guardians. There was a reason for that... but I can't remember anymore. I just knew that I didn't want any sort of sexualized relationship between the guardians and their wards, it was to be more... simple but also much more complex.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Colored Calm Grace

Here's the original sketch. I zoned out and didn't scan it after inking it, oops. I used a brush pen for some of the lines but ultimately went back to my microns. I just need more control sometimes. The problem is me, not the brush pen haha. Also, was having a really hard time with the skin blending. Yeesh. What NOT to do.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inked fin-tastic mermaid

I liked her so I inked her. She's on nicer paper so I'm looking forward to coloring her. What is with this mermaid kick... gotta get it out of my system! Could take years... haha or eternity.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inked crow practice, perched

If I remember correctly, I drew this little dude in Japan while looking at crows IRL (in real life). I was so impressed with myself at the time because I don't draw from life like maybe I should. Still love him though. Finally got around to inking him to practice my inking skills more. He's actually on nice paper so I might color him too. Might go crazy and make him a psychedelic crow or some such haha.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Colored redhead like fire

Soooooo old! This is from 2005?! Madness. Still kinda love it though. Always grateful to that first set of Prismacolor markers. The didn't like to blend much but the colors were bold and I learned a lot before saving up for my Copic set in 2009. Of course now I like to go back and use crappy materials sometimes because they help challenge certain skills. So... irony.

Use what you have, people! With enough patience/practice and a little ingenuity, you can make art out of anything.

with love - M

PS
Note for my own sake - this was inspired by Catherine! She's one of the few true redheads I know. Thanks for being fabulous, Cath!

Sketch Diary: Curved figure practice

Some simply figure sketches I did to loosen up my hand before moving onto something more complex. Sometimes my hand gets really tight and my lines don't flow like I want them to but some quick swooshy figures and all is well.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Colored Harpy Priestess

I really enjoyed coloring this sketch. It had a lot of potential to go sideways on me. I think she turned out ok though.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inked Snake Wedding

Took some time to ink this older sketch so I can keep up with practicing my coloring with my Copics. I'm excited to practice coloring the translucent fabric hanging off her headpiece. Should be a good challenge.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Daniel Craig from Spectre Ad Fanart

So along with drawing more of whatever pops into my head, I'm also pushing myself to do more live sketches (or at least from photos) of people, animals, places, etc. For this sketch, I picked out an Ad I saw for Spectre (I think it was in Vogue magazine). He's just chillin', adjusting his tie and suit jacket, but looking very serious and confident while doing so.

Being a pretty quick sketch (I did not grid the photo or anything like that, just eyeballed it), I'm please with how far I got before some of the proportion problems started to become too problematic to continue. The first thing Joel noticed was that forhead being too tall (or not tall enough? I forget not). Next sketch I do like this, I might do a basic grid just to make sure I have the right bits where they're supposed to be. I don't think I'll EVER have the patience to do those super lifelike pencil portraits but bless those people that do. Bless their little hearts.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Colored kinda 2 dudes posing

Like my mishmash title there? Well that's all this is. I don't recall having any real characters in mind here. Nor did I even bother to finish coloring this a the time, way back in August 2010. Just another sketch in a sea of sketches. This was rare, however, because they were distinguishable as dudes. Drawing ladies all the time made me pretty good at ladies but dude bodies were/are a challenge.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inked harpy priestess

Inking it up over here. Inkin' inkin' inkin'. I actually just started coloring this since taking this photo so I'm really excited to share the WIP.

Feel free to color this if you like it! Send me a link so I can see! Please credit me (don't pretend it's your drawing, dude).

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Lounging elves

Roll back to 2010 again. These girls were from a serious of drawings where I was playing with this elf idea. They eventually had clothes that were attached to their bodies sort of - like a jewel was a part of their bodies and the cloth would attach to the jewel and drape accordingly. the green hair with yellow highlights was appealing at the time, too.

I love the figure on the right, not so much the one on the left. But I was having fun playing with poses and body angles.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Fin-tastic mermaid

Man I was so pleased with myself when I sketched this hah. I still like it! But of course, given time, now I'm seeing all the things that didn't quite work. It was a fun sketch though, from the ends of her hairs to the tip of her tail.

Heh I wish I had a torso that long.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Colored mermaid with fiasco necklace

I should probably come up with character names... or at least something better than 'mermaid with fiasco necklace' hah. Well here she is! All colored up but floating in oblivion. It was late when I finished this a few nights ago and didn't add a background at the time. After pondering a bit, I decided to leave the background alone for now.

I'm just glad she turned out as well as she did. Things were looking shakey with those scales. But I'm okay with how it turned out. A good lesson in taking a chance on something and making it work.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Playing with color in a portrait

My second quickie sketch with the new Wacom. Playing with some colors and shading but ultimately, I got frustrated because I don't understand how to adjust the brushes and levels how I want yet to get the effect that I want. Basically, I want to paint watercolor or copic markers digitally.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: WIP - Copic coloring of mermaid with fiasco necklace

Oh heeey. Like that skin tone you got going on.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - colored baby sphinxes

D'aw aren't they cute. This is an old doodle from 2010 on a postcard size cardstock. I used copics for this but I definitely didn't know what I was doing.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inking of mermaid with fiasco necklace

Found my waterproof inking pens! Let's get to work! Feel free to color this in if you like it - just please credit me (don't claim it as your own drawing, dude) and send me a link! I wanna see!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Copic coloring of Fairy Queen - finished!

And here's the finished piece! Lots of goofs but it actually wasn't as bad as I expected. I really thought it was going to be a shit show. Unfortunately, the scanner made some of the lines harsher than they really are, it definitely looks better in person. Still, fun. Need more ink refills though...

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Inked portrait during the Josei panel

So I was cleaning out some art supplies and rediscovered an old brush pen that I had never used and this was the result of playing with it for the first time. To see the original sketch, scroll down or go here. The sketchbook that this is in actually has decent paper so I might color this in at some point. My hand was super shakey though. Kind of wish I could do a redo on it but hey, gotta love the imperfections.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: WIP - Fairy Queen with copic markers

You might remember this drawing from while back. I'm not in love with the drawing itself but I needed something to sink my teeth into for dusting off my Copic markers. This seemed like a good bet. I of course rediscovered why I used to be so selective about my inking pens... because if they aren't waterproof, the copics make them bleed like crazy >.< not fun. So I had to be super tender while coloring this dude.

Nice thing was that the paper was slightly better than other cheap printer paper and had a slickness to it that did not so bad when blending the colors. Still not great though. Once the color is there, there's not much reworking that can be done. Just have to roll with it. In hindsight, I wish I had made the skin a darker tone as well as the hair so the highlight popped more. And why did I make the collar pink?! Guh. But still good practice.

Keep an eye out for the finished piece shortly.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Vanity Fair boys

An oldy but a goody. I still love to watch the Vanity Fair movie with Reese Witherspoon, though I'm not a huge fan of her in a general sense, I felt like she was perfect for this character. Also loved the military boys - as seen above. Well, I gave them Utena colored hair but whatever. This was a fun small sketch done on card stock, meant for printing invitations and such, postcard size. 

I've been cleaning out my art/craft/sewing/book room and found the leftover blank cards. I might go back to doing small ones like this again to give away to people or to send with letters. I'd like to find little sleeves for them so they don't get damaged in transit but they're small enough to fit inside a sandwich baggy... so I guess that works lol. Let me know if you want one ;)

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Girl sitting and new Wacom

NEW WACOM AAAAAAAH! After so many years with my trusty Intuous 2 Wacom, I was gifted a glorious Wacom Pro for my 11 year anniversary with Joel. He knows the way to my heart... hah! Well this was the first sketch on the new Wacom. The sensitive takes some getting used to, I keep turning it up and down and messing with the hardness and opacity levels etc. But I'll figure it out. I was surprised I didn't goof up the proportions more in this, honestly. I was having the darnedest time zooming in and out all the time. But I found myself sticking around 100% zoom for the most part.

Joel was cute though - he says 'Nice!... No color?' and this was after me having like 2 hours with the new Wacom and I was like 'DUDE do you know how long it can take to color stuff!? It took me over an hour just to do the rough sketch lol'. I think he was misled cuz he's seen me do copic or watercolor drawings that take like 30 minutes to an hour (simple portraits) and assumed it was the same. Maybe for the pros who know all the tricks and have their hot keys and such setup in just the right way. But me? I gotta relearn how to use layers even hah. But I'm excited to do so.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Self portrait in purple monochrome

Old school! And by old school I mean high school senior portrait class project circa 2004/05. I still remember how much of a challenge this project was for me. It was a great process.

I had to sit and pose in this little photo studio the teacher had setup in the basement of the school and let someone take portrait shots of me. Then I took the film (not digital) and processed it myself, darkroom and all. Then made a print of several of the photos, all myself. And finally, pick one and start painting a monochromatic piece in acrylics. The teacher recommended black and grey tones to make it easier (since the photos were black and white) but said we could do any color... so I had to do purple. Then I had to map the light values and make a sample palette strip that had an example of a gradient from lightest to darkest so I didn't get confused while painting.

Wow, it was really a lot for a single project. I'm still really proud of it, regardless of the oddness of some things in it. I think it was a great example of all that I had learned in that class and with that teacher (the lovely Mrs. Lacy XOXO). Maybe this would be a good project to do a redo of in digital form with my wacom, see how much I've changed. Maybe take a new self portrait photo... hmmmm.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Fred's Voice portrait

Second quicky sketch with the Krita paint program. Tis glorious. The paint program, not the sketch haha. The sketch is fine. I was trying to do something.... else with that chin angle, didn't quite work out so I just went with it. Sometimes I find myself having conversations with my drawings. 'Oh, I'm sorry, you wanted to be facing forward, not tilted to the left? My bad. I didn't realize you felt so strongly about it.' Hence his shady side eye. So much shade.

This was sketched while listening/watching to a Fred's Voice ASMR video on the youtubes. Specifically the 'rude English gentleman' bits. Cracks me up.  But of course, it also relaxes me. If you've never tried ASMR, I highly recommend it. For me, it's a cross been meditation and a brain massage. I have a strong response to it, though. I get all tingly. Not everyone does. And not everyone responds well to intimate personal attention either, I recently found out. And that's ok. There's always cute cat videos. Bless the internet and all it's glory.

Fred, if you're seeing this, thanks for the great videos. Keep up the great work for as long as it is fulfilling for you.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Christmas in Nanao caricatures

Throwback to Christmas 2011. I made a sketch of each of the ALT's in Nanao, at the time, gave them the original colored drawings, and made this collage of all of them. It was a great exercise for me, thinking about each personality and what I imagined them doing. I really tried to keep it light and not be demeaning or anything, tried to let the sketch go where it wanted. At the time, I remember everyone really liking the drawings of themselves. But maybe I'm just remembering it better now that time has passed haha. Ah well, it's better that way.

My favorite is still Nicole's drawing. If you zoom in, you can see the snowmen she's making are actually evil snowmen. I think at the time we joked about building tiny evil looking snowmen on the cars in her apartment complex so it looked like a tiny invasion of evil cannibal snowmen. It was really funny at the time, I swear. There may have been alcohol involved. Almost definitely.

MISS YOU GUYS!

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Big hair, big lips, and first go with Krita

OH YEAH. Now we're talking. Finally found a painting program that actually works with my super old Wacom tablet, Intuous 2. I had just about given up and was looking to buy a new drawing tablet this year because I miss painting digitally. Thankfully, another artsy friend (Nathalie) introduced me to Krita, a wonderful FREE paint program.

Krita appears to be open source and already, for me, has far surpassed Gimp. I never got the hang of Gimp, too many things were different from Photoshop and I had grown up on photoshop, I even use it in my career so it's a daily thing for me. But I don't really like Photoshop for painting. I like things like Open Canvas and Sai much more. So when I upgraded to Windows 7 and the sensitivity stopped working for my Wacom pen, I thought all was lost.

For some crazy reason, Krita works and works really well. To do the sketch above, all I did was install the program, open a new document, didn't change any settings or preferences, and sat down for 15 minutes. This is just the basic brushes setting so I CAN NOT WAIT to try the specialty brushes. After my 15 minute doodle, I immediately went back to the download page for Krita and made a donation because hot damn, this program is nice.

After I spend some more time with it, I'll do a more in depth review of Krita. I have high hopes. Have you tried it yet? What were your thoughts on it? What's your fav paint program?

Nathalie and I are hoping to figure out how to do co-op painting via Krita but if that's not a thing, I hope the developers can figure that out because this will be the perfect program for that. Also, live stream painting? I think it already has a record feature but not sure how good it is yet.

with love - M