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

Sketch Diary: Wary priest

A quick sketch from lounging around at Zenkaikon. I like his/her pointy little chin.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: A man at leisure

Another random sketch from Zekaikon 2016 this year. But wait?! It's a dude! How unusual.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Scratch-art Vogue Princess

Many many moons ago, I was into the whole scratch-art thing. I never got very good at it but it was fun to do something that wasn't pencil to paper. Also, working in reverse lighting is hard to get use to - like seeing the darkest areas as the blank areas and the light areas as what needs to be scratched out. Highly recommend to help you learn lighting values as a young artist.

This piece is from highschool so ... 2004 maybe? Anyway, it's old. But I still like it. I used a page I clipped out of a Vogue magazine as a reference. Wish I still had it so I could show a side by side comparison. If any body finds it, like it to me, yeah?

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Portrait during the Josei panel

Thank you, Joel, for encouraging me to go to the Josei panel at Zenkaikon 2016 instead of whatever the other option was at the time. I remember being like 'Idk if I'll be into the Josei panel... they'll probably just talk about dreamy unrealistic men and unrealistic expectations in relationships etc.'. So glad I was wrong. Was a pretty good panel (gotta a little sleepy towards the end but it was early in the day) and learned about a bunch of really interesting sounding manga and anime. Like the one where the main character is a secretary type woman by day and a call girl by night but the lovers she brings home are then fed by her to her pet alligator... YES PLEASE. Of course not all josei style stories are like that and that's the point. Some are milder, more slice of life style and others are more fantastical. The point is simply that Josei offers something for the mature female oriented audience.

Explain - you've got shojo for young girls, shonen for young boys, seinen for young men (think 15-24), and of course josei for adult women. Evidently there's also kodomomuke for kiddies that's supposedly fairly gender neutral. Check out this kotaku article for some more info.

If you're looking for something to check out, one of my current favorite josei type things at the moment is Princess Jellyfish.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Upward gaze with fun hair

Fun hair. Sketched at Zenkaikon 2016. That is all.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Old style redux portrait

So to anyone not familiar, I think I pulled this from Escaflowne styled drawing. I say 'I think' because I was actually thinking about Escaflowne at the time... it just sort of came out that way, like auto-writing. Then later I looked at the sketch again and was like heeeeeey wait a secooooond... HAH. It's funny how things you loved as a young person peek through your subconscious well into adulthood.

with love - M

Edit: was NOT actually thinking about Escaflowne. See people, this is why proofers are so important (love you Kyle, light of my design life).

Sketch Diary: Lounging Akita

I never sketch Baku, my Akita ball of fluff. I don't know why. He's the perfect practice model. He sleeps maybe half the day away so it's easy to get him at a moment where he won't be moving much for at least 30 minutes. But I have a hard time with anatomy, animal especially because it's more foreign. This sketch was a product of my new habit of leaving sketchbooks around the house so I don't have any excuse not to draw.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Pink haired girl

Thought the odd proportions are becoming more glaring as time rolls on, I still really like this. I had (have?) no clue what I was doing with my watercolors. No training, no practice - this WAS the practice hah. This piece taught me a lot. Still feels soft and warm to me and I feel happy when I look at it. Isn't that the point?

with love - M

Sketch Diary: All necked up and no where to go

Hah. This neck. Love it. Love to hate it. Still like the over all sketch though. That little tuft of bangs in the front, the HUGE eyes. Whatever. At least I sketched hah.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Metal wings

Another quick sketch between panels (or during panels) at Zenkaikon 2015.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Zenkaikon 2015

So last year I bought a cute little hard back sketch book and took it with me to Zenkaikon 2015, an anime/game/all the things convention in Lancaster, PA. Scrawled this little ditty while waiting for one of the panels. That's me up top, Joel on the right, and Kyle hanging down below. The three of us did the Con again this year, 2016, and it was fabulous. Really, they did a great job. I've got grandiose  plans of doing my own panel next year and having a table at the artist alley... we'll see. I've always wanted to do these things, give something back to a community that has given me support, camaraderie, and inspiration over the years. Either way, I'll be back again next year for sure. Lancaster is such a cute town to have it in, too. Reasonably priced, close to home, win win.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Lips, Deadpools, and a Finn

All the doodles. I don't usually do cartoony styled characters. They're hard... you can do 'anything' with the proportions and joints don't exists but... they have their own rules and I don't have a lot of practice with them. But still fun.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Eyes in the flower bushes

Throwback to 2010. Noses are overrated.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: A face for your trouble

You know how sometimes you start sketching and eye, ya know, just for the sake of an eye. And before you know it, there's a whole oddly proportioned face is starting back at you?! Madness.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Figure studies, walk and a swing

I started 'hiding' little mini sketch books around the house... because my house is too big... and I'm terribly lazy. SHHHHHHH my methods are working.  I feel less pressure whilst doodling when I can just grab the nearest paper product and scratch at it for a bit. The alternative is to keep carrying a single sketchbook around the house with me.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Lady in waiting

Yeah! Keeping up with the sketch a day thing kinda! This was back in December when I first started loosening up my hand to prepare for a sketch a day mentality. I'm still not there yet but it's definitely more frequently which means I'm a much happier camper. Look how loose those lines are! SO LOOSE. What I was going for in this sketch... I couldn't begin to tell you. Let's just love it for what it is and move on.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Portait of a Mormon girl

As some may know, I have always loved portraits. It's my 'go to' thing to draw. So when I was browsing a National Geographic and saw this beauty, I couldn't resist. It was an article about women and families in a Mormon community. And though the article itself was a bit dark (talked about very young -read illegal- brides, unhealthy relationships, children not receiving much education opportunities, etc) this photo really shined for me. Like this girl/woman was finding her own star, her own fire with which to guide herself and her family even if her situation was less than ideal. Her eyes just glowed with life and a will to persevere. I truly hope that she was able to find fulfillment in life.

Man... this sketch is super old. Still one of my absolute favorites. When was the last time I did an IRL sketch of a person? Or even just a  portrait of someone from a photo like this was? Gotta get on that.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Mermaid hair in a frame

Taking me back! I still get good feels from looking at this piece and remembering how cool I felt while painting it. They sketch alone, I thought, was pretty awesome for my skills at the time and then the actual execution of the colors was quite exhilarating. I think this was 2010 or there abouts. Maybe a good one to hold onto for an OC. I'm so bad at creating original characters... correction, I make them all the time but I very quickly move on to the next one. I should commit to one, at least.

So this was one of my 'just starting out' watercolor pieces. I had (and still have...) no clue what I was doing. I was just putting brush to paper and seeing what happened. Man... it's really making me miss doing watercolors. Just one more reason to get my craft/art/sewing/book/misc room cleaned up so I can get pack into these things again. I certainly don't have to have my art table to paint but it sure makes things easier and more enticing. It's almost there! Just a couple more big projects to finish and it'll be ready for war.

With love - M

Sketch Diary: Portrait of a girl in my mind

What does it mean to be an artist? I feel like I got the sensation of it when sketching this girl. I was doing all the things: using my imagination, drawing out in the open (where could watch if they wanted), feeling at peace, and allowing the flow of the sketch to happen instead of forcing it. This all works together in me to create this feeling of accomplishment. Not because of the final outcome (the sketch itself) but because of how I got there. The experience of drawing the sketch was fulfilling. I think that's what in artist is: someone who is fulfilled by the act of the craft they are practicing.

With love - M

Sketch Diary: Lips and floating heads

As an art student, I got really drilled about making sure I stayed away from just drawing floating heads. I had a pretty cool illustration professor (looking at you Mr. Rea) who had us keep a real sketch book for class. We had to draw A LOT. More than I was used to, for sure, at the time. I think we had to draw a sketch a day and each week we'd have to hand over our sketch books to be checked as part of our overall grade for the class. He rarely critiqued the sketch books heavily, that wasn't the point of them, but he did have a particular grudge against floating heads. It's a common issue with many artists - incomplete drawings.

Thanks to his light pushing to stop doing that, I started to finish the sketches as much as I could. Heads always had at least shoulders attached to it, backgrounds started to happen, though very primitive and simple. One of my dreams has always been to illustrate for books. But I know that's not going to happen without at least a basic understanding of backgrounds and landscapes. So whenever you see a sketch of mine that has a background of some kind, get excited with me because it's a big deal!

Note: it is ABSOLUTELY ok to have sketches like the one above. That's why it's a sketch. If you want to just draw eyes or lips or hands or whatever from here till the end of time, have at it! Just remember your teachers want you to grow and try different things so they're going to pressure you to constantly step outside of your comfort zone in your creations. Don't be upset at them, that's their job. Your job is to learn from them and decide for yourself what practices you want to keep or discard. There are bad teachers out there so don't take it all as gospel. Use your head.

With love - M

Sketch Diary: Figure practice

Being in a more corporate setting at work, I don't usually have time to sketch. I usually have, you know, work to do. But sometimes we have meetings or the work is slow in getting to my department (production and design) so we get moments of pause. These figures were done during one such meeting. Don't worry, the meeting didn't really hold useful information for me. The other folks there were very irritated that we were forced to be there at all and when it ran late, folks started leaving lol. I mean, I don't blame them, time is precious.

Anyway, this. I need to do more of this. Quick, rough ideas. Then when I find something I like, I can sit down and rebuild it, develop it further. Instead of getting hung up on an ok sketch and working it through for an hour and then getting frustrated because it's not going where I thought it was going because really, it wasn't a great sketch to begin with. And that's ok. When sketching more frequently, it's easier to hold onto only the ones that move me and just thank the others for the service they provided... and let them go.

With love - M