Self Portrait

This is ink and Copic marker. I saw another drawing I really liked, on Copic’s Twitter feed, in kind of a manga style. So I decided to try drawing this portrait in that style. It’s not exactly like I pictured it but close.

 

I Draw Portraits

Faces are my favorite things to draw. It’s so challenging, because you have to make it look like the person, obviously, but you also have to capture their personality. Sometimes I miss the mark but sometimes it works. I usually find it easier to work in shades of gray, but since her eyes are her most striking feature I thought a little color would be perfect.

 

Graphite and prismacolor on paper.

 

 

 

Soccer Practice II

More yard adventures! Graphite and Copic Multiliner.

 

Soccer Practice

Here’s a quick sketch, playing outdoors on a beautiful day.

 

Margarita Mermaid

This is a new 6×8 watercolor I did. It’s a version of the piece below, which is an ACEO done in colored pencil. I like the expanded version, since I think it’ll look better in prints. Plus the colors blend easier with watercolors (or maybe I just haven’t completely mastered colored pencil yet 😉

 

Tuesday randos

Going through some old files today; I’m organizing my portfolio in preparation to submit to some galleries that have been recommended to me. I’m not quite ready, but soon.

Anyway, here are a few odds and ends. The lady walking the dog is just me trying out my Copics, when I got my first batch. I like drawing smart-looking dames in period garb, but the dog…? I forget, I think I wanted her to be doing something other than just standing there (or standing there with martini and cigarette as I often do).

The kneeling Highlander is from a sketch I did when conceptualizing my submission for Litographs Dragonfly In Amber design contest. I didn’t win, but I had fun. The submission guidelines called for silhouettes, but I liked the details on this version so I saved it. I think I used his outline for the final version.

The last is from one of my favorite older sketchbooks. I used to take it to work when I was a projectionist, in the days before digital took over, and there’s a lot of stream-of-consciousness art in it.
Projection was my favorite aspect of theatre management, for sure. There can be a lot of down time, especially late at night when you’re waiting for the movies to end. Either you have to pull a giant roll of film off a rotating metal platter and tote it to the opposite side of the building, or you need to wind up the tail end of the movie and shut down the projector.

This sketch is of one of the many, many Saw movies. It was the last one to finish, and I had to wait for it with the sound turned down and the porthole closed(because I hate Saw as a franchise in general). I probably just needed a distraction from the “gross bloody torture” but it turned out all right.

 

Some new bookmarks

 

The Night Road

Sunflowers

I made a couple of new bookmarks.

I got the visual idea for The Night Road while I was thinking about a book I loved as a kid, If You’re Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow. Google it, it’s terrific 🙂

Sunflowers is another stained glass flower entry. I cut the same tag shape out of a piece of Copic paper (not regular paper like the previous ones). It absorbs a lot of ink, blends well, and when you hold it up to the light, the colors glow.

 

AKA Jessica Jones Fan Art

I watched Netflix’s Jessica Jones last month, and while normally the superhero genre doesn’t interest me, I really liked it. To the point of adding Daredevil to my queue and brushing up on Marvel’s street level supes.

Hmmm…maybe I liked it so much because the titular protagonist is a strong, complex, interesting, imperfect woman. You know, instead of the typical fights-and-explosions trope one would expect from the typical superhero flick. It’s almost like…the show creators are acknowledging that maybe the world of secret identities, tragic origin stories, special powers, and snazzy suits aren’t just for dudes!

 

Some new art

Floating Daffodil

Reflections

Baby Buggy Boy

Baby Buggy Girl

So I have some new cards I’ll be putting in my Etsy shop. The top two are photos I took. I prefer drawing and painting to photography, mostly because I enjoy the challenge of reproducing a person or object or scene in lifelike detail. I guess I like honing those particular skills. Also, I never thought I was good at it. But these ones were pretty decent, I thought, so here they are!

The baby buggy ones are a drawing I did after my similar buggy-themed paintings. I’ll put those up if I haven’t already. But then I scanned the drawing into my laptop and colorized it in Not-Photoshop. I quite like the result.

 

Sketch vs. final

I had an idea for the literary bookmark series concerning the Dark Tower, Stephen King’s magnum opus. I sketched it out in graphite pencil, then reproduced it in bookmark form. I used Copics, Prismacolor pencil, and an opaque silver paint marker. Still to be laminated and tasseled, but this was pretty much what my day’s output consisted of.