Month of Love Fetish Challenge

I hope everyone had a good weekend, with or without a valentine.

My husband of almost an entire year now, took me out for dinner and spoiled me with flowers and fishies. However, we both wound up feeling a bit under the weather during the weekend (we blame the fried onion ball), so this week's challenge comes to you a little late.

So what's my fetish? Well, I can tell you with some enthusiasm that it involves men in uniform. 

This one's for my husband....I love you babe!

#monthoflove

Month of Love: Illustrate Your Favorite Love Story

Watercolor sketch

Maybe there are some people out there who don't share my same perspective of how Star Wars can be seen as a love story. Sure, she kissed her brother unknowingly, but it was to piss off the guy she was really crazy about. And it worked, didn't it?

Yes, I know, women are weird. 

#monthoflove

P.S.

Can you imagine that story being told to their kids? "This one time, your mom kissed your Uncle Luke...."

Month of Love Unfiltered Valentine Challenge

In October I followed alongside Month of Fear, and now I am following along Month of Love. The first entry is for an unfiltered valentine, which pretty much leaves it open to whatever I want to create.

So here is my unfettered valentine tribute with an Indiana Jones twist! Watercolor sketch on Bristol Paper. 

Kali Ma! Kali Ma! My heart burns for you!

  

Until next week's challenge: Illustrate your favorite love story.

#monthoflove

Halloween Memories

This post raps up my parallel postings to #monthoffear.

We leave off with Halloween memories. I don't really have any ones that particularly stand out in my mind, but there is a sort of ritual that has developed over the years in my life during the holiday. Of course I was excited to come up with an idea for a costume, and get free candy.

But mostly I love picking out a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch, and carving it up. I love drinking hot apple cider with cinnamon. I love seeing kids in costumes, though we don't get many trick-or-treaters ={

I also love diving into scary stories and watching scary movies to this day. When I was younger I used to read Scary Stories, or In A Dark, Dark Wood and stay up late on Saturday night to watch Svengoolie make fun of crappy b-rated movies.

Happy Halloween!

Phobias

I have a few phobias. Leporiphobia, coulrophobia, but the one that probably most effects my life is arachnophobia. Just the other day I was reaching out for the computer mouse and noticed a house spider crawling from the table towards me and the couch. My husband thinks it was funny how shrilly I was able to scream, getting over excited and anxious as I pointed my finger at the little beast and told him to get rid of it.

I have a way of thinking these spiders are a lot bigger and nastier than they really are. I know it's an irrational fear, but it's one that still gets me screeching like a banshee when I see a spider.

Marker on Bristol

P.S-

Last Summer my husband caught this....

This thing was the size of my hand!

I had just come out of the very bathroom where only minutes later my husband found this hand sized spider that he at first thought was a tarantula. Or maybe a mutated spider with some extra chromosome that made it a giant. It turned out to be something called a Nursery Spider, which apparently eats other spiders. Needless to say, he relocated the thing.

P.P.S-

While we were in Oz we saw some other nasty spiders called Huntsmen, which are like the Oz version of the nursery spider, in that they eat other spiders. But they are big and hairy, and look like movie props. True story....

#monthoffear

Month of Fear Catch Up

So for the past week I was away in Chicago visiting my family and making an appearance at The American Academy of Art to give a lecture on the importance of networking. Thanks to the Academy for having me, and it was nice to see some old faces.

While I was gone I was unable to post the last two week's challenges so I will do so now.

Pickman's Model. Watercolor on Bristol

 So for illustrate your favorite horror story, I chose H.P. Lovecraft's short story Pickman's Model. I'm a huge Lovecraft fan and every year around this time I pick up and read my anthology of his stories. Pickman's Model has long been my favorite work of his, perhaps in part because is is about an artist. I would imagine that it was a lot scarier back in the day than it is today. I absolutely love it, and doing this piece has sparked a desire to dabble on the subject in the upcoming months.

Creepy Closet Door. Colored Pencils on toned paper.

And last week's challenge was to illustrate something that terrified you as a kid, which was perfect for me since I was at my childhood home. My parent's house is a bit over 100 years old, and now that everyone has moved out it's sometimes a bit more spooky than it was when we all lived there. 

As a kid I used to sleep with my mom in the master bedroom for a few years until one of my sisters moved out an I was able to have my own room. During my childhood I often was afraid of 'the fat lady in the closet'. I don't have any idea now, what that was all about, but I do suspect that I thought I was seeing the ghost of a rather large woman jam packed into the tiny closet space. I was terrified to be upstairs alone because I thought she might come out of there and get me. 

My mom couldn't help but chuckle when she saw me take a picture of the door with my phone so I could do this drawing (There is no way I was gonna sit in the room and draw it!). She told me that sometimes she is in there dusting (This room being vacant now), and she thinks 'I'll keep the closet door closed in case the ghost is in there trying to look out.' 

-What a creepy thing to say, mom.

P.S.

Carrie was on the other day (the original movie), and I was reminded how similar the closet in my mom's old bedroom with it's stoic white walls and religious paraphernalia looked like the closet door that Carrie's crazy mother used to lock her into. I assure you my mother never locked any of us in the closet...but I think my older twin sisters did that to me at some point in my life. I don't recall as I have probably blocked out those memories.

Until the next challenge: Phobias. Ta ta!

#monthoffear

Month of Fear:Week 2

Watercolors on Bristol

This week's challenge is 'What is your reoccurring nightmare?'

I would have to say that mine is probably the nightmare of loosing someone I care about. Sometimes I have dream snatches of the possibility of loosing someone close to me, be it my mother from a heart attack, or my husband from any number of things from a car accident, to being deployed somewhere and not coming back home. 

Of course none of us can escape from Death when he finally comes for us. But the idea of him coming is no less unsettling. 

Trying to end this post on a more positive note: according to my dream dictionary to dream of someone dying actually isn't that bad of an omen. It means some sort of a rebirth, or some sort of a good omen for things to come. 

Until next week.....

Month of Fear: Week 1

It's been a while since I posted anything to my blog, and a lot of things are changing for me. 

I recently attended Cincinnati Comic Con, which was kickstarted by Tony Moore. I had a great time in Artists' Alley with the rest of the crew from Surreality, plus Andrew Day, R.C. Young, and our beloved Amanda Bolin. It was my first time setting up behind a table and selling my art, and I plan on attending more conventions in the future as an exhibitor. 

I have also opened up shop on Etsy, selling pin up prints and offering commissions as well. Check that out here. 

But now onto the reason for this post. There is an online challenge going on over here that I have decided to participate in this month. I first saw this blog when they were doing a Month of Love earlier in February, and decided for me it was a bit too late to join in on that. 

Week 1's challenge is 'What Lives Under Your Bed?' 

This is something that I was afraid to consider as a child, and something that, from time to time, also haunts my thoughts now as an adult. I am afraid of many things, namely spiders. And so I thought that would serve as inspiration enough for this week's challenge piece. 

And so here you have it, a young girl creeping to the end of the bed to investigate that weird bump in the night that your parents try to tell you is just normal house noises. Or perhaps investigating that there are no Ghoulies hiding under you bed, because you stayed up late on Saturday night watching Svengoolie on the boob tube. 

11 x 14 watercolor doodle

Looking forward to the next challenge idea. 

#monthoffear

Private commission. Watercolors on 140lb hotpress watercolor paper. This came out very well for a piece entirely out of my comfort zone, not just for the use of green and blues in my pallet, but overall. It was fun and tricky. I need to work more on foliage. It's good to work outside the box, and frustrating. 

Ch-ch-cha-changes!

I'm posting this to let you know that I will be planning a revamp of my work, which will most likely include this here blog of mine.

I think that I have been totting around a whole lot of baggage since college, perhaps before then too. I realize that now is the time for me to maybe take a step back from a few things and try to sort things out. Find out my likes and dislikes of my art making, really take a moment to go over and practice a lot of things that art directors and fellow artists have been telling me to explore.

I am not sure when I will have a chance to come back to this blog, but be sure that I will, with much better work.

With that, I leave you with this pencil draft for a private commission....

Coloring for Surreality

Hello world, it's been a bit since I posted anything on here.

I wanted to take a little time out to call attention to the web comic Surreality, created and inked by fellow alumni Caleb King and Carla Wyzgala. This coming April will be the mark of our first anniversary of releasing our online web comic.

The image as sent by Carla

I like to throw some color in  with the borders

Laying in the foundation colors

Adding in simple layer tweaks

Finishing up with some detail

Above is a quick look into how I apply colors to the comic. This is my first time as a colorist and I think that in the last year of working on this I have learned a lot (especially about cheating with layers). Caleb is a wonderful writer and artist as well (not to mention a pretty relaxed slave driver). Carla and I have been wanting to collaborate on something for a while, so I was her first choice in a colorist, and I am happy to have not let them down. 

Our comic has been a great success, and last summer we were pleased to reach our goal to fund a special anthology comic featuring the works of Andrew Day, Lucas Durham, Nicolas Giacondino, David Pauwels, and of course ourselves. Could there be another anthology in the future of the comic? We'll have to wait and see. 

Post Gen Con

So I'm back from Gen Con, which was a total blast since I took a big step away from volunteering to run much for my game group, which freed up my time to do some other things. I got to walk the floor in the dealer hall and chat with people a bit more as well as hang out with a good buddy of mine when schedules allowed.

Mighty Muggs on Display

I got a chance to stop by to visit my mighty mugg that I did as a design challenge for ArtOrder, and checked out the others there as well (everyone did a smashing job!). I also had a chance to sit in on some paint overs by Todd Lockwood, and while my USB wouldn't work I was still able to pick up a lot from the experience and hope to have a chance to meet up with him again at a future convention. 

There was also the Brimstone Drawing Club, which made it's debut at the convention. It's ran by Natanya Rubin and Kyle Bice, and featured some awesome models! I hope they come back next year and I hope they have at least a later session to see if they can snag any of the artists from the hall to come in and draw. 

Little Alice

I also had ad double portfolio review from WotC's Jeremy and Kate, as well as a later one from Zoe from Fantasy Flight. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that despite my own doubts (which were many) that my art is really coming around. I still have things I need to work out, but for the most part they seem fewer and far between. Zoe mentioned that if I can polish off things a little my work could get accepted for publishing, and Jeremy pushed me to delve deeper into my watercolors and gave me a lot of very helpful advice. 

So my focuses will be narrowing down quite a bit in terms of portfolio work, and widening in terms of working with my media. I have to say I feel great about being encouraged to work more on my traditional watercolors rather than digital. 

And last, but not least.....while I was away at the convention my buddy started up a kickstarter for the web comic that we are all working on. So check it out, and donate! And stay tuned for some WIP work on a new painting and possibly an inside scoop on my color work for the comic!

Mighty Mugg Wrap Up

Original Design

So I know that it's been a while since I updated this, and now with Gen Con just a few days away I realized I ought to get on with the wrap of the Might Mugg Challenge (Which has been a challenge and a blast!)

So when I last left off it was when I had started to go into the actual washes of paint to the figure after all the prep work to get there. 

Using the original design as a ref

I apologize for having skipped taking pictures after this point in the process, but sometimes when you get your groove on you just get caught up in the moment when it comes to painting. I decided I didn't like the yellow for the gold in her outfit so I applied a few coats of Golden paint's gold acrylic to give it that shine.  Once the figure was done I spray primed her with a protective coat.

Now a word about the protective sealer. I had bought it but wasn't going to use it once I had the paint job done because I was afraid she would be really hard to photograph. However I ran into some issues with the sculpy acting weird so I used the sealer to try to keep the problem from getting worse. I guess that sculpy III has some change to the chemical base as opposed to the normal sculpy, and despite following directions to boil it to harden as opposed to baking it, there were a few places were it became very tacky. 

Creating the Whip of Fangs

With the Mugg out of the way it was onto her accessories. Again, I kinda got lazy so there aren't any pictures of the process. For the whip I used a bit of a dowel rod, some thin wire which I braided, and some more sculpy....oh, and superglue. God, yes, superglue.

Again I primed and sanded this down before painting it and sealing it. I decided at the end to add a bit of sewing floss to the effect of tongues coming out of the snake head's mouth. For the skirt I just used a piece of faux leather from an old skirt and cut it out after futzing around with it to see how best this would work out. I sewed a bit of wire into the hem to help it hold it's shape to the top and used some velcro to keep it around her waist. I also cut a slip to add as a belt and just used cardboard which I painted as the buckle.

Oh yeah!

You can see how she turned out above. Overall I am quite pleased with how she looks though in hindsight it would have been cool to give her some hair from a scrap of wig or something. And the best thing...?

Quenthel with her comrades on Jon Schindehette's desk!

The best thing was seeing the picture that the AD of WOtC took of her and some of the other muggs from the challenge on his desk! Gen Gon is only a few days away now, and I can't wait to see how all the other muggs turned out. If you'll be at the convention, make sure to stop by and check these babies out!

Mighty Mugg WIP: Part 2

So this far into customizing my mugg I have already modified the figure with sculpy clay, primed, and sanded it. That means I'm ready to start painting.

It's not often that I use acrylics, but thanks to having gone to college, they were something I did have to purchase for some of my classes. Which means I happen to have quite a few tubes laying around still. I'm currently working with Golden acrylic paints, and Utrecht brand acrylics but I think just about any kind of paint will do.

First I start off by taking a look at the color study I already have laid out. Once again, that means the image below:

Color Study

I mixed up a nice violet with Ultramarine blue and Cadmium red, adding in some white and black until I got to a color I was happy with for the skin. From there I split half the mixture and added some more blue and black to darken it up a bit more for the color I would then use for the leather parts of the figure. And to make sure that the mixtures wouldn't dry and become plasticy I added in some retarder (again I happened to have the Golden brand).

Now even though I have the retarder in the mix, I want to use thinner washes as I apply the paint, so I make sure my brush is saturated with water before tinkering with the paint, and I do a few tests of the mixture on some scrap watercolor paper.

Once I'm satisfied I begin to paint the figure. At this point I still have the toy broken into pieces to make it easier to paint, so make sure you know which pieces are what and which way they are going to be facing before you paint! 

Above are some of the pieces with a few coats of paint on them. Using a brush loaded with watery paint and slow strokes, I was able to mostly paint without leaving behind any traces of brush marks. I am using a synthetic brush for the painting (retired watercolor brushes that no longer hold their shape). Giving them a little swirl at a 45 degree angle in the paint helps to narrow the tip for places that need more finesse.

I want to mention that I didn't draw on any of the details prior to painting them on. Since I have my original mugg designs out, I am instead eyeballing where certain details are placed. I did run into a problem with the yellow paint mixture I used, which would not apply evenly. Therefore those areas are a little rougher than the rest. 

I've still got a bit of painting to do with this toy, so you'll have to stay tuned for another post. But here's a preview of the detail process to come (a little cleavage never hurts!).

Mighty Mugg WIP: Part 1

As I may or may not have mentioned in a previous post, I was one of a couple of people who were chosen to modify a Mighty Mugg to be on display at Gen Con this summer. Above is the entry I submitted, and I suppose that since the blank arrived in the mail recently that I ought to begin documenting the process.

Firstly, we were asked to submit in a character we would like to create. I chose the character of Quenthel Baenre from War of The Spider Queen book series, mostly because I really loved her character though out the books. I used the cover she appears on as a point of reference for designing the mug. 

Paint Me!

Now, I am not simply painting the blank mugg. I will need to add onto it, and to do so I will use sculpy clay, which you should be able to pick up at just about any craft shop. I happen to have some already (+ for not having to run out for more), which I plan to use. I begin by pulling off smaller pieces (because I have small hands) and warming the clay up with body heat in my hands to soften it while rolling it into a ball. From there I can easily pull off pieces as I need in order to sculpt with. 

When I was finished adding on the clay, I decided that I wasn't going to bake it for fear of ruining the head of the actual toy. So instead I brought a small pot of water to a boil and dipped the sculpted portions of the head into the water for about 3-5 minutes. Once I pulled the head out the clay had set and become hard just the same as if I would have baked it. 

(Oh yeah, I started this process by cleaning the mugg with some soapy water. I used dish soap for this and was careful not to get any inside. This is important because the mugg tends to have some chemicals on it from where it was made.)

First, I pulled my mugg apart. I found a video on youtube that shows the process. Then I taped the pieces onto some sticks (I used colored pencils since I have so many of them), making sure to tape off areas where the joints will meet. Once that was done I used a spray primer on the pieces.

I did run into an issue with the spray primer dripping down some of the pieces. Don't worry if this happens, since once the pieces are dry you will sand them down so they are smooth. I also used an empty egg container as something to stick the pieces into, though due to the clay on the head I had to use a small vase so it wouldn't tumble over. 

So that's it for the first part of the mugg process. Now that the pieces are primed and sanded down it's onto the painting stage.

Surreality

I've been offered the opportunity to do some color work for a friend of mine from the Academy of Art. He's working on a web comic called Surreality that he also plans to publish. Check it out, and those of you @ C2E2 feel free to drop in on Caleb and Carla at their booth!

 

 

 

Art by Caleb King
Colors by Kat Guevara

Sistine WIP

Just posting a quick WIP of something I am working on atm. I plan to use this in an upcoming portfolio, and am finding that working digitally my artwork looks a lot more polished than my watercolors. Sad, but true.

Star Wars Pulp

So I finished painting my piece for the Provocateur Gallery/ ArtOrder. I painted this in watercolors, which needed some digital touch up after scanning. If being a watercolor painter has any nasty little demons at all, I have to say the biggest pain is the one who lurks in the scanner.

Anyways, the deadline is due in a few weeks, so this ought to be sent out in time for it. Fingers crossed it makes the gallery!

30 Days of Sketches!

Hello bloggers,

This month I shall attempt to draw one character every day for the next 30 days (I only now realize there are only 29 days this month). It's my hopes to get my creative juices flowing, so these are just sketches I am being pretty laid back about doing.

In preparation I did make a list of characters to draw for the next month and some days, so I'm not just pulling ideas out at random as I go along. Just to make sure I don't lose steam in trying to pick some subjects to doodle. With that, check back to see more sketches as I find time to post them up, beginning with:

Dr. Mrs. Monarch!

SW Pulp WIP

 After posting my process to the WiPnation forums, where this contest is also taking place, it came to my attention that I had lost a lot of emotion in Princess Leia when it came to the pencil drawing. After doing the color comp I was feeling timid about continuing onto the painting stage, and I am happy I didn't.

Original Sketch

First Draft

Second Draft

In the original Leia is obviously more surprised/shocked by seeing Vader and his torture droid, however after getting a crit my original pencil drawing made Leia look more in control. So I took my drawing back to the drawing board and made the correction. I moved her arm up so it looks more like she is cowering, or trying to shield herself. I also changed the expression on her face, which was my main cause for not going to paint.