Madison

Okay, three guesses as to why I bestowed the name "Madison" upon this girl. (Hint: it happened as a result of researching different piercings. Okay, maybe that was a bigger hint than I thought. :-P)

Anyways, she started out as an initial coloring practice but I like her design so much that I'm just gonna have to give her the full body portrait treatment. :-)

Drunken Karaoke Madness: Wanda Style!

Okay, by a show of hands, who here remembers Wanda and her big-ass glasses?

Well, here she is again with some slightly less big-ass glasses rocking some B-52's after one too many mojitos.

Why yes, I was feeling a mighty need to hit up a karaoke bar while drawing this. :-P

Alien She?

Drew this all the way back in the winter. Had a bizarre urge to draw some ruffly old school lolita threads on a really tall, freakishly distorted girl who may or may not be an alien.

Or maybe she just loves wearing her sclera contact lenses a lot. Who knows?

The truth is out there...

The Strength of a Female's Character

Okay, okay; you're probably wondering what could have possessed me to draw such an atrocity against proper human anatomy in the first place.

Well, I've been morbidly fascinated by the blog "Escher Girls" on Tumblr as well as the admittedly bothersome, long standing trend of the "broke-back pose" prevalent in female comic book characters. Especially ones that are STRONG!!11!!1!

I heartily recommend checking out that blog. Not only is it hilarious, horrifying and entertaining but it's also quite enlightening and provides a great springboard for discussion. Just don't attempt doing any of these poses in the real world...unless the you love the sound of your spine snapping.

As for drawing this piece itself, it was fun in a lobotomized kind of way. 

Holly

Why yes, I was in a rather Christmas-y mood when I was drawing this. What gave it away? ;-P

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 23: I Was Raised By Culture Snobs

Turns out Day 23 of Sketchavember was another day that was asking for a color explosion.

Well, more like an explosion of bold, flat primary colors (though those giant dots in the background came out more orange than the Honey marker I had originally used). I also felt like doing a more loose and elongated style much like the one I used in "Biba".

The jury is still out on whether that look translates into color or not.

Note to self: do NOT use Canson Universal sketch paper for markers again in the near future.

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 20: Somebody Sure Digs Reptiles

Yee-HAW! With Day 20, I've reached the home stretch of Sketchavember!

This is another one of those times where everything just came together beautifully. The inspiration for this one comes from the deliciously 90's track (must be the repetitive use of the word "jump". XD ) "Reptile Theme" by Skrillex.

What can I say? I was a total "Mortal Kombat" kid back in the day (even against my mom's best intentions ;-P ).

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 16: Violet Wrath

If this ain't a total contrast from yesterday, then I don't know what is. ;-)

If there's one thing I've learned on Day 16 of Sketchavember, it's that it's near impossible to listen to speedy punk music when you're in an antsy frame of mind. With a change of music (Sisters of Mercy to be exact), the tone and general look of this drawing began to change.

Ahh, I love her impractical but awesome hair. In fact, who doesn't love hair that's awesome but impractical? ;-)

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 13: Blotty Dotty

I may have spent most of the day out and about but I still managed to squeeze in another drawing for Day 13 of Sketchavember.

In case you were wondering about the title (because I totally know that you are ;-P), I was trying to go for leopard spots on her cardigan but they ended up looking more like blots you'd see on a Rorschach test. If there's one thing I've learned tonight, it's that leopard spots are trickier to pull off with inking pens as opposed to markers.

Have fun looking for my signature. ;-)

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 12: Biba

Day 12 of Sketchavember ended up becoming some sort of classic movie bender day. (Translation: Turner Classic Movies has quickly become one of my favorite TV channels. Throw in a PVR and I'm a happy camper.)

One of the movies I watched today was Charlie Chaplin's "Modern Times". I've always had a huge love and appreciation for silent films and today's drawing kind of reflects that. Also a strong influence for this drawing is one of the photographs in Kevyn Aucoin's book "Making Faces" in which he and Kate Moss recreate the look of "The Biba" (as in the 60's era London boutique). Here's the photograph in question.

Heh. So all in all, I drew some psuedo-fan art of Kate Moss (even if I don't have any particular feelings about her) today. That's Sketchavember for ya! ;-P

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 6: A Girl Like Me

Ever had a random piece of dialogue that you've been itching to work into a poem, story, song, comic or prose of some kind? Yeah, I just had to get it out of my head and onto paper for Day 6 of Sketchavember.

It's been a while since I last did one of these single panel, devoid-of-context "cryptic comics" but they're always so much fun to do. I love pieces that let you draw your own conclusions and let your imagination fill in the blanks.

What do you guys think?

I will give you one hint: I listened to a helluva lot of Depeche Mode. "Music for the Masses" era Depeche Mode to be exact. ;-)

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 4: Something Worth Losing

For Day 4 of Sketchavember, I returned to one of the sketch cards I was working on during one of the conventions I was at. In this case, it was Comix and Stories back in August.

At first, I was going to make this a black and white ink sketch card but a random challenge of sorts popped into my head as I was finishing the inks tonight: to see if I could create an unsettling mood without using dark colors or blood.

I successfully avoided both elements but I'm not a hundred percent sure if I captured an unsettling vibe. A sense of bittersweet nostalgia, maybe? (The mad color balance/saturation experiments in Photoshop certainly helped in that respect.)

Let me know what you guys think in the comments. :-)

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 3: Whatever...

Thrilling title, I know. :-P

Ever have one of those days where you're completely stumped as to what to draw? Yeah, Day 3 of Sketchavember ended up being one of those days. But I just gotta soldier on, y'know?

Whenever I'm at a loss of what I want to draw, I just let my hand and my pencil do their thing and sometimes it all falls into place. This expression and her messy hair came about and I just went with it.[/cool story, bro.]

Heh, now that I look at it, her coloring does look pretty similar to Zoisite in "Sailor Moon"...if he were a woman. ;-P

SKETCHAVEMBER 2011 Day 1: Miss Polly Pegleg

It's baaaaack!

That's right folks, I'm joyfully subjecting myself to another round of Sketchavember! Don't know what it is? Morbidly curious? Learn more about it by clicking here. Take on the challenge...if you dare.

Anyways, this initially started out as a random character design. Of course, having the overactive imagination that I do, I ended up conjuring this whole story in my mind of how Polly Pegleg (that's her nickname) came to be and what hijinks she'd get herself into. I'm actually pretty tempted to turn it into some short comic story. We'll see. 8-)

Hallmark? More Like "Hellmark"

Guess what I'm planning to do with this image. ;-P

Anyways, my mixed medial kick marches on with this little experimental foray into semi-collage work. When you can't find gift wrap paper with the right patterns you want then cut/tear/rip apart gift bags that do.

Oh, Usa

DISCLAIMER: Usa belongs to me, baby.

Another addition to the list of "subject matter I'm not totally done with playing around with and drawing yet": bunnies.

Well, okay, I technically drew this piece about a month or two ago but I only recently decided to recolor the backdrop so the black looks more stark and solid.

For those of you who have been following me on DeviantART and/or Twitter, remember my little offhand mentions about an upcoming book? Yeah, you're looking at the drawing that kick-started this idea. It all stemmed from my attempt to draw something "bubble goth-esque" but it ended up turning into something a little more Harajuku raver than I had anticipated (must have been due to the music I was listening to at the time).

Before deciding on a color scheme, I wanted to draw a full-body sketch of her outfit. I was faced with the temptation to draw this character standing in front of a portal in the ground with a floating digital sign flashing the word "WONDERLAND".

And so an idea was born.

Piper Whacks...

New artwork?! From me?! What has this world come to?!

Okay, this is my first drawing since recovering from a post-wedding hangover. I figured I'd start off light with no real plan for a specific image in mind. I'd let my hand guide me and my imagination go where it wants to.

At first it was going to go in a Dieselpunk direction (though I suppose you can still see shades of it if you squint hard enough) and then it became some mechanic girl...but I wasn't satisfied with any typical mechanic girl. How about a mechanic with a murderous, vengeful streak?

A backstory of sorts came together as I was working on this: Piper (HA! Geddit?!) and her father (who raised Piper after Piper's mother died shortly after giving birth to her) ran an auto repair shop in a small town just outside of London until one tragic day when young Piper witnessed her father get beaten to death by a group of thugs. She continued to run the auto repair shop but took up another job on the side that required just as much precision and attention to detail as her day job: a hitman for hire. While she takes pride in being quick, efficient and clean in both of her occupations, Piper still longs to find the very thugs who beat her father to a bloody pulp and offer them the same service, only with a (bloodthirsty) smile.

On a technical note, I'm extremely happy with the coloring (though I may have done a little too much dodging on the blood splatters in Photoshop) and her muscular arm.

Wounded Though Winsome: Threadless Version

EDIT: Uploaded a much better scan.


What the hell?! A new image?!

I am planning on hand sewing a border but I thought I'd upload a threadless version before I tackle this drawing with a needle and thread. I guess you could say that this is technically a work in progress but the way I see it, this is an "alternate" version of the same piece.

As for the influences, well, all those hours playing "Bioshock" and reading countless lolita fashion blogs all had to culminate into something eventually.

She may look a lot like a Little Sister but trust me, she's not. She'd look much grungier if she were.

Out of all the substyles of lolita, guro (gory/grotesque) lolita is one of my absolute favorites. While I was highly tempted to put a tiny dab of blood somewhere, I decided to hold back on the gore and just focus on the fragile "broken dolly" aspect of guro lolita. Going soft but delicate was nice change of pace for me.

Be on the lookout for the "stitched up" version soon.

Ecstasy and Entrails

OONTZ! OONTZ! OONTZ! UUUUUUGGGGGHHHNNNN....

Ahh, who doesn't love a technicolor zombie raver? ;-)

I spent a fair portion of the last Vancouver Comicon inking this sketch card but I wasn't totally sure if it should be an explosion of color or if it should stay inked. Clearly, I went with the former.

Fun(nish) Fact: I was intending to make the skin a lighter shade of green but I grabbed the wrong marker and by the time it hit the paper it was too late to go back. Still, I think I managed to work well enough with it.

Toony Stew

Here's a fun little drawing exercise I picked up from jeinu's excellent tutorials on DeviantART.

Draw a bunch of odd, random shapes and try to create a face out of them. They turned out much more cartoonier than what I usually do but y'know what? It's really fun to get super cartoony every once in a while. It also helps that I was watching a lot of episodes of "The Critic" ("Needs more love" is an understatement) so I had a lot of their looser, cartoony character designs in mind while working on these.

With all these bizarre shapes, I wanted to draw a range of different ages, genders, shapes and characterizations.

Top left corner is a mall loitering sceney-bopper (you know 'em when you see 'em), top right corner disapproves of your lower middle-class shenanigans and waistlines, middle right became some sort of willowy, pretty boy Michael Jackson goth type, bottom left corner is a mopey sadsack working a soulless 9 to 5 desk job and bottom right corner is such an adorable little Jabba (as in Jabba the Hut) girl.

Let me know what you think.