Incoming Art Dump! Yet Another Teenage Witch on the Internet and Animu Abomination

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Anyways, the drawing above you is a self portrait...in the style of all the anime cliches I utterly despise. XD

Torpedo tits? Check. Robot baby face? Check. Cat ears, tail and wings for no real discernible reason? Check. Vacant soulless eyes? Check. Gratuitous panty shot? Check. Impossibly long legs? Check. Body type rarely seen outside of a horny teenage boy's sketch book? Check. 

Weep and tremble upon this totally kawaii abomination that crept from the bowels of Weeaboo Hell! :')

With that monstrosity out of the way, here's my take on one of my favourite comics growing up. Anyways, I totally see a modern day Sabrina Spellman being one of those nu-goth types that have a massive following on Tumblr and Instagram. Oh? And that magic floating stuff in the background? Totally #nofilter!

Oh god, was that an unironic use of the hashtag? gasp emoticon

Do It Yourself, Dammit! (V. 2.0)

"Oh for the love of god!! Do we really have to go through all this again?! What part of 'do it yourself, dammit' do you NOT understand?!?!"

And the revamp of this classic (if you can really call it that) is complete! Man, did I have a ton of fun binging on riot grrrl music while working on this one. "Rebel Girl", "Bad Reputation" and "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" will never not be awesome songs! \m/

A comparison post of the old one and this one will be coming soon. smile emoticon

Cyber-Kei Cutie V. 3.0

Aaaand here she is once again! The Cyber-Kei Cutie! If she isn't ringing any bells, I last drew her all the way back in 2011 (and before then back in 2007!). 

I feel like this is gonna be one of those images I'll return to every four years (that seems to be the time intervals on this one) just to see how far I've come art-wise. Expect a collage of all three images to come soon.

Anyway, it's funny; as I was colouring her last week, someone had asked me what her name was. In all the times I was drawing and revamping her, the thought had never occurred to me to bestow a name upon her!

What would you lovely folks name her? :-)

Nia Polly Tina

Why lookee here! It's the first completed piece of 2015! 

I may not see you but I totally know you're doing a victory dance in my honour. :-P

Anyway, as you can see, my art's developing one helluva sweet tooth. If this doesn't make you crave ice cream (let alone neapolitan ice cream) just a little bit, I'll be kinda shocked.

Useless fun fact: this took me three tries to scan in because I'm super meticulous like that. :-P

Puffy Pop (Plus Some Embarrassingly Belated Thank Yous)

First off, I feel so bad that I haven't had the chance to thank all those who came out to see me and Camille's table over at Akimatsuri so I'm doing it now! Thank you all so much for your support whether it was buying something, chatting, checking out my stuff or taking a business card. I appreciate it all so much and I'm already gearing up for the next convention in March. ;-)

Second, hope you all have had a very merry Christmas and the happiest of holidays. Also wanna take this time to wish you all a super duper happy new year! To say this was one of (if not) the biggest years of my life so far would be an understatement. I can't wait to see what 2015 holds! :-)

Now finally, onto the image itself! If your teeth aren't aching or rotting a little while looking at this, then I'll have failed miserably at my job. :-P

Christmas Lolita Collection Redux 2: Electric Boogaloo (UPDATED)

It's that glorious time of year again, people! My Christmas Lolita collection of cards has some brand new additions to the roster!

Now onto the commentary!

"Loliskate": The main change I made for this one was giving her a fluffy bunny hood. Other than that, the only real upgrade was a cohesive colour scheme of pinks, blues and white and better streaks of pink and blue amongst her blonde hair. Too bad her skating skills haven't improved since the first time I drew her back in 2008. :-P

"Gingerbread Lolita": Would you believe that this is the second time I've done a revamp of this particular lolita? I last drew her back in 2010 when I first wanted to update this series but I think this iteration feels a little more faithful to the fashion. Plus, I can finally draw classic old school lolita headdresses!

"Caroller Lolita": Another example in which I decided to change the skin tone and hair colour of the original design because hey, I love my diversity in my girls. I think the colours (especially in her outfit) came out a lot richer and vibrant and I love it all the more because of it. :-)

"Snowlita": This was originally the Snowman Lolita but I love my terrible puns too much. XD

Anyways, out of all my designs, this one was the most challenging (but fun!) to revamp into a more realistic lolita style. I know white face is considered a huge "no-no" in lolita but hey, I see shironuri fused with lolita fairly frequently so I figured, hey, this might work here as long as I don't get super literal with the snowman imagery. It's also safe to assume I had Mana (aka the Patron Saint of Gothic Lolita Fashion) on the brain for this design.

Baby Loves Her Bubble Tea

Okay, show of hands, who here remembers my character of yore Baby?

Well, I was kinda hit with the urge to draw her again recently. If you came to the Vancouver Comicon a few weeks back, you might've seen me coloring away at something. This sketch card was that something.

You can definitely say I was inspired by old school lolita and street snapshots from those "Fruits" magazines from Japan. I even tried to channel the blase expressions from those old shots. Hope I hit the mark!

Bloodwork

God, I wish I could scrape up a better title for this one. :-P

Oh man, this is like a culmination of all the things I love to draw: bunnies, lolita fashion, medical themes and copious amounts of blood. Hooray!  I'd be a horrible liar if I said my new nurse lolita dress wasn't a driving influence behind this piece.

I highly doubt this will be the last time I draw anything containing bunnies, lolita fashion, medical themes and/or copious amounts of blood.

Shibuya Sweethearts

ERMAHGERD!! My first completed image of 2014!  (Oh man, that will never stop being a weird year to type and read out loud.)

As you can see, my love of Japanese street fashions/subcultures is eternal and I just had to take a crack at drawing them all. From left to right, we have Fairy Kei (aka 80's cartoons as envisioned by Japan dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century), Mori (which kinda went into a Dark Mori direction. Think Stevie Nicks with a touch of innocent whimsy) and Shironuri (white porcelain to the max or go home!).

In case you were wondering about the black vertical lines, these will be turned into bookmarks very, very soon. 

Christmas Lolita Collection Redux!

They're baaaaaack!

That's right! It's been years since I first drew the Christmas Lolita collection and well, let's just say I've been chomping at the bit to revamp these designs. Not only has my art changed drastically since then (in terms of color, anatomy, facial features etc.) but my knowledge and experience with lolita fashion in general has been expanded greatly. To say that the old dress designs are "lolita inspired" would be generous. :-P

The cards are available at My Sister's Closet in Vancouver, British Columbia for $5.00 each. Proceeds of each card sold go towards the Battered Women's Support Services. Gorgeous cards (if I may say so myself) for a great cause!

Reindeer Lolita: If there's anything that I've picked up from working on these cards, it's getting creative with mixing Copic marker colors and making new ones. It's pretty apparent in that deep red on the ruffle trim of the dress. But yeah, her hair and antlers are adorable. ^_^

Christmas Tree Lolita: Remember what I said about creating different shades of color by mixing Copic markers? It was most apparent in this card when I had to create a shade of green that I didn't have the Copic marker color equivalent of to the...Crayola marker. (Oh, those old days of yore. :-P) Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with how the coloring on the Christmas Tree Lolita turned out. Fact: this card sent me out on a goose chase searching for a sparkly blue gel pen. Yeah, I still love gel pens. Deal with it. XD

Angel Lolita: When I first did these Christmas cards six years ago, I sold them at craft fairs. One of the things that stood out most to me during these craft fairs was a woman asking me if I did any cards of dark skinned girls. Sadly, I did not. That was then, this is now. One of things I wanted to focus on during my "quest for improvement" was diversifying my characters not only in terms of avoiding "Same Face Same Body Syndrome" but in adding more variety to my skin tones. It's surprisingly hard to find coloring tutorials specializing in darker skin tones (at least on DeviantART) but I've been able to apply a few techniques from other coloring tutorials to create different skin tones for various ethnicities. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the Angel Lolita turned out. Her hair though, oh man, that hair...it must've taken me 45 minutes or so just to color it because I'm insane like that. :-P

Santa Lolita: Here's the final card of the series! (For now, at least. I went crazy and did like 10 different designs, both old and new. I could only do so much before my deadline would creep up.) If there's one thing I wish I could fix about this card, it would be that first layer of color for the skin. I really should've refilled the ink on that E000 Copic marker. >_< But it's not too bad. There's still a lot to love about the Santa Lolita and this card in general. :-)

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...

Krampus: The Totally Underground Christmas Icon

First off: YOU ALL KNEW THIS WAS COMING!

Now that you've collected yourself from the shock that I'm still alive and still drawing, I just want to wish you all a most fantastically Merry of Christmases. Spend lots of time with family and loved ones have a wonderful day! 

Oh, and be sure to avoid the Krampus. I still can't believe I only learned of this figure about two weeks ago. 

PS: why yes, I totally was inspired by the Hipster Animals tumblr. 

Concept Sketches of Yore: Alec in Cyberland

Straight out of the "Stuff I've Been Meaning to Upload For a Ridiculously Long Time" archives, I decided to be nice and show you all some character designs for a one-shot comic story that you might remember me mumbling a few things about last year. Well, I may revisit this project in the future but it all largely depends on how strongly I feel about it. You have no idea how many times I've swung back and forth between "nay" ("Does the world really need another 'Alice in Wonderland' adaptation?") and "yay" ("Wonderland goes futuristic cyberpunk?! Hell yeah!") on this concept.

However, when I look back on these character designs I can't help but feel like they deserve at least some kind of showcase since I spent so much time on some of them (you'll know which ones I'm talking about as soon as you spot them) hence why I'm posting them now. ;-)

Up first, we have Alec, the would-be hero of this tale. At the time, I was contemplating the classic female lead for a Wonderland story until I got the suggestion to swap it to a male main character. Immediately, I was quite intrigued by the idea of thrusting an 18 year old otaku manchild into a high tech world he'd seen, played in and read about in anime, video games and manga...and finding out the hard way that it's not what he expected it to be at all. Not even all those hours puttering around TV Tropes could have prepared him for Cyberland!

Oh Chesh, you shapeshifting, flamboyantly androgynous ol' scamp! I have been told that Chesh leans a little closer to the feminine side of the gender scale. Maybe I oughtta dial back on the hips.

You all knew she was coming. The Queen of Cyber-Hearts is easily my favorite design out of this batch. Sure, a full-body sketch of her takes roughly two hours (yeah, you read that right) but y'know what? If she looks this bloody awesome, it's totally worth it. ;-)

Finally, we have our catalyst of the chaos Usa. Perhaps you may remember her in a much bigger and colorful context. In fact, she was what inspired this whole crazy idea in the first place. I still have a soft spot for her big buck teeth.

So whaddya guys think? Potentially awesome or a cliche best left behind?

Omigawd, People With EARS?!

I could have started this with an "OMIGAWD I'M STILL DRAWING?!?!" joke but that would just be really predictable and lame. 

Anyways, these are just some sketches where I would just let my pen roam and see where it would take me. I also tried to play around with different facial and body types. I even decided to get super experimental and add EARS (honest-to-god EARS! ) on my people.

Let me know what you think. 

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. 

The Long Lost Fascinator: Neapolitan

WHOA! Blogspot has a new layout now?!

Funny story about this one: I actually drew this all the way back in 2010 as part of my Fascinator sketch card set. 

However, as soon as I started coloring it, it ended up...not going in the original color scheme I had intended. As a result, I left it on the back-burner knowing that one day I would return to it because I really was pleased with the lineart. Well, that day finally came and I salvaged the image by going a very marshmallow peep-like direction with the colors.

Anybody craving sweets now?

A Sketch Card for Stephy-Wan

New art?! What the hell is this nonsense?! X-D

Anyways, this past weekend was my dear friend Stephanie's birthday. As you can tell, she's something of a "Star Wars" fanatic so naturally I had to draw her in some "Star Wars" related scenario. Needless to say, she loved it. :-)

I didn't really have time to scan this one in so that's why it's been posted in photograph form. God bless the iPhone.

Just Call Me "Pun Dawg"

Oh, deary me...

It's been way, WAY too long since I last updated this page. In fact, it's been so long that I actually have to switch up my profile picture. As you can tell from the toon, I've got bangs now. The last month or two had me swept up in a lot of things, namely home renovations/remodelling/revamping (well, something with an "re" at the front) and strangely getting sick more frequently.

With things finally returning to normal on my side of things, I'm going to jump back into my work and post more often.