This Entry is Brought to You by Too Much Bastion

I can't stop playing Bastion. Seriously, you guys. It's an amazing game with fantastic music. I'm totally horrible at it and die constantly, but that's okay because I am completely addicted to the music. As you may or may not know/care, I've been having some artistic issues lately coupled with some weird mood things, so I haven't really been in a good place as far as creating goes. I'm working my way out of it slowly but surely, and I finally have something that isn't totally terrible to show for it!

I swear Bastion is helping. The music anyway. If I allow myself to start playing again, I'll be glued to my laptop for hours and that is no good if I am trying to create artwork and work on my script for my current comic project.

This was a huge pain to complete. I literally threw my sketchbook in frustration no less than six times. I became hyper-focused, as I usually do, on small details like his braids and his scarf, so I kind of wasn't sure of how I wanted the rest of the picture to go, and it all started to seem very static to me. Eventually, I started to listening to "Build That Wall" from the Bastion soundtrack on repeat, and that, for whatever reason, lulled me into a sort of working state where I was able to find a new direction in free-form lines and fluid movement. I'm not especially pleased with the results, but it helped me to get over the hump and actually finish something, God Dammit.

This is Ukyou. He's one of my muses from the scifi-horror story I am perpetually working on. He's also based off of one of my ball-jointed dolls; A luts El 60cm boy. One of these days I need to make character sheets.

Anyway, materials: smallish watercolor sketchbook, ballpoint pens, uchida markers, copic markers, neopiko markers, white ink, walnut ink, red ink.

A Crisis of Confidence.

Sorry it's been quiet around here. I haven't been happy lately, so I haven't been working very much. Anyway, here's a dumb little Winnowill.

Yay. It's kind of crappy, but it's a step towards something, at least.

Announcing my hiatus mid-hiatus

I'm still alive. In a bit of a rough patch, but I haven't forgotten about my blog, even though I've neglected it.

Here's a sketch.

I'll be back soon, I promise.

Livestream!

Hello again! This is just a mini update to say that I am going to be doing some livestreaming stuff on and off from now on! I did a pretty long session on photoshop last night, but I'm thinking I'll try to do my next ones with traditional media.

Here's the link to my channel: http://www.livestream.com/akoe

Hope to see you guys there!

Commission progress and blogging ponderings.

Oh man, this is a very long way from done, but so far, so good! This is a sneak of the commission I am working on currently. Because I am such an anal-retentive pixel-hunter, it takes me ages to work on a single piece, whether digitally or traditionally. For whatever reason, I'm finding it easier this time around to work in photoshop, but I'll be coloring this traditionally because that's what I'm comfortable with. Stay tuned, because I think this is going to turn out quite well! :D

In other news, despite the fact that I am practically swimming in paper and different kinds of sketchbooks, I'm rapidly approaching the end of my much-loved teNeues coolnotes book. I've ordered a new one, which should be in within the week, but if anybody is interested, I may do a big post on paper and sketchbooks, and provide reviews of a sort! Over the years, I have amassed a tremendous supply of paper in many different forms, so I think it may be of use to pontificate a bit over what it is and what it is best suited for. Also, after spending entirely too much time drooling over Diamine Inks, I think I might start doing reviews on supplies as well.

So, when my new sketchbook comes in, I'm going to ramble incessantly and post lots of pictures! I can't wait to start!

Duh Dammit. :U

I make it a habit to always get a scan of my finished sketches because I'm terrified I'll mess them up. Which I totally just did.

I know the quality isn't super fantastic, but the lines were actually quite light, so I had to fudge about with the contrast a bit. Anyway, I feel like I should have left it alone, because it's quite nice on it's own, but for some reason, even though I had this feeling I would mess it all up, I decided to take my inks to it anyway.

Blech. I don't know, I feel like the balance has suffered somewhat from the coloring. I had some issues with my new waterbrush where it would keep blotting the paper and spreading around the ink either too thinly or darkly, and it just didn't sync up to the image I was hoping to achieve in my mind. Also, I like how I just spent a lot of money on markers at Sakuracon, and the first thing I create post-con is with my inks instead. Wah-Wahhhhh. Still clipping together a sketchfile to show you all the scribblings and such I've been working on, and maybe I'll post that when I'm not distracted by all the shameful Vocaloid doujinshi and gay vampire comics I bought.

WOOPS.

Con preparations.

They're sucking up my life. I have almost everything ready, but I need to make prints. Today, I make sure my rings and displays are dry, then I can take pictures. Sorry I've been scarce lately. I'll have a big post up with stuff for sale soon! Also, I've been drawing, but it's mostly kind of porny. I'll clip together a big sketch document and post it when I have a few minutes to breathe.

Now, back to work.

Octopus, Octopi.

Plurals. PFF. I am such a damn scatterbrain lately, it's a wonder I can get anything done without combusting. The sun is finally starting to show up with something resembling consistency, and I'm starting to feel a little less like I suck at existing. It's either Seasonal Anxiety Disorder, or I'm back to having a critical deficiency in vitamin D again.

No, I'm not exaggerating. This actually happened. I had to take superhuman amounts of it just to get out of the red.

ANYWAY. I made some arts. I'm probably overdue for a sketchdump, but I have a lot of badly drawn wangs to navigate around so that will have to wait until I'm not drawing/playing Portal/grinding in Pokémon.

Yeah. Sorry, Razell, but you came out of my brain, so you're pretty much obligated to dabble in skanky drag costumes when I'm feeling exceptionally hilarious. Or really, just because drag queens are one of my primary sources of inspiration. Also, because I apparently don't care about consistency or beginning my sentences with grammar that isn't stupid, I totally forgot to draw his horns. :/ Like my older picture of Privilege, this picture was drawn in my sketchbook, which has incredibly uncooperative paper. I always seem to forget that when I start drawing, and when I progress into the coloring stage, I end up screaming at the image in desperate hope that the heavens will burst open and magically transform my stupid moleskin paper into godly bristol.
The green texture in the background was lovingly devised a month before with walnut ink and boredom. Scan it, free transform+shift to scale, and adjust the hue in photoshop, and BAM. Instant background.

Avarice! I had a thought that I wanted a picture that was primarily line-oriented, but I got restless after hours of lining and some painstaking pointillist pissery, and got out my inks. I'm...okay with how it turned out. I need to start paying more attention to the balance and composition in my pictures. Her tentacles look alright though. I still have some time before Sakuracon, so I'm trying to get out some new and exciting artwork, and I think she'll adapt well to bookmarks too!

I painted my new headphones! :D Sensing a bit of a theme here? In the past couple of months, I have created a lot of octopus-inspired junk, and once I get my mug back, I'm going to take some pictures of it with some of my bitty sculptures.

Now that we're sufficiently caught up with the stuff I'm working on, I should probably try and sleep now. I'm going to embark on a mask-making project soon, so I'll take lots of pictures of the process!

Holy freakin' update, Batman.

Distracted with a capital DERRRRRR.

Quarter winding down, along with my ability to construct grammatically sound sentences. Getting ready for cons and desperately trying to pump out new work for people to enjoy. However, I am totally uninspired for any of my own creations anymore, but in an effort to keep drawing, I'm doing a lot of fan art. Hopefully it doesn't show the stagnancy I feel inside, but as always, the best way to work through a rut is to keep working.

So, as an apology for floating away for so long, here's a Raja sketch that's about 85% nailed down.

I......need to sleep. A more intelligible post to come. Soon. Maybe.

Snow, Snow, Snowed in!

Since it is now ACTUALLY WINTER in the sense that there is enough snow on my hill to trap me here for a few days, I have actually had a few moments to sit down and be productive!

Read as: Playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I did some paintings too! Speaking of Zelda, here's a silly little comic I did today.

I like making comics, but I don't think I'm particularly funny. Whatever, I'm having fun doing these. :D I also started a two new wood paintings today. They are a quite a ways from being done, but here's a preview!

I need to go to bed before I think of more new projects to embark on. <3

A regular sleep schedule? Pff.

I don't really know what happened with the last week or so of my life. I seem to recall getting a Sony Cybershot for Christmas and taking lots of pointless pictures of food, a dirigible shark, fits of obsessive painting, and playing lots of Fire Emblem and Minish Cap. Anybody who knows me knows that I have an extremely sporadic sleep schedule, and I will usually be awake at 3AM doing something artistic.

This is my most recent finished thing. It's really more of an excuse to monkey around with creating textures and screwing around with color balance in photoshop, and I think I spent a little too much time on this portrait to simply call it a sketch. It always amazes me how people can create photorealistic portraits with traditional media, especially pencil, and I was going for a similar feel with this. I have a number of female characters/muses that buzz around in my brain and play important roles in the stories I have yet to share, and Quill is one of the oldest and most important. This portrait isn't very indicative of her personality at all, which I find kind of annoying, but I was feeling a bit emotional, so nyeh.

Razell doodles I clipped together and posted to Deviant Art a few days ago. I have seriously bad handwriting, but don't worry about trying to read the speech bubbles, because they aren't important. I am super proud of that cobra, though. I find animals hard as hell to draw, and snakes in particular are difficult to convey with a believable sense of form. I think it's in the scale patterns. However, if it's one thing I love, it's doing research, so I spent about an hour looking for photos on the internet so I could scribble out a tiny cobra in my sketchbook. Whatever, SUCCESS. It's a decent looking snake and I am proud of it. So there.

Just like that, it is now 5:15 in the damn morning, so I should prooooobably attempt to sleep before I get on with another project or another episode of Jem and The Holograms.

Assorted sketchbook stuff, etc.

Let's start with something new.

I bought a new sketchbook yesterday, which was totally unnecessary, and this is the first thing in it. It's sketchy and quick, but I kind of like it because it's one of the better pictures of Raen I have. It's also pretty illustrative of the kind of relationship he has with Gabriel.

This is the big sketchdump I put on Deviantart a few days ago, but now I have the time and I feel like talking about it a little. Gabriel has been showing up a lot in my thoughts and sketches lately, but I'm not entirely certain as to why.  He is my oldest muse and I depend on him quite a bit for direction. So yes, in order of appearance:

Top Left: Gabriel in an elven style sweater outfit. It's almost Hollowellian in design, which I guess would make more sense if I ever shared my concept and costume designs for the Hollowells. Haha.

Top Right: A thumbnail sketch of the Junk Sphinx. One of the other cyborg monsters that roams the wasteland.

Directly below Gabriel: Privilege in a winter bunny outfit. I ended up liking this sketch so much that I took it into photoshop and posted a colored version on Deviantart. I am now more pleased with the sketch than I am with the final version. Oh well.

Next to Privilege: 3 AM is a great time to scribble mindlessly while listening to Beyonce. I don't know, I guess the thought was that Raen is a whiny romantic so of -course- he'd transcend time and universes to sit around in women's lingerie sobbing over a telephone in the desperate hope that Gabriel will FINALLY PAY ATTENTION TO HIM. Again, I don't know, but it's funny.

Directly below beyonceRaen: Tiny Junk Sphinx head.

Below Privilege: Yep, the Luka chibi again. It never got a makeover in photoshop because I am lazy.

Next to the Luka Chibi: You know those "draw this again" memes that keep popping up over deviantart? I didn't really want to share any of my super old and embarrassing art, so I just decided to reconfigure one of Gabriel's old costumes. It's pretty skanky, but I get the impression that sorcerers are expected to bare some midriff while they toast the country side with flaming pillars of destruction.

Below all of that: The Junk Sphinx! It didn't really deviate far from the barebones sketch at the top of the document, which is cool. I usually go through a long and exhausting process of designing my cyborgs and I am rarely pleased with the results.

Finally: Gabriel and chibi Gabriel. This is how he currently appears in my head.

After having typed all this up, I realize I never crossposted my first sketchdump to this blog. It's not super interesting, but maybe I'll do that later. Once we get a little further along towards New Year, I'll probably do a self evaluation post with a summary of  my art in 2011. The only other thing I can think of that is pertinent to art is that my stupid tablet pen is jacked up, which is making it nearly impossible to do all the comic work I set out to do! Argh. I have some replacement nibs coming soon, and if that doesn't fix the problem, I get to pay more money for a new pen. Crap in a hat.

Maybe if I coax and coo and smile prettily enough, my stupid pen will behave enough to let me do a little more work on my current page. Then I can put up a teaser pic. In any case, I feel kind of crappy, so it's time to lie down and play more Minish Cap.

I swear I'll try to sleep after this.

You know, I seriously wonder why I seem to create more interesting works when my brain starts to fizzle out. I have been sleeping poorly, even for me, as of late, and I spend hours contending with the frantic misfirings of my brain and sometimes I get some cool stuff out of it. Other times, it's just pages of the word "FUCK" scribbled next to stick figures doing gymnastics.

45 minutes. Ink, gel pen, cartoons, and pseudonightmares. Maybe it's my compromised sense of fuck-giving after so many hours awake that allows me to simply scribble without an agenda. Maybe it's my habit of looping songs. Maybe I just really like to draw Canta in various stages of gender neutrality and exploration.

In any case, I need to try and sleep before I get stuck at my desk and start to paint again.

Are you sick of me yet?

No? Fantastic. Yes? Also fantastic. So it turns out my order that came in today came from Deleter, instead of the one I was expecting with my white ink. So my materials post will have to wait a few more days, I think. This may or may not mean I'll plan it and actually come up with something that is informative and reads well instead of "HEY LOOK AT THIS OO ISN'T IT NEAT HERE LET ME SHOW YOU MORE NEAT STUFF OOO".

I have very little else going on in my life right now, so I basically live and breathe at my drafting table. I'm a bit compulsive when it comes to tasks, work-related or otherwise, so I tend to get locked in and kind of obsessive, which explains the crazy amount of work I'm churning out these days. I took a break from writing and drafting stuff to reread some Elfquest, which I do a few times a year. Elfquest is the series that basically started me on the path of art and I will always treasure it. I occasionally do fanart for Elfquest, but nothing has really been worth sharing. I rather like these little ATC things though. They are small and cute and easily carried around in a photo album to show to people! The image above consists of three ATC sized cards with (left to right) Nightfall, Leetah, and Moonshade. I spent most of my time on Leetah, but significantlt more effort on Moonshade because I found her harder to draw. She has a more squarish type face and her eyes seem to be large even for an elf, so striking a balance is a little trickier. Although that may also be because I tend to draw more oval faces by default.

Anyway, I have to get back to feverish scribbling and not sleeping.

Finished Raphael and some kissy scribbles.

Raphael belongs to Yuki, who can be found at http://lustredesquelettes.blogspot.com/ .  I love Raphael to itty bitty bits, but I have a hell of a time drawing him.  For a full color mixed media piece, I don't feel like this took too much time, but I might be underestimating it. When I start working on something, whether it's artwork or a task of some sort, I have the tendency to become very focused and can work at it for long periods of time.  Fortuitously, my order from Jetpens came in with my new pilot choose pens ( gold and white ) and some various other supplies, so I went a little wild with them! I'll probably do a materials post tomorrow once my holbein ink comes in, or maybe I'll do an entire post on inks. Part of the joy in creating artwork for me is learning new ways to use tools and exploring new mediums, so I think the things I learn might be nice to share.

I wasn't really planning this picture, really. I was using this page in my sketchbook as a blotting page to clean my texture stamps, and I got a little bored and started fiddling with a paintbrush. I decided I liked the background and sketched a bit onto it, and the sketch developed into Raphael. I've been listening to a lot of ambient electronic music lately by an artist called Burial, and I think I blame Archangel for how this picture came out. Anyway, I was trying to keep the end result a little unfinished looking, but I think I got a little too meticulous in blending and sort of destroyed that tentative balance. It's alright though, because I kind of like the result.

What can I say, cuddly dudes make me happy. Yuki pointed out that I make Lucifer more muscular every time I draw him, and she's totally right. Canta still looks like a chick, but he always looks like a chick. He's gender neutral so it's awwwwright. You might be able to see some of the thumbnails on the back of the page for a holiday fluff story I'm working on, but I haven't even started to draw it yet. I'm sort of waiting for a program I scored off of ebay to come in before I get on with it.

On that note, I am going to finish my grapefruit and start on some ATCs.

Mixed Media Tomfoolery.

I love working with mixed media. About the easiest way in the world to make me happy is to give me art supplies of any sort. I'm always on the look out for wood and wood panel that can be used for paintings and drawings, and a new favorite of mine are these cheap little panels that you can find in craft stores with varying degrees of thickness and edge design. Prep the surface with gesso or something similar and you're ready to go! This is a teeny little work in progress picture that I don't really have any particular direction in mind for, but I'm having a lot of fun just doodling and playing around.  I was wandering around a home decorating store the other day and I saw a large custom decoupage-type painting of a chandelier, and the design kind of stuck with me and inspired me to use a similar design for this silly thing. I'm still working on it, and I'll post a better quality picture when I'm done!

So I decided to color the Koren picture from the last update, since I have a good hi-res scan of the lines to use if I decide to mess around with the scenery again. I'm trying to make more dynamic pictures with less white space, so I made a quick little last-minute backdrop.

I have a little block of watercolor paper that has sort of been sitting around collecting dust, but I used it in the past to blot the excess off of my texture stamps. That's the black texture on this page. I have some deep purple ink that I like, so I played around at painting it over the black patterns and used my waterbrush to fuss with the edges. After some soufflé pen detailing and some level-tweaking in photoshop, I was done. Here's the end result:

Yeah! I like my purple background even if it was totally winged, and I'll probably use it again for something. I might even make more with different patterns. 

All of this because I am procrastinating drawing actual comic pages. I guess we'll see if I can actually get shit done tonight without getting distracted by other random projects.

Deleter Scenery Collection

I found two of the Deleter Scenery collection books a few days ago, and being extremely lazy with drawing backgrounds, I snapped them up. Last night, I decided to mess around with them! I started with this:

 I'm actually kind of fond of this because I like the chandelier design. The only thing here is that Koren looks a little too much like Jupitor in the face. Okay, so with the drawing lined and cleaned up a little in photoshop, I scanned in the stock image of a bar from one of the scenery books and slapped Koren onto it.

The original image is straight black and white, but I made a layer under it and threw some gray on it just to see how it looks. I'm not very good with traditional comic toning in photoshop, so I'm trying out alternate ways to make shading and definition look good. I'll probably try to get a better handle on toning in the future though, because I'm not really sure how I like the straight grays. Also, as much as I like the relative ease of using the stock images to spiff up a picture's background, I think my line-art style is a little too curvy to make it look totally cohesive.

I do like the Scenery books and I'll probably use them in my comics, but I need to get better at making them look like they belong where I've placed them. Also, I know the flipped image of Koren creates continuity problems with his eyes, but I don't really care. I was just fiddling around, really.  Let me know what you think!

Nereid WIP

Gotta stay productive. Gotta stay productive. I was thinking about the various mechanical creatures that run around inside my brain, and got to thinking a little about Nereid.  The concept behind Nereid is a little hard to explain and delves into some of the backstory I have squirreled away for the stories I will someday share with the world. Without explaining too much, the Nereid was a personal project by a bio-artisan who wanted to explore the long-lost art of shape changing. It is purely synthetic in origin and would have been considered something of an artistic masterpiece if not for it's hijacked programming.

I'm going to shuffle into coloring now. ;w; I have a few long and trying days ahead of me, but after Tuesday, I should have all the time in the world to put into my art.

Fond Nightmares + Some Goddamn Vocaloid crap.

Crossposted in like, a billion places. This picture caught me off guard. I was scribbling about in between scriptworks and thumbnailing, and this kind of exploded out of my brain when I was looking at high fashion photos. Sometimes I think that the things I create more or less by accident are better and have more impact than the things I actually plan. I don't know. Often when I paint, there really isn't any rhyme or reason to how I do things, only that the basic picture starts as a huge scribble that slowly gets refined over time. This picture took two hours, which is very quick for me. I used inks and a white gel pen for this on some extremely sexy watercolor paper which is toothy and fantastic, but a pain in the ass to erase things off of. I really should use it more.

I tried so hard to not like vocaloids. I really did. They're just fun and fluffy and ... well, shit.  My favorites are Gackpoid and Megurine Luka. ;w;  So....yeah. Luka scribble. This may or may not get a makeover in photoshop.

Honeyed Words

So. I finished him. There is a lot that needs fixing, but I really need to take a step back and work on something else for a while. If I don't I'm just going to get sucked into tuning it until I start to eat my own hair out of frustration. I had something to say about this, but my brain is a bit foggy and I don't actually think any of my rambling will be even halfway entertaining. I am, however, getting better at facial anatomy. Also, I can't seem to stop listening to The Knife, which I think has a direct influence on how my pictures come out. Trying to decide if this is a good or bad thing.

Anyway, I need to get back to writing and thumbnailing. Maybe eventually I'll have something interesting to share.