Babette

Part Number Next of my Small Horrors series. I really have to turn these into greeting cards.

Hello, Kitty Kitty!

Just a little more detail and color to the Kitty Pryde costume design I started yesterday. Not as polished as I imagine it should become, but Justin always professed a liking for my rougher renderings. Hope this passes muster!

Hello, Kitty

I found an old drawing I had done when I was just over 15, that was printed in X-men. My drawing was so badly inked in it (and I swear it looked better before I sent it off), that I decided to redraw it today. It needs some more work, but I think Kitty looks more like the 13 year old she was supposed to be than the original drawing I made.

Retrograde

I think that Mercury Retrograde is in full swing - I'm experiencing communications breakdowns. Problem is I take things too seriously sometimes, and I'm feeling rather maudlin about it all. I better just go to sleep and sleep it off for tonight, and hope for a better day tomorrow...

Flying Drama

Because of the "firecracker" incident from the night before, airport security was completely fucked up and my flight was delayed two hours. Plus it was raining like mad. I was feeling as gray as the weather and could not wait to get home...

Happy Christmas!

Who better to evoke joy on this day than Zenaida? My niece offered her sketchpad for me to use so I left her with an image of Zenaida. Will upload the image later.

Quick Draw

Christmas Eve was spent at my brother's place in Toronto, so amidst the dinner, gift giving and plain adjusting to the new surroundings, I had little time to draw. I pulled out a piece of cardboard and did a quick manga-influenced face, as my niece proffered her manga books for me to read to bed. Sorry, it's a crap drawing. :/

Scalpel! Facial Reconstruction

Still unfinished, but still tinkering with the (hopefully) realistic unreal face.

Scalpel! Next Version

Fleshing out the poster/postcard concept for my friend's play, it was hard for him to imagine that I really wanted it to look like a noir-ish Hollywood movie poster, with cheesy dramatic lighting effecs. However, I really need to fix the character's face. She looks too much like a drawing to me, but how do you draw the perfect, imperfectly done plastic surgery aficionado?

Scalpel!

A friend is doing a play called Scalpel! And wanted me to come up with some poster ideas for it. This is a rough idea I liked.

Mannequinesque

Continuing the mannequin tangent I was on the other day, this time sculpted... and meh.

Repair

I felt duty-bound to repair yesterday's horrible face sketch. Using just the airbrush tool in Painter, it started to look very mannequin-like, although the proprtions are still kinda off. Oh well.

This finish reminds me of one of my makeup painters back in my mannequin days, Ivan. He always painted with such a smooth hand, the mannequins makeup looked positively airbrushed on. Ivan Figueroa was amazing at what he did. I still remember him from time to time whenever I see Rootstein mannequins. R.I.P. Ivan.

Quick Face

Yet more filler...

Quick Eye

I've lost a little steam so far as sketching goes, probably because my creative energies are going to my gift wrapping. So this was a quick filler from Thursday.

So What Elf Is New?

Quicklines

I joined the Facebook fan club for the late, great Antonio Lopez, one of my idols growing up. In retrospect, he was amazing, but my own work has come very far so I thought maybe I had caught up. But looking at one of his quick sketches on the FB page, and rediscovering the confidence of his lines, I realized how very wrong I was. This was an attempt to ape the piece I saw.

Fabric Unfurling

So funny- some things apparently never change. I've been drawing fabric unfurling on a figure for the third of the Mass series, and I noticed how much my rendering style hasn't changed that much in 20 years. I know because I have a drawing from back in 1984 /college that has the same kind of shaping and linework. Although to be fair, since I'm working on a tablet, my linework isn't as smooth as I can get it when I'm slaving over a sheet with a technical pen, and I did want this new drapery to be a bit less rounded and more "crunchy" and squared off, like they were less satiny and had a bit more body. Still, the way I put the lines down were very familiar. Hunh. Guess I could either say I was good at it back then, or my abilities haven't grown a whit in two decades...


a detail from a fantasy-based illustration I did back in April of 1984:

Dark & Lovely

I got tired of all my happy zaftig Zenaidas after a week so I had to do something completely different. I needed fashion-y imagery. This rather dark 80s piece came as the result of seeing a magazine image that I then warped in my head.

edit: I had to fiddle with the line of her nose. There was a stroke width that was bugging me.

Zenaida Triptych

I guess I couldn't just stop at two. This is a bit of a surprise gift for Joanie, who is expecting two images but I'm giving her three. Happy Holidays (and in Zenaida's case, very happy!)

Zenaida Diptych 6

I decided yesterday's sketch wasn't "alive" enough, so I've gone all "kittenish" on her with this pose. I like it much better.

Zenaida Diptych 5

See? Bigger is better.

Zenaida Diptych 4

Her form here really reminds me of what I based her on originally, The Venus of Willendorf. But I think her boobs are too small...

Zenaida Diptych 3

Zenaida Diptych 2

Yesterday's sketch just wasn't happy enough. THIS is happy enough, lol. Bouyant even.

Zenaida Diptych

One of my blog followers commissioned me for a couple of drawings of Zenaida, and I'm happy to comply. She's typical of my characters - all happy and sexy, but much more woman. In the nearly 20 years I've been drawing her as a recurrent character, some things have been established as her look, and certain sketches are really her. It may be the proportion of the eyes or the largeness of her smile, or the scale of her nipples. This week, since I was doing her for someone else. I paid extra attention to keeping her consistent, especially since she'l be going to someone else's home to live. Joanie, these are for you! I'm glad she makes you so happy!

Exhausted

Man, last night until this morning, I had nothing but issues with my computer! I finally got to address the issues with phone help from Apple. I gotta say, Apple has amazingly consistent tech service. Seems like my Mac is all hunky dory now, but I'm exhausted!

Winter's Here!

There was snow everywhere, and I hadda break out the wintercoats. Brrr.

Zenaida Study

And another commission, this one of my favorite Venus of the Rice, Zenaida. I am doing this in natural media but decided to do a quick study in Painter. Been really hard to get anything done, seems my Mac is experiencing major bugginess. I can barely make any changes nor save files! Is Mercury retrograde yet??

Scalpel, Again

Ugh, I am so not motivated. Where are those freakish tv reality stars when you need them?

Scalpel

A friend commissioned me to do a sketch for him, for a play he's doing. I have to draw older ladies who have gone under the knife for plastic surgery. How does one do that? I'm not sure how to draw those enhanced features. I may have to look for references... maybe if I watch Bravo's Real Housewives series...

Meeting Sketch

Tuesdays at work can be positively mind-numbing. Not only do we have weekly Tuesday morning meetings at 8:30, but most of the information is repetitive and so uninteresting after the 7th or 15th iteration by various people. So I find myself sketching people at the meeting.

(I left the sketch at work but should upload it soon... not that it's the best, but hey, a sketch a day, no matter how awful!)

Bearable