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

All That I Can Bear

Unibrow 3

Unibrow 2

I'd drawn quite a bit but my Mac is experiencing difficulties, so I was unable to save it. Here's a redux based on a screen grab (I was smart enough to do one when I realized I wouldn't be able to save the file). For some reason it's less detailed than what I recall, but no matter...

Unibrow

I got an email with some fashion pics in it, and this shot of a male model caught my eye. He wasn't attractive to me, but he was striking in that his bone structure - especially with his pronounced brow bone and unibow - made for interesting lines.

(G)Old Standards

Butterick, Vogue Patterns, non-editorial magazine illustrations: those are the fashion illustration standards I grew up with in Manila. The lower-end fashion styles were seen as desirable, especially since they illustrated for a customer the actual dresses and clothing before they bought into it. Not the most advanced stylistically, but easy to comprehend, and they were my understanding of what was supposed to be good. What did I know, right? To this day, I still strive for that, despite knowing better. This was a quick sketch, not fully finished by any means, with that end in mind (hence the really prosaic clothing). I recalled a woman named Trining, who was the best illustrator that my mother ever hired, and who stayed with us at our shop the New Yorker the longest (well, at least in my nascent memory). She became synonymous with the Gold Standard of what all illustrations were supposed to look like. I wonder where she is now? She was at least a decade older than me, maybe more.

Old Fashion(ed) Sketch

I pulled a pad next to me and actually drew in pencil! Nothing to this sketch - just the usual shaping inspired by old fashion illustration. But the pencil didn't have enough intensity, must have been too hard a grade. (need to scan the sketch to upload it soon)

Phoenix, Again

I revisited my old Phoenix drawing again. Funny how things look so different when there's been a bit of time lapsed. I fixed her eyes and facial proportions that looked awfully long. Can't believe I missed that originally.

Medusa Riff, 4

Well, I guess I'm still tinkering with her. Details, details.

Medusa Riff, 3

Now a bit of coloring. Not sure what I should fix here, but there's a lot off right now. Ah well, a work in progress. Well, assuming I decided to go further with it.

Medusa Riff, 2

Just added a few more details to the original sketch. Not much, but some. She kinda reminds me of Natalie Portman's Princess Amidala character in Star Wars.

Medusa Riff

I completely forgot to do a drawing on Thursday, so when I realized it Friday morning, I put together this image based on the Inhumans comic book cover that was staring at me from my desk. The main character on the cover, Medusa, had a cowl that I found interesting, so I decided to do my riff on it.

Wacom Intuous 4 trial

I went to TekServe on Wednesday eve to attend a demo of a product I've been interested in this past year, and while waiting for the demo to start, I decided to play around with the new Wacom tablets they had on display. With double the pressure sensitivity of my current one, I had a hard time adjusting to it. The lines on this sketch were way shakier than I'm used to.

Joshua

I met this kid named Joshua on Tuesday, a musician who had the sweetest demeanor, and who really seemed to respond well to my Prefab Sprout album. He complained that his hair was all crazy long. I thought it was perfectly disheveled.

Kiiiity

I didn't want to draw. I was having Monday blues, but I forced myself to do something quick. I used to breed and raise Siamese cats when I was in my teens, and I love cats, Siamese in particular because I have a long history with them. I love how this one has the slightly skewed ears of a cat wondering what the heck is going on.

Flygirl 3

The truth is I don't have the energy to start a new sketch. But to my defense, when I used to doodle all the time on the pad next to the phone (while I chatted away for hours on end with my friends), I always played with older sketches and fleshed them out more, or added to them.

Flygirl 2

I think I lost all of the flow that the initial sketch had - fleshing out my work can sometimes do that, sapping the energy of the lines. Still, this was done on autonomic - while I was watching an episode of the new "V" series.

Flygirl

I think I was scanning an ep of Queen's Blade (a kinda tacky anime that I still nevertheless watched) and this image of a very comicbook-y/anime flight pose popped into my head. I attempted to do that very Rick Leonardi chunky hair that can look like it's sheets of fabric flowing in water.