Fireflies and Robots

Finally finished up this painting. Originally intended to be watercolor-only, eventually the paper couldn't take any more paint and so I went in with colored pencil to finish it up. There's a bit of digital touch-up on the fireflies as well because what was luminous green-yellow on the original turned into an unhappy brown-purple on the scan.

Original is about 14 x 16". Not sure where I want to go after this. I'm thinking something a little more sci-fi to prepare for InConJunction in July.

In that light, I spent a good few hours yesterday sketching robots and hoverboards.

I had a lot of fun with these designs, so I'll have to continue in this vein and see what I come up with.

Mink and Puppy: Shenanigans 4-5

Probably the last two in this series that I'll do. This was a lot of fun though and I should really think about doing similar exercises with my other characters.

So April has been a chaotic month- we found out the house we had signed a lease on wasn't actually available, leaving us to scramble frantically for a new place. I was also trying to find a job and finish up classwork and other pre-graduation concerns. Happily, most of that seems to be settling into place; we found a new place not too far from where we would have moved anyway, I'm in the process of starting a new (permanent) job, and things finally seem to be going smoothly. Although now I need to begin packing.

I have tons of things to put up here-- I've been working for the census the last month, and that's been a lot of dead hours with plenty of time for sketching-- but they'll have to wait until I have time to sit and format them all in Photoshop.

For now, here's a book cover design I did for a YA fantasy series. This is book 3, which isn't out yet.

See! Space Turtle in...

Today we have our first installment of 'Fun with Vectors.' This is me trying to learn Illustrator.

The first piece I did was simply working off of a photo from a few years back, featuring me in a steampunk costume complete with wacky goggles:

For the next assignment, I decided to do something more illustration-based, so I re-drew a sketch from a year or so back, of Space Turtle fighting his nemesis: He'e, the Space Octopus!

I dragged my heels a bit on starting this one, but I really did enjoy working on it in the end. And so we have The Cephalopod Menace:

The original plan for this was to do a movie-poster style, with crazy text and everything, but I think it works much better without. I really fell in love a bit with Illustrator while working on this, it was just so much fun and gave me a chance to work with the bright vibrant colors that I love.