Fawn, bound- finished

I ended up working into this more with colored pencil than marker- I still don't really trust myself to pull out soft shading with prismacolors, though my small collection of greys are subtle enough that I trust them a bit more. I've been slowly training myself to work up to dark colors slowly and lay in the quiet shading first.

Cleaned it up a bit in Gimp and put in that cloudy effect around the top of the image. Not exactly the glossy effect I'd really like to achieve someday, but at least I got some practice in.

Art production and focus has a direct correlation to my mental state, which has been set to "off" and "down" lately, for a variety of reasons. Paper and markers continue to be cheaper than therapy.

Tank Genderqueer

Okay.

Updating daily while in the midst of bringing a show into existence and splitting my time between four cities may have been....ambitious.

But! Here's a sketch I did in Sao Paulo, while watching Tank Girl. It's a gender ambiguous tank creature, who enjoys wearing hot pink tops and whacking things with it's equally ambiguous weapon thing.

It uses it pronouns and enjoys all things neon.

PS. Hundred and first post!

Metanol Recording Session 1: Vanessa

During my last week in Sao Paulo, I had the ridiculous good fortune to get to sit in on a live radio broadcast at Metanol.fm that two of my friends were performing on air for. I was armed with my sketchbook and a single fine point pen, and spent the three hours of sitting Very Quietly and Listening scribbling away at my impressions of the session. This first one, which was done during Vanessa's set, was an attempt to capture a little of the feel of broadcasting over Sao Paulo and the sense of connection with the city that Metanol created in that tiny space.

I filled in the yellows and blacks with prismacolors later, partially to lose myself in filling in vast amounts of white space with big fuck-off markers, and also to cover up my thumbnail sketches in the top right. The colors ideas came from a set of yellow and black speakers in the corner of the recording room and I was trying to draw disks surrounding the figure as if they were shiny black plastic speakers, to not-quite-accurate effect.

Dr. Sketchy's Scantily Clad Lady Emporium

I went out to Baltimore's Dr. Sketchy's (if you are unaware of this phenomenon, Dr. Sketchy's Anti Art School has your answers) on Monday night. I have mixed reviews- on the one hand, I missed life drawing, I like gimicky shit like this, and drinking accompanies drawing as it does stretching and MST3King in the rest of my life. On the other, the only thing more pretentious than hipsters are ARTISTIC hipsters, the mc really didn't impress (I have high standards from circus work, but still), and the soundtrack to the evening was pulled directly out of a Wed Anderson film. The Darjeeling Limited, to be specific.

Still, I got some good marker practice in, and I'm groping my way to understanding shading with prismas. I forgot my beloved chalk pastels in Pennsylvania, but Heather lent me her pastels and I went to crazy town and back with them.
There were contests, one of which was to draw the model in spaaaace. This next one got me in the running for the prize, but I didn't win anything that night. It was nifty getting picked the hang out on stage and get cheered for, though. More my scene than being an audience member.

They also did the opposite hand drawing, which I understand is a staple of Dr. Sketchy's fun time. I did it in charcoal, and carefully specified some elements to make it obvious.

One of my quickie warm ups I liked. I shyly started out with my faithful charcoal before I went media crazy.
They also did two 20 minute poses I threw some real work into, but I'll save 'em for tomorrow because this is already the Art Blog Post That Ate Texas.

New art toys!

My shading is getting better, thanks to the FIVE BRAND NEW GREY MARKERS I laid hands on at Art Things in Maryland yesterday. Funny story- this art store has known me since I was two years old and living in England, because my aunt did a goku birthday card for me that was up as a how-to in the shop for yeeeears. I've been making pilgrimages to there ever since, but I don't think they've seen me since age 16, so the owner got a bit of a shock when I walked in yesterday.

Other stuff from the sketchitybook includes a rough for a graphic short I've been tossing around in my mind for ages. I tend to get it in my head whenever I find myself romantically entangled that I should start illustrating my relationships-I used art to process everything else, why not that? It'd be damn good reading, if nothing else.

This particular one was a reflection on falling into love for brief periods at a time- weekends, weeks- as tends to happen when you travel (or when I travel, at least). For the first time recently I fell with a lot of awareness as I was falling, like Alice floating down the rabbithole and examining the objects on the walls as she descended.


Enough for today- more on all that tomorrow as the ideas germinate.

Tits and Tentacles

No scanner access until today, so y'all get my Tits and Tentacles picture, plus some sketches from yesterday. I'm struggling to figure out how to shade using prisma grey markers, but I think this picture was a breakthrough for me. Still working on it, though.


Disembodied caaat head. I feel like I'm copping Heather's style, just because of the media. I learn marker shading so slowly, but progress is beginning to happen.

That's me pushing nasty reality away from my happy bubble above, btw.