science!

Some character studies for incidental characters in my book. They are meant to be intelligent, learn-ed, men of science from the 1830's. Typically, dudes like this would have had outrageous hair-do's and jackets adorned with medals of a mysterious nature.


I haven't done any character designs in a looooooong time...perhaps that's obvious, but I liked how they turned out!

just messing around

Here are some drawings to keep my blog alive! Some girls with cats. These are related to nothing, except for the last lady, who is a rejected design for a project I'm working on. Sorry lady, you didn't get the job.

back from the dead + some weirdo drawings

Hey everybody! I'm back from my blog sabbatical. I'm working away on a stationary set for Chronicle books right now. It will have stickers! I haven't done much other drawing, but I did these to warm up a few days ago, and although they are friggin' weird drawings, I thought I should update with SOMETHING before you all forget my blog exists, so here they are.

Whilst foraging for mid-century fashion magazine scans, I ran across some photos from the 20's and 30's, which is one of my most favorite eras for fashion. Ladies were petite and robed in satin, and covered with flowers, and encouraged to be dainty (not that any of those qualities is present in these drawings, I'm just sayin').

I like how this one turned out.






Flickr is my favorite thing to search for images on. It is about 100x better than google, because people just scan images from books and such, and you get a lot of obscure stuff. These weirdo-weird drawings are me biting off some obscure French illustrator whose name I immediately forgot. The flower-crotch is all me, though.





I'm doing a guest lecture in Ethan Metzger's class at CalArts next week. If there are any current CalArts kids out there that want me to talk about something specific, now's the time to ask! I'm going to explain my process for doing digital paintings. I'm going to share all my secrets with you. I'm bringing my dog.

mythological

I have a show at Occidental College later this month. Can you guess the theme? Did you say "mythological creatures"? If you did then you're right!


I don't usually put up rough, ugly, crazy sketches like this, but I feel guilty for not updating in forever, so you get a sneak peak at my process...whatever that may be.



Right now I'm focused on creatures of the mostly Greek in origin. Later there will be fairies! I like to delight and indulge my inner seven year old with the skills of my outer 24 year old sometimes.



There's a lot of mental static on these pages. I do a lot of thinking/drawing/scribbling when I figure stuff out for pieces. I know a lot of it probably doesn't make sense to you, but that's okay. I'm the only one who sees it most of the time anyway.



I've had a lot of these guys rattling around in my brains for a while. Like Mr. Poseidon.



Mermaids! Yes!



More soon.

brush pen part 2

Hey! I've been sick aaaaalll week! It sucks. I really thought I was better last night but after being in denial most of the day I finally took a Sudafed and passed out. At least I woke up breathing through my nose, which was a major improvement! I've been sucking down tea and hanging around my apartment for daaaaays and started reminiscing about last weekend when I thought I had beat my sore throat and went to brunch at Alcove, the favorite breakfast-at-noon spot in my neighborhood. It is full of characters, myself included. Here's a few that I encountered:

The lady on the right had a whole lot of look happening: a big woolly oversize sweater, a ripply tunic or dress (it's hard to tell which sometimes but this was supposed to be a dress since she wasn't wearing anything under it), giant chunky rock necklace, crazy gladiator sandals, and the ultimate accessory: a small dog. The dog was cute but ultra tiny! It looked fragile and fluffy. Her friend was tiny and had worlds largest handbag.



This girl is a cupcake. She was really working that romper. Except for the back, where the edge of her butt cheek kept peaking out...but I did you the courtesy of only drawing her from the front.



This was a tall, skinny, lanky couple. They looked like they just rolled out of bed to have a tall, skinny, lanky brunch together.




Also, I added a whoooooollle bunch of new prints to the shop this week. All stuff from my show last month. Lots of the originals are still available too, but I'm still considering whether to put them up in the store or not. I haven't had much luck selling OG's on etsy.

This will probably be my only post this week, since I've spent most of it laying around watching Grey Gardens and eating cough drops like candy.

screwing around with a brush pen

I just got a brush pen! I've never really messed around with one before, and I don't really understand how to use it. I understand that it makes whatever you draw look about 300x cooler instantly, but they are very sensitive instruments and I'm used to hammering away on paper with an unsharpened Ebony pencil, so it will take some getting used to. These are just some experiments from last week...



I saw this girl at Trader Joe's last week, when it was all weird/rainy/cold outside. It literally looked like she had just wrapped a tea towel around her shoulders and pulled on the most ridiculous, bright leg warmers she could find. I thought to myself, "Really?? Are pants really that hard to come by these days??" And flip flops, in the rain? What?



But that is why I love Trader Joe's in Silverlake. So much style, so many varieties of tortilla chips!

sketch bits

Arrrgh I can't believe it's Sunday already! What! Here are some sketches for you. Just stuff from my sketchbook, really. Like this 18th century lady with trees for hair, and this 30's bathing beauty...



I haven't drawn from life much recently, because honestly, it bores me. How many images of people in a coffee shop do I ever want to look at? Not very many. Animals in a zoo mostly just stand around. I do love Sean to pieces though, so drawing him lying in the grass reading Walter Benjamin (a smart person book of some kind) is pretty fun.



I've been thinking about mythology a lot lately.



I tried to personify Hollywood, but I don't think she'd really be this trashy/stupid.



I'm gonna color this in and it's going to be pretty. These girls are from "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort", a very beautiful and melancholy French movie with Catherine Deneuve and her sister, whose name escapes me. The art direction is soooo cool!



Check back for it later this week!

Color, color, who's got the color?

I'm gonna paint these guys. I pulled these awesome color schemes from some cool vintage fabrics I found. If you're gonna bite, bite from something totally awesome, right?

I am leaning towards pink (#4), but because I am interested in your opinion, and also because I've got nobody around to bounce it off of, I'm having one of my ol' fashioned votes.

#1: Turquoise and yellow...pretty but kinda plain. My first impulse. This is the color scheme I first imagined it in.


#2: Green and orange-red together, like something you'd find in a thrift store.


#3: More muted pink and blue and warm grey...gives it a whole different feeling, doesn't it?


#4: Think pink! My favorite so far...but I like the others too...maybe it's too pink? A little too saccharine?


I'm painting it tomorrow, so don't think about it too long!

sketch fun

Sketches for paintings in the works...







Inspired by houses and apartments in my neighborhood.

giants

I took the Adventure Time character design test like a million years ago (or so it feels, I think it was actually about October). I still like these giants.




Other than that, I've been working like crazy madness on getting the book done. I feel like I'm revisiting crunch time at CalArts, a crazy, insane time where you do nothing but work, eat, work, work, drink tea, work, drink more tea, get hungry and then realize that's because you ate 7 hours ago, work more, and then suddenly it's 3 am and you feel that you've got nothing to show for sitting in front of the computer for so long. But, whatevers! I'm used to it! I do get kinda cabin fever-ish at home all day, by myself, but so it goes. It'll be done soon, and then I can go back to normal, whatever that is.

yuki colors

I'm trying to decide what colors to go with for that Yuki poster. It's hard, cause I like colors so very much, and the feeling changes lots depending on what you pick.

I like these blues. Blue roses could be really cool.



I think I'm most attached to this one.



This one is really nice too, but it has a much girly-er feel to it.



Something appealing in this too though...



I give up. What do you think?



What's your vote? I like #2. But maybe #3... See? I need a second opinion.



Now I'm gonna go work the kinks out of the drawing. I'm enjoying the chilly, perfect-for-drinking-tea weather in LA today.

ALSO: I saw Coraline again on Monday night, and I have to say, I liked it even better the second time around. It's one of the best films I've seen in a long time. All you guys who worked on it should buy yourselves ice cream sandwiches to celebrate.

squirrels + magpies + owls

I did these drawings last winter when I was in a certain European country for a couple weeks. They didn't actually use any of what I worked on while I was there, but they seemed pretty happy with it at the time. I did these with marker on this totally bizarre round paper that they had. I could've used photoshop, but they only had old crusty PC's (which I hate) and the keyboards are different in Europe (like the z and c keys are switched I think?? or something?) and all the keyboard short cuts were different too, and photoshop is just no good without shortcuts. So I went for markers and paper. Also, I don't really know how to use markers! Obviously!





Sometimes you do a drawing and look back on it later and think "oh yuck", and I don't quite feel "oh yuck" about these...they're slightly above yuck. I may decide that they are yuck later but I'm strapped for blog content right now. I fear that I will soon be posting pictures of my feet or something.




Anyway, they were fun to do. It was really liberating to just hang out and drink free cappuccinos from the fancy espresso machine in the office (Alpenmilch! Yum!) and mess around with markers, and then go eat a pizza and watch Pippi Longstocking on TV.





I promise not to lame out with only one post like I did last week. I had been doing so good posting twice weekly!

And last post was my 100th! I forgot to mention it at the time, but it kind of fills you with a feeling of accomplishment...even if it took over two years to make it to 100 and most posts are just a bunch of my gobbledy gook writing anyway.

more yuki sketches + friday already? seriously?

I'm trying not to procrastinate. So far, so good!

I think this is what my Yuki poster is going to look like, roughly of course: pink skeletons, birthday cake hat villain, lots of roses and pink because I'm a girl and I like those things. Don't look for the pink yet cause it's not there.



I know my sketches are really rough and sometimes indecipherable, but it's all I got right now! Isn't there a movie or something with a skull that has jewels in its eyes? Where am I lifting this idea from?? I couldn't figure it out, but I know I've seen it somewhere.



Little thumbnail sketches...



At a CalArts Halloween party one year I saw some guys (more than one, like three I think) dressed in suits and sunglasses with hats shaped like birthday cakes with illuminated candles. Obviously, the image stuck with me. What kind of villian wears pastries as headgear? I leave that to your imagination.



This week went by really fast. I seriously am having a hard time believing that it's Friday. What have I been doing??