Solitary Monster

Another quick sketch-note for a future personal project...my "Solitary Monster". Maybe "Self Portrait as Dragon"? Just add pink -- ha! If or when I actually do develop this further, I'll have to get some reference for those wings...and fix that hidden hand.

Some of my friends don't quite understand that I actually enjoy my own company -- I like to spend time with me, myself and I. My immediate family knows that about me very well. heh. Having the occasional solitary weekend helps me relax. Drawing, studying, reading, doing chores. I admit that I'm not much for shopping or going out or doing alot of "blah, blah" on the phone, either. Erk. On the other hand, it also makes me a little happier about going to the office to be a little social with the other artists and my co-workers once again once the weekend is done. :) Over the years I've found that I actually do prefer working with a team of artists that I get along with and appreciate, even if we're all working on separate projects individually. You get critiques, a chance to learn from your peers, and a bit of creative chatter. For me at least, it is much better than working completely on my own, even if it meant I could be in my own home studio. I think if I ever went back to 100% freelancing, I would try to get space in a shared artists' studio.

My younger brother asked about doing some web design work for a new site he's wanting to develop. Unfortunately, now is not a good time. I'll see what we can work out. My mom left me a voicemail today to let me know she was up in northern Germany with the Tante's. It sounds like she had a good trip up from Austria. This week is my stepsister's birthday. I'm sending out a card tomorrow...and sending my other siblings a reminder to do the same. ;) You're reminded!

A couple of articles I read the other day about military brats provide some interesting explanations about some typical reactions to certain situations that I hadn't really considered...and gave me some additional insight in part as to why I rejected going into the military myself although that was certainly an option with the scholarship I was offered to West Point when I graduated from high school years ago. There is also a book and a series of online articles by the publisher about military brats that seems to resonate with those that have read it. I may have to check out the book myself. If it's good I'll be sure to recommend it to my brothers and sisters...

Putting it all together...

Today's quick sketch -- designing a personal flying machine. Hey, why not? Great for summer flights of fancy! Having a bit of fun concepting a kind of "one-man band" contraption that has all the bells and whistles for flying. I wonder if I could get it to work...hmm. With all of the "continuing education" experience with my I.D. textbooks, you never know. Yeah, all that studying is making my brain hurt.

This week will have to be my last push to wrap up some of my personal concept projects for my portfolio. It's supposed to be a bit rainy still, so hopefully I will get everything wrapped up like I've got scheduled. This weekend required some at home time on a set of illustrations for work, so I didn't spend the time I'd originally planned for portfolio updates. Ah, well. Also, I have some more freelance illustration work starting in the next couple of weeks for more textbooks, so I really need to get my latest personal stuff finished and everything updated for my portfolio like I've been wanting to for the past few months. Ok, it's been quite a bit longer than that. sigh. I probably will pause the daily mini-sketches for a while so that I can use that 30 minutes or hour (maybe 2) after work to squeeze in time on my book projects again. As it is, I've stopped watching tv except for morning and evening news....

And no games. D'oh!

Hello, Summer

Not the first day of summer just yet, but it's certainly getting hot enough to feel like it. 20 minute quick sketch after a rather long day of busy.

Almost Ready to Fly

Bah, I should just forget about setting deadlines for my own work...I rarely meet them as something always interferes...even if it's only me doing the interfering. ha.

Busy at work, busy at home.

At work, I'm really an elf and it's always Christmas, fa la la la laaaaaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHCK...! Not really. I'm just a bit off my production schedule but I should catch up again this week since my new projects are slowing down just a bit at last. But, I'm still busy. Looks like my department is getting an intern or two for the summer after all. I'm not sure what changed since I was told repeatedly that we weren't having any interns in my department at all this year, which was a disappointment -- imagine my surprise when I found out a week or so ago that we were having interns after all.

Interesting. Yup.

At home I'm squeezing in a couple of new environment drawings and light studies since I don't have very many new ones to pick from...most of my usual daily work (home studio work as opposed to "office work") I could probably better define as being mostly about character development. Except for the illustration work generally, since that's more of capturing a moment which may or may not have backgrounds but definitely has a character or two. In any case, I can use and re-use the new environments in a couple of my other personal projects. I've posted some progress shots of the various bits. I find it very relaxing when I'm drawing with a pencil...can spend hours just making rocks. Silly me. The rough sketches include the two environment layouts I'm developing.... You can see where I've layed out lines for the buildings that I want to sketch at the proper perspective. Part of my reference is from a photo I took during one of my trips to Europe. The rest is all my imagination.

I've also scanned in the rough layout sketch I'm working from for my "revealed" or unmasked sketch. That's the 2nd rough at the top. If I had more time for development in my home studio (wasn't moving, etc.), I think I'd do it all traditional. Since I don't, I'll do the pencil detail work on paper, and all of the coloring in Photoshop and Painter.

Wheee....

I decided to move at July's end. Haven't decided where just yet. I hate moving, but I enjoy starting out in a new place: arranging furniture, unpacking and sorting, putting up and organizing my library, hanging up pictures, making a home. I may just put everything in storage. Or maybe not. In any case, I may have to postpone my trip to Europe again for another year.

Sigh.

Unmasked in progress

Here's the latest update to the dress sketch. I'm taking it slow, heh. Still have the background and secondary characters to sketch out. Over the weekend I checked out some different materials for the main character to figure out what fabrics will best give me the colors that I want to have in the final piece, too. When I started this illo, I decided to use a kind of visual story or metaphor of the character being revealed in the illustration (since it's also part of the relaunch of my website), hence the mask being moved over to the side. Not happy just yet with how I've sketched it, but it's a decent start. I probably will do a separate sketch of the mask on another sheet before I'm happy. Although it may actually all get painted over (digitally) when I'm working on the color final.

The final leaf design of the summer mask will be based on some rather large leaves by a river in a London park from a photo that I took when I was visiting London one summer. Here's one of the leaf photos I'm using as my reference. Believe it or not, the leaves are at least a foot if not 2 feet across. Those are ducks down below in the water.

I've already picked my palette (lots of lovely summer greens with secondary gold and brown colors and accents of some of my other favorites) which is definitely helping pull this illustration story out of my head onto my sketchpad. This one will be finished over the weekend, and I will post the final version when it's done. :)

Meant to add...I've been wanting to do an illustration like this for some time. One of the inspirations for it has been a long time favorite artist of mine, Adrienne Segur, from waaaay back when I was in 2nd grade, believe it or not. I was so enthralled by the Fairy Tales that she'd illustrated...that I checked out the book so much from the school library that I got in trouble. :( It was fun to find a bit more info about this artist this weekend as well as read an interesting article by some other favorite writers and artists of mine over at the Endicott Studios.

Train of Thought

This rough sketch is part of the new homepage art that I'm working on for my updated portfolio. I'll be re-launching my website at last during the first week of June. Hurray! I think I finally have enough new pieces that I like, and all of that together with some previous projects fits in with the new creative career direction I've been steering myself for the past 5 years. Most of the art I'll be posting is recent work I've done in my free time or for freelance projects that aren't part of my toy design day job. So, rather than posting all of the wide variety of creative professional work that I've done over the years in my online portfolio (web, graphic design, illustration, branding, multimedia, software UI development, etc), I'm going for a more focused presentation that shows the type of work I'm most interested in pursuing currently and for future opportunities.

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Over the weekend I decided that working with licensed art (well, let's say most licensed properties -- most recently I've been working with Disney styleguides for product design again so licensed art was on my mind a bit too much this past week) is like having to translate a foreign language.

I blame my random internal dialogue process for that bit of an odd revelation. :)

Just as with any language, with licensed art you have to understand the specific "grammer" or structure (since this is graphic design). Within that structure you have "words" or images which can be used in many different ways to create a "sentence" or product; however, because of the required structure of the particular styleguide (some licenses have quite a variety of styleguides, like the Disney Princesses, for example), you can only use these particular images, colors, fonts, patterns, borders, characters and backgrounds in certain ways that fit within the overall pre-defined license "message". That message can also change depending on who the target audience is, and how that audience probably feels the licensed characters should appear in whatever particular situation or story format the product design puts them in. It helps if you tend to buy the products developed for a particular license (yup, that's one of my excuses for some of the toys in my work area...ha) or at least do the research and find out what the various retailers are selling, who's buying the product, and how that product is being used. Is it for a little girl, or a little boy; or is it even gender specific? Is it for adults only, and not children? Is the product designed for interaction, to be played with; or is it supposed to be a collectible or display item only? What materials satisfies the design requirements of the styleguide, the purchase requirements of the consumer, and still fits the product line standards that I'm creating this toy for?

Yeah, all that thinking sometimes gives me a headache, too.

But, there's more!
And maybe I'll go into that another time. Just not today.

Valkyrie of the Damned

Another interesting CHOW topic over on CA that I just couldn't resist sketching up, the Fallen Valkyrie, although my character probably won't get finished till next weekend. I still want to do a close-up of her face with a nice "damned" expression, and put in the background and wolf steed/companion for the full figure that's rising up from Hel. And color it, of course! Unfortunately I was sick with something odd -- had fever and really bad chills Friday night into most of Saturday so I couldn't do all the artwork that I'd planned. Not good. Feel much better now, though, so back to work!

And I was reminded by another CA artist about my Fall Fairy sketch which they'd like to see in color...I'd like to do final tight lineart of it first, and then color. Especially since I just finished watching Wendy Froud's DVD about creating a fairy figure art doll -- my Fall Fairy might be a good character to get that first practice with.

Hmm...

And Death Came Riding By

Opted to spend some of my relaxing sketchtime (i.e. nothing work-related) in the evenings this week on the previous CA.org Character of the Week project, Death's Horse. Mine, however, isn't named Binky. The deadline (ha) was this past Sunday. The art I posted includes some of my early sketches. Since I still like to draw horses (remembering that old comfort drawings discussion...), it was an entirely enjoyable self-imposed sketch project to do.

While thinking about this subject, I found myself influenced by the aforementioned Binky, as well as the various horses that I owned or spent time with from jr high through college...long dead by this time (my first horse, Pride, in particular, such a lovely boyo -- horrible old picture of us both below); and the Mari Llwyd. With just a dash of the Christian Apocalyptic Pale Horse.


Also recalled a nice little story about Mr. Death at the door in an old Twilight Zone episode with a nice young Robert Redford. And what about that recent tv series Dead Like Me. They all had some quite different faces for Death. And without horses, too bad. With that, I then got to wondering about what I would see at death: would my doppelganger, my twin from the land of the dead, my mirror self, be the one coming to me as Death -- in my mind probably the only one I would trust to come fetch me when I was at last ready to die...whether fair, foul or something inbetween. Me, only me. :)

Then I read that long ago, when a new graveyard was built, a horse would be the first of any to be buried there. This horse would then become Death's horse.

And finally, I started thinking about Death Jr.... Hmm.
And came up with that first sketch at the top. :)

In any case, the majority of wip sketches I've seen thus far from the artists posting seem to be focusing on a dark horse. Or could that be a creature from hell.... Difficult to tell with some of them. I don't think Death is something that everyone dreads...after all, there's supposed to be a heaven, too.

For a bit of whimsy, I wrote a quick sonnet ("Ode to Death's Horse" - ha!) to help me visualize my final character:

At dusk this noble creature waits for me,
Ever patient he bears my burdens well;
His bright eyes the light helping me to see,
His swift feet the way to heaven...or hell.


Always eager to take on every task,
No soul too heavy for his broad, strong back;
"Room for another?" is all I need ask,
And so, we go; fetching those we yet lack.

By the end of our ride his head still high,
We take the dark path to his resting place;
His stable the grave we reach with a sigh,
At dawn Death's horse a skeleton I face.

No better friend could I have at my side,
When I go out as Death on my night ride.

A Story Please

If I was a vulture, I'd still like someone to read me a good storybook.
Just a quick, impromptu, "let's see what comes out of my pencil" kind of sketch.
Scribbling allowed and encouraged.

Finding a Place to Stand...

Found a nice little 1934 Lincoln Wheat Penny in the dryer today when I pulled my shirts out of the dryer at the apartment laundrymat. I wonder what places (and pockets) it's been during its lifetime...


Got an Archimedes quote (of sorts) in my fortune cookie the other day:
"Find a place to stand, and move the world."
Haven't found it yet...could say that that is my main work-in-progress.


The sketches I posted today are more of those ideas from that ongoing personal projects concept library that have been drifting around in my mind, some for many years...some going through revision after revision of mental sketching before I finally actually put them down on paper. For example, a couple are from a story I first read when I was 11 years old, way back in the summer of '76. Others are from more recent random blips of inspiration. Somehow, survival and the daily grind of work (gotta pay those bills!) always got in the way.


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My Uncle Al died.

It's been close to 15 years, possibly longer, since I've seen him. I did hear about him now and again, from either my cousin (his daughter), or my aunt (his 2nd ex-wife and my mom's sister).

One of the earliest memories I have of this uncle (one of the four men that was actually part of what I consider my immediate circle of family when I was growing up), was when I was about 4 years old. My mother, my 2 yr-old baby sister and I were visiting him, my aunt and my cousin who was just a couple of months older than me. At some point during those first few days, my uncle found out that my little sister still liked to suck her thumb; especially when she was upset and definitely when she was napping. He didn't like that. How did I know? My uncle Al told me that if he caught her sucking that thumb while she was napping, he would cut it off. And as he told me this, he took out his pocket knife and folded out the blade so that I could see what her thumb would get cut off with. Terrified, I remember standing next to my sister's bed during that nap, reaching over to pull her thumb out of her mouth at least twice, maybe more, before my aunt discovered me doing so and asked me why. I told her that Uncle Al had told me that he would cut her thumb off if he caught her sucking on it again, and I didn't want that to happen. My aunt scolded my uncle the rest of the day for that bit of fun.

I was such a gullible kid.

He did tell me later that he was just kidding...

More Castle sketching

More pencil sketching. I'll post some more after tomorrow.

Friday the 13th Twisters

When the wife of one of my co-workers was sent home early from her North Dallas office because of the bad weather forecast, I figured it wouldn't hurt to get home early myself so I left at 5:30pm instead of my usual 6:30 to 7pm. Plus, I definitely wanted to get my car under the covered parking I have at my apartment complex. I already have dings and dents from a bit of hail damage at work from the previous year (we're in a large warehouse location with open parking), and do NOT need all the windows broken - especially since the weather forecast included the potential for golfball sized hail.

Pictures from the local news show the 4 twisters that swept through the North Texas area around 6pm as well as the hail. It wasn't fun hearing all the sirens going off and the pounding of the hail on the roof and the day turning into the dark of night as the storm passed over; while I was tucked away with my pillows and blankets in case the roof blew off...it didn't. My cat Tabby sat with me - the others hid under the bed. They didn't like the noise either.

Interesting fact I found out - the billboards that were twisted like bits of paper and scattered over in Haltom City (next to Ft Worth) were built to withstand straightline winds of over 100 miles an hour.

Sketching

Some WIPs - a couple of very rough sketches of potential layouts for a previous illustration project.

It's Spring?

It snowed early this weekend. But it's April...and today is Easter. From what I've been hearing in the news, just last year it was close to 90 degrees on this day. The latest snow that I can recall since I've lived in Texas was March 28th. So I figured it was safe to plant some new flowers (for pretty) and herbs (for cooking) in my patio boxes - and, of course, I had to bring them all in for the weekend so they wouldn't freeze. That's Texas for you, I guess.

Happy Easter!

And check out this funny little bunny video to celebrate those sinful little bunnies of Easter past...as I vaguely recall from one of my old art history lectures at university, bunnies in early christian religious art were symbols to represent the "sin of lust" possibly to challenge the old pagan fertility association. What fun!

Have some more freelance illustration going on for the next few days (wee), but as I wait to get approvals on my concepts I keep on with my own work as much as possible. I'll post some of the work in progress from that in the next few days.

Behold the Enemy

Free At Last

Wrapped up the freelance illustration work for the children's textbook series at last today (well, until the next time they need me and I have some free time), so I'll be back to working on my own stuff after the day job and posting merrily away once again, for the next month at least. Wee!

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Mina seems to be responding well to the thyroid medication this past week. Her coat is looking better and her behavior is more the occasional spasdic sweet cat like she was before. Haven't gotten the others tested yet since they weren't showing any of the symptoms mentioned. Unfortunately, I did get an email from Petsmart this week with the info that I'd purchased the tainted food - tracked me and the numbers by my PetPerks card. Isn't that lovely. Ah, well, I suppose it's a good thing I only buy cat food from Petsmart.

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Had a quiet birthday this past week. Planning on going out tomorrow night with some friends to drink farewell to my lost youth. ha! I need to color my hair pink again - we all miss it. Tracey, my hairstylist, wants me to try this new iridescent pink. Sounds like fun!

My Friend Mina: Part 2

More news about the petfood recalls on the tv and in the papers today:
"...her first thought after hearing about the recall was, “Oh my gosh, I killed my cat.” Fluffy’s health deteriorated after Tracy fed her Special Kitty brand food, one of the recalled labels, and she had to euthanize the 11-year-old cat last week."

I have to admit I've been in a panic all weekend since I pretty much felt the same way. Evidently more dogs and cats may still be victims of kidney failure in the next few weeks; and in particular, cats, as it appears they are more sensitive to whatever contaminated the pet food.

Meanwhile, yesterday's tests and exam results are in - Mina has hyperthyroidism. She'll be on medication the rest of her life, but it's a treatable disease. Her kidneys seem to be functioning fine at the moment. My sister's cat Coco evidently had the same problem and lived till he was 20 before his kidneys finally failed him (...let me see...that's two pills a day for 365 days a year for about 7 more years...that's gonna be alot of pills...over 5000, if I did my math correctly -- sigh). For the next few months, I'll work with the vet to figure out what her dosage will be, and get her tested twice a year after that to make sure all is well.

Mina easily took the first pill without issue this evening. Hurray!! Hopefully, that continues for the future...have to admit that I didn't think that the pill pocket would work, especially since Mina isn't used to taking treats, but it did, yay! And here's hoping that the rest of my cats will have even better exams in the next few weeks.

I'd rather be sure than sorry, so I'll get the others examined and tested, too.

My Friend Mina

My 12-year old cat, Mina, hasn't been quite herself lately. Worse, she may have gotten ill from some of the canned food I've been giving her recently as a treat in the evenings (she usually only got the Science Diet dry food and no people food ever, but I've started feeding her and the other cats canned food once a day, too, for added moisture and coat improvement) -- unfortunately, the same food which was just recalled this weekend due to some kind of contamination. Turns out it may be the wheat gluten additive (for extra protein) from a new supplier for Menu Foods is what they said this morning on the news. In any case, I took her to the vet for a full "senior" exam which will hopefully pinpoint the problem so that the vet and I can get her feeling better and living a quality life for awhile longer yet. Her sister, Tabitha, seems to be fine. But, depending on the results of the tests that are being done for Mina...I may be bringing Tabitha in sooner than I'd originally scheduled for her annual physical exam and senior blood and urine tests. Here's an old picture of the two girls when they were about 4 months, I think. Mina still had a short coat then.


And this next one is from about 2 years ago, in her usual queenly pose.

I figured after bringing Mina home from the animal clinic (she was so stressed out by the visit that she was panting like a dog when the vet brought her to me in the exam room) that she'd run and hide under the bed for the rest of the day once I let her out of the carrier. But she's a trooper and instead wanted me to brush her for a bit (she's a very pristine cat) after she checked the apartment out to make sure everything was as it should be...and she is currently resting in the cat tree by the window watching the birds flying by while keeping a close eye on the two pigeons that persist in calling my apartment balcony their new home.

Stupid pigeons.

Believe Me

Just a quick little sketch of a memory to take a break from the tedium of textbooks...

While I was working on my freelance textbook illo's last night, the local PBS tv station was running a British music special which was providing some fun background music. When Dusty Springfield started singing "You don't have to say you love me", I just happened to be walking by the tv and saw the performance - and totally had a flashback to a time when my mom was dressed up for a night out with my dad, and looked almost exactly like that -- big blonde hair, sophisticated, too cool for words. Well, at least to my little girl eyes.

I thought she was perfectly beautiful.

Dream On

Since I was about 4 or 5 years old, I've had the occasional vivid dream that I can later recall quite strongly. Either because it was a recurring dream (I have a few that I can still remember from back then, although unfortunately most of those were nightmares) or I enjoyed the dream-story so much that I wrote it down in one of the notebooks that I have hanging around me. Just reading my notes about the dream brings it all back once again.


There are a few times when I'm lucid dreaming, and in some of those I like to completely change the dream or at the very least, manipulate the "story". Some of my all-time favorites involve shape-shifting. I think it's memories from lessons in my old anatomy classes that also make shifting so attractive -- instead of changing in a flash from my own self to whatever creature I want to be (werewolf, swan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, mermaid, etc.), I like to make the changes properly and methodically, so that I can feel the bones and muscle grow or modify, the weight difference from my original self to the new creature, and the addition or modification of my limbs...and how the new body all works together once the shift is complete.

Elements from those shape-shifting dreams are currently driving some ideas I have for my participation in a fun little comic anthology. I'm working on it along with some concept artists (professional and student-level) that I've gotten to know in the last year. Not something we plan to sell, but rather use as self-promotion; and some have mentioned that they plan to include their contribution as part of their sketchbooks for this year's Comic-cons. In any case, I posted some of the very rough sketches I've been doing over the weekend for that.

Interesting, too -- it appears that there is a japanese feature animation called Paprika that is about a "dream detective who can enter into people’s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious to help uncover the source of their anxiety or neurosis". It looks pretty cool. I really wish that there were good animation studios here that also did movies for adults and not just kiddie films. Anyways, the movie was released last year in Asia and should be in theaters here in the U.S. in May or June 2007, most likely in rather limited release.

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In other news....

Just back from a brief visit with the Disney folks for another licensing meeting for my day job. Had a nice dinner conversation with David P., a long-time Disney artist who has worked on a variety of feature animation projects and who most recently lead the creative development of the Disney Signature furniture collection (really cool and unfortunately every piece is way out of my budget), on working with interns (we both have some that will be starting in the next few months) and on some key creative best practices or maybe a "creative nugget" that we could take from the many years of professional work that we've done (we each have about 20 years of artistic work, his with the various Disney departments, me with various freelance, corporate and private companies in some creative capacity of one kind or other) that could be passed on to our future interns. After some discussion, we agreed that the simple idea to not immediately refuse a new project simply because you don't have prior experience is one of the best bits of wisdom we could pass on. Don't let inexperience scare you away!

Now, I just need to listen to my own advice....

Speaking of freelance and future job projects, I'm doing some freelance illustration work once again for some more children's textbooks with a publisher I've worked with before, so my postings will be rather limited if at all for the next few weeks.
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And, back to those dreams of mine....

One of my more recent interesting dreams pulled in scenes and characters from two different books I read some time ago, "Blood and Chocolate" and "Moon Called". Well, the second was a year ago and the other one about 6 years ago I think. Both of them were werewolf stories - which made my dream most excellent IMO. Nothing like turning into a werewolf and having a bit of fun. Grrrrrr... :) However, since I hadn't reread those books in a while, I believe that the dream may have been influenced by a project I'd been thinking about...a painting I've been wanting to schedule time to develop....and that's probably what really got me dreaming about werewolves. I've posted one of the initial rough concepts sketches for that illustration below.

Rubs hands together with glee -- Let the creative work begin!