Happy holidays everyone!

Happy holidays and a really super new year to everyone! Thanks again so very much for all your comments, questions and general support of the Drawblog. See you in 2011!

Elfs!

My 7 year old niece has been drawing elves like crazy, so I drew some for her!

I did these with a nib instead of the brushpen. I've been inspired to go back to it by the amazing delightful fantastic and French work of Domtille Collardey. I don't know her or anything, I'm just crazy about her drawings. Check this out for even more fun!

Special days of the recent past no. 19

 

Something new, kind of. 

UPDATE: I have since been informed that Cujo is the name of a scary dog from some manner of Stephen King book or film. So there you are.

My First Website

The intensive I'm presently doing includes two Dreamweaver classes. As an outcome we had to make a pretty simple website, and I made this one! Don't worry about the video, it's mostly there to meet course objectives, although I'm told it's not totally uninteresting if you can sit through the whole thing.

UPDATE: The video page won't work at all! How'd you like that! Anyhoo, have a look at  http://drawsmall.tripod.com

I usually dislike making excuses for myself or what I put on the blog, but I can willingly acknowledge a marked decline in the drawings due to time constraints. I have projects due constantly, without exaggeration, and each is on at least this scale. I think this is a fine start though, and I hope I'll be interested enough in a month or two to go back and clean it up a bit.

ps: The mail form really works, so feel free to leave Phoebe your comments!

Very important research

Goofing off in class.

Sketchbook dispatch

More sketchbook, almost ready to finish this one up. I've gone back to the Cansons but took out half the pages and used only half the book at a time. When the first half was used up I put the unused pages back on the binding and took the old ones off. It helped with weight/bulk, but it was messy and I don't love having so many loose pages hanging around. I don't know that I would do it again.

I'm really hoping to have some new actual content up soon, hang tight!

 

Schoolwork

Most of you probably know that I have gone back to school to do a design intensive. For anyone who didn't know or was too shy to ask, I am learning to be better and more efficient at doing stuff like layouts and photo manipulation. I guess that might sound a bit dry, but it isn't always, and I really am improving fast. Hopefully when I have more time I'll be able to integrate more drawing elements or hand-lettering into these kinds of projects.

Here's what one of my homework assignments looks like.

Image from http://mariannika.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/wacky-cupcakes/ where you can also find the Wacky Cake recipe in its original context.

In somewhat related matters I have a few questions for those of you in the clicking/drawing/making trades. I have been experiencing a lot of eyeball strain and back pain, and the beginnings of generalized flabbiness, as a result of all this computering. Do you have any tips to toughen me up or at least save my eyesight? I'm a bit concerned as this will eventually be my job.

Bonus question: Colours that look fine on my computer are attrocious on everyone else's computer, it seems. My CS colourspaces are all synchronized and I have tried changing the colourspace of my computer (I am using windows vista on a laptop so perhaps my monitor is partly to blame) but to no avail. Someone told me the problem is that PCs are not calibrated whereas Macs are calibrated, but they didn't elaborate beyond that. I thought you calibrate TO something, like another device or a peripheral like a printer. Can something just BE calibrated? Is that what my problem is?

Thanks!

Humans!

Hello and sorry sorry sorry for my long absence! I have been distracted. Please enjoy some of this life drawing, or, perhaps more accurately, "people facing away from me on the bus" -drawing.

Also, this!

Hey!

Hey, it's been awhile! I have been a pretty busy bee. New stuff and a very special day coming soon when I get a chance.

Special days of the recent past no. 18

I went to see Wolf Parade! Initially I was inspired to draw a comic on concert etiquette based on my experience at the show, but then I got caught up in inking this thing.

To be honest there's only one panel here I really like, but I need practice inking so I decided to go ahead with it all the same. I've moved from smooth bristol to vellum finish and I'm giving the pocketbrush another try. So far the texture seems nice, but I've got a long way to go before I'm likely to see any increase in proficiency or speed.

For those of you curious about how these things get done I've scanned my entire sheet of bristol, complete with pencil lines and several false starts.