X3 » http://sketchpan.com/mypan/?id=Tomatsu

Now I just have to convince other ppl that it’s a good idea to join. Buahahaha. <cough>

Also, Banlieue 13 and Banlieue 13 Ultimatum are sooooooooo very good. Just sayin’.

Take two:

Though I kind of prefer the saturation of the first one.

So here’s a random scribble I did in Photoshop today; the monotone line width is probably something I’m going to keep. (I was really more interested in playing with color, tbh.)

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* A fountain pen, actually. Not much line variation, but I’ve always favored that anyway.

And I don’t usually sing the praises of my plugins, but I feel the need to make an exception for this one. It’s seriously the best lightbox for WordPress ever. It attaches its rel tags separately from the dashboard somehow (on page load maybe?), which you’ll never have to edit old posts to get it to work with them. It also means you can put any kind of code you want into your post (I’m looking at you, NextGen singlepic shortcode), without having compatibility issues.

I just started drawing in blue pencil. Well, not that I’ve never done it before, but regularly, I meant.

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Mm yeah, when I’m designing a character, sometimes the pencil ghosting gets pretty nasty.

Since then, there’s been a lot of stuff in progress, but nothing finished to show.
Today, that changes!
Behold the reworked ninja bunny gloomday attacks! banner:
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And also my new Halloween Evil Sheep icon, of course. <points up> I made it for Miranda, so there’s no shiny larger image (yet) (if ever).

I’m semi-hard at work (between watching things and poking at my aquarium tanks and surviving another heat wave) at a number of things. I’m in the mid- to finishing stages of a Victorian girl piece for my friend Marc,* I started a reworking of my original (ninja bunny) gloomday attacks! banner, I’m in the mock-up stage for a redesign of my portfolio site, I have take-along sketchbook-making on the brain,** and mm… there was something else, I just can’t remember what. Oh, I was working on comic-y story stuff the other week, too—but that’s not what I was thinking of.

* which I liked yesterday, but not so much today, especially after digging up my book of John Singer Sargent portrait drawings. Right now I want to scrap the whole thing and start over, but it seems a waste.
** I had planned on one design, but I acquired this lovely scrap of black leather last week, so now I want to make something out of it as well.

Asked about the Evil Sheep’s recent fetish for capes—many citizens have been heard to refer to him as ‘Supersheep’ since the trend first started some months ago—his spokesperson had this to say: “Sure, the Sheep is fond of his capes, but really, who doesn’t love a good cape?” We also inquired whether this was to be a permanent look, and were informed that “the Sheep’s personal clothing accessories may change at any time.” The question remains, does “any time” seem likely to be in the near future?

I’ve been working on this on and off for a couple of weeks, but it’s finally done to my liking. I doubt I’ll love it in a couple of months (my previous banner (the ninja bunny one) looks sort of clunky to me now), but I do like that I kept at it until it was more detailed and refined than the last one.

Well, today I actually finished off the last page. Of course, I’d managed to fill it up quickly because about two-thirds of it was timed sketches from the past few months, which I’d never done before. I’ve already started thumbnailing a couple of things in my new one, which brings me to a tangent.

I still can’t fathom all the people from my school and all the fancy pro artists with the amazing sketchbooks, the ones filled with gorgeous ink sketches and mixed media stuff (“experiments” my ass). Surely they must have ugly, scribbly ones hidden away somewhere that they don’t show off?* And if so, then how can they possibly call the show ones, ‘sketchbooks’? To me, if I was going to do something like that, I’d consider it an art piece, because that’s really what it is.** Just because it’s drawn/painted/whathaveyou in what is sold as a sketchbook doesn’t make it one, imo.
[/rant]

But I am going to try being more conscious of my pages (we’ll see how long that lasts, and how long it takes to make me paranoid and uptight about what goes in it, just when I’d started loosening up about what I put in my sketchbooks).*** I don’t think I’ll ever end up with a pretty sketchbook, unless I do one that way on purpose, but maybe I can make it more engaging and interesting to look at?

* Those are the ones I’d really like to see, to be honest.

** And that’s about the only way I can think of to wrap my head around it. Do they plan what they’re going to put in there, and test it out beforehand, or are they just that good? Somehow I think (hope) it’s at least partly the former, so they can make people think it’s the latter. Unfortunately, I have no brains to pick about this, and even if I did, it’s probably all secret society-ish.

*** For a very long time, my sketchbooks were reserved for drawing only. No thumbnails, no drawing from life/timed sketching (though I wasn’t really doing either of these ’til recently), no notes for stories, no random little scribbly doodles, no pasted-in stuff (ok, I still don’t do this unless forced, but I may start)—those all had other places to go (or no place at all). I still don’t really experiment much in my sketchbooks, but then, I don’t really experiment much.

Built up from a 45 second! wire-frame sketch over several hours (lots of work on the hands, cuz hands are hard). Probably would have been faster if I hadn’t decided to keep all my layers so that someday, if I felt like it, I could show the process. It might be funky in one or two places (like, are her feet really at the right angle?) but I’m pretty happy with it. It is flat like the Rae piece, which I kind of like, but it makes me wonder if refining ‘em more with, like, highlights and shadows would be even better. ‘Course, shading and I aren’t very good friends right now, so maybe someday I’ll go back to it when we make up.

Incidentally, I’m told my Rae icon looks like a boy, so I’ll be tweaking that pic a little to hopefully put an end to that. XD

EDIT: Fixed my icon~

EDIT #2: Omg, it’s trying to sprinkle. The air smells all lovely and damp, even if the raindrop count is nil.

EDIT #3 (next day): Hmm, so it’s official her feet are weird; I think I’ll leave it a couple of days and maybe poke at it when I’ve got fresh eyes.

And then I’ll change my Rae icon again. :X

Unrelatedly—
After reading about the proposed changes to basic LJ accounts the other day, I started thinking about moving to a wordpress blog on gloomday. Before that, I had planned to switch to a paid account when I finally get a job, but now I don’t think I want to. Of course, that sort of sucks in terms of friends I have on here, so I’m still debating (though I do have everyone’s journals on RSS feed now). Depends on what they decide to do, too. <shrugs> Chances are, I won’t be bothered to move in the end. Heads up anyway, though.

I loved it. Of course, I loved the first one, too. Where Batman Begins was focused on Bruce/Batman, Dark Knight focused more on everyone else. And the new cowl doesn’t make his chin look fat (+points for that). Heath Ledger was very much not like Jack Nicholson (+more points), a fact which I had been concerned about in early trailers.


One of the things I loved about this Joker—apart from the very lovely subtlety that Ledger managed—is that even though you know he’s Not Right In the Head and you know he’s done some terrible things, he makes you laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him portrayed that way before; usually stuff’s only funny to him, or he’s been made purposefully goofy. This time, he’s not even trying,* and the audience plays right into his hands. Brilliant.

* The character, I mean. Obviously they wrote him that way on purpose.

I actually saw the Watchmen trailer yesterday (go Pumpkins!), so seeing it on the big screen was nice but didn’t have quite the magic of first time viewing. It looks awesome. I just have to get my roomie to actually read it so he understands what it’s about. (My description/analysis is less than succinct, as usual.) The Quantum of Solace trailer was a nice added bonus. Not sure about the movie, but we’ll see.

And what was with the dumb people who thought there was going to be an extra scene at the end? “They did it in the Marvel movies,” one of them explained to their friends during the end credits, as I sniggered in my seat behind them. Seriously, people: Marvel =/= DC. <facepalm> There was no extra scene at the end of Batman Begins, so why the hell would there be one at the end of Dark Knight? Psh. Idiots.

So I tinkered with it more today; much more finished-looking. I like it a lot better, but as a permanent style? Probably not so much. I dunno. Poking around at style for me is like going clothes shopping: nothing quite fits. I have a drawing style (I mean really, how hard is that? it’s how I draw), but not a finished art style. Of course, that’s probably cuz I’m so lazy about doing finished pieces, buuut… I mean, I’m getting better, right?

Still playing with blacks. I dunno, they don’t feel quite me yet. They look a bit like I’ve been reading too much BPRD lately, which I have. Eh, I’ll keep poking at em.

EDIT: So originally I had her fully colored, and then I turned off the color layer and realized it looked better without. Added skin color at 100% and a few 30% tints of the original colors, and now I’m better pleased with the blacks. (I guess I was channeling Dave Stewart for colors? o.o Far less BPRD now.) Sort of Ashley Wood-ish* palette currently, but oh well.

* I have also lately been reading things of his. Speaking of which, Zombies vs. Robots and its sequel, Zombies vs. Robots vs. Amazons (nsfw, that latter one) are quite good.

Just a random two-second scribble I did after tweaking some brushes. I figured I might as well put it to use. The line brush doesn’t quite match the coloring/blacks brush, but other than that, I think it came out fairly well. Apart from getting up the courage to use more blacks,** I’m also playing around with the line work itself (as you can see), letting the color hold the shape in places instead of making sure everything’s outlined. Of course, that doesn’t hold up quite so well in black and white, so I’ll have to be careful what I get rid of. XD

* This number was a rough guess which I have now made fact!™ by my use of it here.

** “But it obscures some of my lovely picture!” my brain normally objects. “Plus, my blacks never end up looking right; other people’s look so natural by comparison.” and “I must put some soft edges in, I must make the shapes acurate….”