March Post. Arr.

Hey! Wow... been a while. Busy month says I. Which is why I deemed it necessary to stay up late last night drawing a crazy old drunken pirate woman. I'll probably do a big drawing dump soon of stuff I've been working on in my spare time. Also I blame the gym. I started going to the gym 3 times a week a month or two ago recently since I turned the big Three-Oh. I despise it. I resent almost every second that I'm there and not working on drawings or ideas. But as a friend of mine quite rightly pointed out if you don't have your health...

Also of note... this drawing features a newly scanned pretty shiny texture overlay! OoOOOoh!

Vampires for Valentines

OK... few hours late. And I reserve the right to take this down and fix it when I see it without sleep-bleary eyes tomorrow. But for now here it is. The yearly Vampire Valentines day entry: Check. I was trying something weird with the painting here. I used no lines to define the silhouettes. Even in the first stages beyond a really loose sketch this was all blocked in with shapes and the details worked out through shadow. It was a very different way to have to think. I solved a lot of problems that came up... others never quite got resolved. All in all a lot of fun and an interesting challenge.

And it takes my mind off how much I hate Valentine's Day. Grump.

Anime.... ish (?)

So I've been on this anime kick. And I'm rubbish at anime. Though it's always fun to play around with different styles. But it's got me thinking about Japan. Here's a weird thing. It's about a year since I hit up London. The whole experience was freaking wonderful. A large part of that is because it was in all ways exactly what I wanted. London was so... Londony. It was upbeat and colourful and alive in all the ways I'd hoped and it was also gloomy and somber and full of interesting dead people. Same goes for Ireland and Spain. They were more or less as I'd always hoped they'd be ever since I was a kid and wanted to travel.

Japan though...

Japan has always been on my list of places to go but it has suddenly struck me that it's for an entirely odd reason. It's because I like anime. Whereas my notions about London were coloured by movies I've seen, books I've read and photographs of haunted castles that I'd poured over in the library, all the things I want to see in Japan... don't exist.

The stuff I've watched that makes me want to go to Japan is always set in the far flung future... and is watercolour or photoshop. I've seen so much more anime than I have Japanese live-action films that the part of Japan that is really interesting to me is entirely fictitious. I'd never really thought about it this way before.

Weird eh?

EDIT!!

It's WAY too late for me to be up playing in photoshop but whatever. Have another sthpooky ghotht. I had so much fun doing the other one I figured I'd do another. She took a lot more tinkering to get right than the first fella.

OMG Sthpooky Ghothts!

Anyone else feeling a little Haunted Mansiony today? Also in an anime sort of mood lately. Maybe more on that later. Anyways this is probably my last post from my apartment of 7 years. So long, apartment. So long Ghost of Errol Flynn even though you never showed up. So long cubby that was perfect for setting up my 2 way mirror gag even though I never properly rigged up the black light behind you. Hello less expensive rent and balcony!

Onwards to adventure!

Avast! Piratical procrastination off the starboard bow!

No notes today so I started doing some pirate paintings. Well *a* pirate painting. This pirate painting. Arr.

wasting time @ work...

Drew this while waiting on some notes... what the hell is this guy? A "heavy gunner" I named the file I think. Yeah that's what he is A heavy gunner. Why not.

EDIT and also here is a battlefield commander with EERIE PSYCHIC POWERS! because the notes took a while getting in and it was too late to start thinking properly.

So this is 2011...

OK, 2011. So far we haven't been getting a long. You're scary. I am getting a negative vibe from you but I'm gonna work with you. We'll get through it and gods damn you we'll enjoy it!

Ahem... anyways in the post this week are mainly doodles. I'm trying to figure out what Sand Dan Glockta looks like. Young Master Gillen had a stab at him too on his blog (He turned me onto the most excellent First Law series) and I would like to refine the design until it looks like the character in my head. I don't think he looks crippled enough. This poor bastard's body is a road map of pain. Also there's that pasty skinny guy. I'm not in love with the drawing but it was more of an attempt to get the idea across. More about him later maybe if I continue the rest of the characters.