the winning project

The project that has come out ahead, for now anyway, is Surreal World.

It took no time at all to tighten up the characters in my new cartooning style.



And now I can play more with brush inking. When I'm only accountable to myself, I'm mush more relaxed with it than when I knew it was going to be scrutinized by Mick (my inking instructor). Though, I'm sure its not nearly so tight either, but I work best when I keep things loose.

I'm a comic artist...

I'm a comic artist. I should really be planning and working on my pitch for a comic. I guess its easy to loose faith in your own ability to do what you love and flounder about on the periphery. I am also an illustrator but I studied comics, I went back to school to improve my comics, dammit, I need to think about my next comic!

Some days I can look at the comic work on my webpage and see that it really isn't all that bad. Today was one of those days. Despite the smack down my Kokoro pages got from my MFA defense, they still reflect a quality of work that I would accept/read from someone else. To me this is a good standard.

So, I have to put in some serious work planning which project to start. If anyone actually read this blog, I would definitely take a vote or requests, but this is just a place for me to put my own thoughts into words.

The contenders: Pros and Cons

Quatre C- story mostly worked out, great new characters designs, perfect for a web comic/ would be a long or serialized story, really want a background designed in studio max and it isn't getting made...

Gender Studies- successful hook, black and white, 98% finished plot/ was turned down once, would like help on the writing, would have to re-draw existing pages


Surreal World- story worked out, opportunity for variety and experimentation/ would have to re-draw existing pages

Kokoro- pitch completely worked out, sample pages done, mostly scripted/ don't feel for the characters, sick to death of it

"Sandy"- awesome, totally worked out story/ need background and tech artist partner who is dedicated

It seems one of my hold backs is wanting a partner to share the work- especially in areas I'm not confident about. I suppose if I really want to get serious I need to buck up and just learn to do it myself! All of these project will require at least finished scripting and thumbnailing... it's just, where to start?

Villa Incognito

Villa Incognito is a Tom Robbins novel I thought it would be fun to illustrate. I pulled together all kinds of images of tanuki and kitsune, references from Hokusai, Japanese legends and even Amano's art in The Dream Hunters but none of my designs felt right. One little scribble I did while planning all this was of the girl throwing up a chrysanthemum and this morning that drawing came together.

First I sketched in blue pencil- a trick I've been trying out lately to good effect.
Then I inked right over it with brush and india ink.
Next I got out my bamboo sumie brush to do the flower. Then scanned.



With the help of a few new photoshop brushes from http://chriswahlartbrushes.blogspot.com/

I'm pretty happy with the result! I think I need to loosen up more and push the brush ink and watercolor angle some more.

Kokoro Cover

Sticking with my idea for doing a few covers I finally settled on redoing a project I started in school but had to rush to finish for class. I was never happy with the final result so I thought I'd give it another shot:




I left plenty of room for text and here's an idea but I would love to see what a real graphic designer would do (typographically etc).





I absolutely love kimono and kimono patterns. Working on Ojosan's kimono was a challenge because I had to weigh the balance of pattern versus busyness for the overall image. One of the last choices I made was to go over the black outline in favor of color trapping, which I think turned out well.



Here are some of the planning sketches I went back to from the original project:

Evolution of an illustrator

I hope by the time I am 40 I can figure out my artistic niche? I hope that isn't too ambitious? I have quite awhile to go... but I feel rather lost as an illustrator. I have pretty high standards that my own work often seems to fall short of!

So my journey continues in a new direction, now that my thesis is done (from which I am still recovering) and I can work on anything I want, the hardest part is just pinning down a direction. In an effort to not spin my wheels I endeavor to start documenting my process (Hopefully this way I'll at least see where I've been).

So, Today's lesson: good research not only shows you where to start but also where to quit. My idea is to do a series of book covers that are at least reasonably well known- if not classics- to use as portfolio pieces. In researching Lolita covers I found that the ground has already been thoroughly covered- though often incorrectly.

According to 'Chasing Lolita' by Graham Vickers, Nobokov didn't even want an image of a girl on the novel, much less the overly sexualized versions that developed after the movies. I did find some great links/images along the way:

Here is an archive of Lolita covers, and a contest of designs which I found from a link on a new(to me) artist's blog.



Lastly, I remembered this video posted on Open Culture of Nobokov looking at various covers.

So, my quest for a subject/ novel to illustrate continues.

more doodling

More ink and watercolor doodling.

Sketches

It was surprisingly satisfying just to doodle with some watercolor and ink the other night. I must remember to do this more! Esspecially when I have a nice set of blank watercolor cards and frame cards to make use of.