Oil Pastels

The other day at work I saw a squirrel across from me on a branch, I drew this from the impression on my memory of the little guy.


This is a life sketch of Lorenzo's fish tank. I scanned it in 2 parts so one side is darker than the other- too lazy to ajust it right now...

I found a set of 25 long lost oil pastels on one of my shelves today and decided to play around with them.

Something Sweet

I had been working on a new comic book idea and had gotten as far as drawing and inking about 8 pages of it, but after stepping back and looking at what I had done I was dissapointed in myself. My paneling needed a lot of work, my inking was shaky, and the level of detail I put into the pages was inconsistant. I had some friends who are also into comics look critque my pages which was very helpful but at the same time it made me frustrated. Every time I feel like I'm getting the hang of something I get a little reality check like that, that'll make me feel like I'm even further away than I was before. But, I am making progress. One of my friend's suggested that I take a break from the more ambitious story that I was working on and focus on my skills by doing a short comic of only a few pages. So that's where "Something Sweet" comes in. It'll be a simple short story of about 6 pages. Here are some of my rough character sketches, thumb nail drawings, and the penciled first page.

Caricature Rejects

I'm normally not too ofended when I get a reject. I don't get them often and when I do, it'll be one that I myself felt wasn't as good as it could be, but I kinda took this one personal. I felt I had nice clean lines and a good likeness. The mother didn't say why she didn't want to buy it and had stoped me even before I even finished coloring it in. I thought it was a nice drawing so I went ahead and completed it so I can maybe use it as a demo.

I really had an annoying day today. I did another one where the lady didn't think the drawing looked like her son but liked the way her grandaughter turned out. She wanted me to change only his nose. I said no at first, hello it's a marker! Anyway a lot of times one person in the family might think the drawing is off, while everyone thinks it's dead on so I useually leave it up to the one's being drawn to decide. But, she said with no small hint of disdain, "I'll pay for it but it does not look like him at all." Her attitude really made me angry. I felt like crying, it's a caricature! You're getting a caricature! I exagerate! It's what I do! gahh I was really annoyed and it probably showed which is regretful.. I try my best to be kind to the customers even if they are not kind to me. The 90 degree weather today wasn't helping my mood much either. I ripped off the drawing to start over, she wanted me to start with him this time and I did, she paid for it, and I retraced the rest of the drawing. I miss getting the customers who think that the mere fact you can make a line on paper using a marker is something amazing.

Life Drawing 10-01-08

GIANT SQUID

For my friend's birthday this year I didn't have a lot of money but I did have a lot of fabic and a good amount of time so I decided to make her something. She mentioned she saw these Giant Squid stuffed animals at a shop in LA for around $500. I found some reference pics online and set out to see if I could make one for her. I worked on it over the course of 3 days, now that I have a pattern designed for it I think I could make another in about a day. The hardest part was figuring out which pieces to sew together first. The most time consuming part was stuffing the tenticles. In the end, I think it came out nicely, it was a fun challenge for me and my friend loves her new buddy. :)

Panda Caricature

I did this caricature on the 27th... it made my day because the parents asked for a RED PANDA! I love red pandas- I think they are adorable. No one ever asks for one because most people don't know they exist. It was my first or second drawing of the day and it made me happy. :)