Practice practice practice

Been sort of busy all this month, working on getting into a new school and practicing with my inks. Thankfully this post isn't all talk but more show, so let's get to the grind!

WIP: this is a commission I'm doing for a lady friend. What you see here is a color swatch test to make sure everything will integrate nicely before hand coloring. She chose the earthy brown/red palette.


One of my first major attempts at doing a pure ink/ink wash drawing. You can tell I made some awkward mistakes in the shadows of her arms. The knife also doesn't look quite like a knife as a couple of guys pointed out to me. Which lead me to the following doodles...

er....Lolita and knives. I'm sure nothing could be more awkward than this. I'll explain! See, I've also been having trouble with getting clothes to look natural on people ( as in organic folds and such. ) so I just decided to try killing two birds with one stone. I chose the Lolita gowns because the designs are challenging and aren't limited to one form of fabric. Also the blades in this drawing were referenced from bucknife model 184 and bucknife model 119.


Another practice session with clothing. By the way all of these dresses and blouses you see here were referenced from www.fanplusfriend.com. They have some pretty gorgeous dresses/EGA/cosplay items and even have close up shots of the fabric patterns they use. Good reference source IMO.

Yes we have no updates!

Well that ain't entirely true. For the last month or so I've been mixing it up with vegitating and doing another sequential battle at enterVOID.com. I'd link it but frankly my self confidence is too shot for sharing. Mayhaps later? Unless you the viewer already know how to find my stuff on the site.
I've did some small craft work recently, thanks to Yukkin sending me some clay and other little art supply things. I didn't bother taking photos before I mailed out the handmade gifts to everyone.
( I'm so BORING I know! )
In other news I received an e-mail from Jamie Chase of SLG stating that FatChunk volume 2 FINALLY has a release date. It should be coming around stores in April, so let's keep our fingers crossed and expect my little one shot to be in their book as well.
Don't expect updates to be frequent for awhile. I'll be practicing on not sucking with quill pens as well as a commission piece, and possibly another sequential match.

New Years house of blues

Happy New Year everybody! Nothing too excited going on here. I got laid off, and fighting for unemployment and while on the side I've been practicing with my new art tools given by my friends and family.
So the main topic of the evening; Quill inks and pens. I finally received a set thanks to my cousin, and I've been going to town with them since.
This is what I got
http://www.merriartist.com/Speedball_Pen_Set_sktching_p/sp2964.htm

Now, as I was looking through the ink section for pen ink I could only come across two brands; Higgins and Speedball superblack ink. Higgins, we all know and I've been informed well of, is chalky bullshit. I've tried it before and you're better off drawing in car oil. So because I wanted to try something out right away, ( and it was a gift ) I got the Speedball stuff. I figure it's good for regular black and white comicking. And so it is! I'm impressed with it so far, but it's come to be difficult inking buildings. Also, as my friend Heidi mentioned, it's not very water proof so slapping colors would be a challenge if I don't want to mess anything up. ( especially commission work. )
When hours can be picked up at my work and things calm down a bit I'll be investing in some Deleter ink and a jar of white.
In the meantime, here's a few practice pieces;

Panty Project

It's not very often, with my budget being so tight, that I venture away from just paper and pencil. Once in awhile I'll go on some misadventure in the world of experimenting with foreign materials. Sometimes clay sculpting, sometimes forcing my fat fingers to sew, or just making an ass of myself and setting myself up for failure. However, early this year was a different story.
Time warping back to my days in Florida early this year, a friend of mine gave me an opportunity of a lifetime.
They demanded that I defiled one of their clean sets of panties by doing some sort of illustrated motif on them. From there I had nothing to lose.
These photos are the final results before the pre-washing.



The only difference is the blue banding around the top is now black. As for the theme, it was actually inspired by a Youtube clip which you can see here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMdPYya3IoA

Now if only that person would just wear the damn thing.

Let's do something nonsensical once more

Not a very 'artsy' post, but wanted to add a little more coal to this blog's furnace so to speak.
I was hanging out with RabbitJunk in pchat the other night and tried my hand at digital painting for the first time....

Not a very handsome first try.

The comic experiments will have to be put on hold for awhile due to my holiday card and sticker project ( and money issues is really ripping me apart stress wise....probably why I haven't been sleeping....blahblahblah. )
Around the first week of december I'll be alterating commission prices to make them cheaper temporarily for that month. We'll see how that works, but in the meantime....


( sorry Riley, I just had to. And yet you'll never know this entry even existed.
.....*snicker*.... )

Rhythim and Blues

It's been years since I've had my old web comic characters make an appearance in public, so allow me to refresh some memories and maybe make some new ones. In 1999 I had an old web comic called Alien Drugged, a sci-fi 'shoujo' type story about five unique girls and their abilities to fight off an evil empire of intergalactic transvestites. The story was inspired by Rocky Horror Picture Show, Sailor Moon ( HAH! ), and electronica pleasure culture. I stopped working on this around 2003 because of time for the project being cut short and I was reworking the same first chapter over and over. If you're interested in knowing more of this comic, the most recent chapter ( from 2006? ) can be found at my comicspace account.
http://www.comicspace.com/bittermause/comics.php?action=gallery&comic_id=4601























Now onto more sketches! I decided to upload some older stuff from this year.
( LEFT ) Original character Pandora showing off her honkin huge mallet weapon. The next two are of a recent character I created named Ellegy, a Pan-like creature with a Quagmire overbite, and a passion for the accordion.

Setting the Mood

This is technically a 'part 2' to the Halloween gift art I was working on for Yuki. The grinning wooly lookin guy is Ero Ero Happy, Yuki's 'candy demon'. The chunky pissed off erololita girl is Edsel, my 'witch' type figure.
.....They're best of friends! Can you tell?

The holidays are inching closer, which means it's time for me to carry on my annual tradition of illustrating stickers and mailing out cards to my friends. I also have some practice sequential comics planned in the works, both which are linked to some activity within enterVOID.


Below is a sample pic of one of these said projects I'll try to get working on:


If you know your greek mythology and dramas then you'll more than likely know which painting I parodied this from. This will be based off the tragedy of Apollo x Daphne, but based around the enterVOID verse. When will it happen? I couldn't tell you just yet!

As for sequential mini project number 2, I'll keep that under wraps for now.

In the meantime, that's all for tonight!