Another quickie

Ahh, watercolour. Why do I treat you like regular paint?
Watercolour is, to my knowledge, supposed to have that overlapping, oops!-leaked-outside-the-lines kind of niftiness, and yet I keep forcing it (digitally, anyhow) into the lines, more or less.

Regardless, I enjoy watercolours.  It's one of those things that a rank amateur can achieve awesomeness with, and a master can drive themselves batty trying to get perfect.

Okay, so this is a computer and everything's been fresh-installed.  This means all the things I had tweaked out on my laptop, all those preferences and shortcuts and such, aren't on this. And now I kick myself.  because instead of the nifty watercolour, you get this black & white crapshow.  Because I forgot to edit the Export option in Manga Studio 4. Fing monochrome, how I loathe you, almost as much as Times New Roman!

So, instead of that thing, which I guess I'll reattempt at another time, here's some Harley Quinn quickslap work, which is a mix of airbrush and watercolour over some simple, simple lines.

It's a while coming

I haven't updated in a good long while, forgive me.

I'm trying to figure out how to get a few things done, what format I want to do it in and more importantly,
WHERE I'm going to do it.

I bought a new computer recently and it's eating up a good chunk of real estate in my room.
I'm thinking of maybe using my laptop strictly for art stuff, even though the new beast is better suited to the resource-whore art programs.

A change is coming.. I've been feeling it for a while, and like a lazy ass, not been preparing for it.  Well I better start, otherwise when the change happens, it'll hurt more than it should. but I do so loathe the feeling that change is happening, or that a storm is brewing, if you will, and I can't really do anything about it at the present time.

I'm not sure if I've posted this image before, but I want to post something more than text. It's semi-appropriate, as there's some spectre of something pointing in my direction, demanding some kind of action.. just hope the course of action I choose is the right one.

I will be attempting (key word) to post on a more regular basis.

All the Rage

People are predictably unpredictable.

I've said that for years.  As it turns out, I'm not the only one.  A few years ago, waiting for the bus, I struck up a conversation with a girl who was attending university, and we were talking about the nature of people, and I said that same thing, to which she responded that her human behaviours teacher said the same thing at the start of every class.  Neat, and weird.  Neat because it's nice to know someone else is passing along such obvious, yet obscured knowledge, and weird because.. what do you do to become a teach of `human behaviours`??!

Anyhow.. so, a general rule of life is that we all do stupid things.  And they all catch up with us at some point.
I've got some piercings, generally easily hidden from view and blah blah blah. For whatever reason, I've been on a search for some unique jewelry for said piercings, and wanted something more than just the general 316L surgical stainless steel.

Initially, I found some awesome stuff at Body Candy and put an order in, though I got the sizing wrong. Still, the stuff is neat, and I'll but using it with some Jovi (air-drying modelling clay) in the future. A week or so later, I was out and about running some errands and thought `what am I doing wrong, why can't I find anything in the proper size here in Canada?!`, drove past a tattoo place, and stopped in.

That place is Artists of Life in Hamilton, Ontario, and let me tell you, the joint is friendly. Amazingly friendly. I had previously had a bad experience trying to acquire some jewelry from a local shop (it should never take 4 weeks or more for an order) and these folks put me right at ease. If I ever get a tattoo, I know where I'm going. Now, to make this really clear, when I say friendly.. a friend of mine who isn't into tattoos, body mod, piercings, or anything even remotely like that (even fake boobs are a turn off for him), he went with me to pick up the jewelry, and was so keen on how friendly and nice the staff are at Artists of Life, he almost wanted to get a tattoo. So I picked up the ordered jewelry and was on my way. They told me who their supplier is, and I looked them up online, and placed an order from them, as well. The folks at Artists of Life even offered to help me swap out my current jewelry, because hey, sometimes it can be tricky, even just a plain old earring can throw you a curveball sometimes.

So anyhow.. I placed an order with Rage Body Jewelry . I placed the order 7 days ago, got notice in the mail yesterday and picked up the jewelry today. I gotta tell ya, I'm fairly pleased with everything.

Between Body Candy, Rage and Artists of Life, I think I've got my bodymod wants covered - forget the bases, it's the whole dang field, including the dugout.

On a completely unrelated note.. I'm having a bit of a hard time designing some family members for something I'm working on..so I thought I'd doodle out some other stuff for a while instead.. and we've got a roughed up bruiser itching for payback and some old designs I'm going to be re-evaluating and tweaking to get further away from the Ninja Turtle-vibe it gives me.

More doodle-do

Sometimes it's easy to whip off some quick rough ideas and splash a little colour around ..and other times it's like pulling teeth - trying to create something from nothing with only a very vague, still unformed idea to shape the thing.. vagueness to create something specific, oh yeah, that'll work. Well, sometimes it does - but not often, from my perspective.  So, instead of the things I wanted to doodle and get a better grasp on, I doodled this instead, which, should things work that way, will be one of the cleaner denizens of certain areas. 

I find I almost miss working in photoshop - and I am going to squarely chalk that up to know it better than I do manga studio..ergo, I must learn more of manga studio.

Anyhow.. enjoy a smiling, semi-grubby mechanic.

Surprise!

Here's a little something - surprise!


Well, the surprise is there's nothing to surprise you with.

So clever! Ah-hah......
...
....
Moving on then.

Ever do something by mistake and it turns out to be a pleasant surprise?
Yeah, I don't do that very often anymore.
Good thing I'm not a magician..then again, it seems the stories I know of, when they
accidentally do something it turns out pretty horrible for anyone not in their party or
essential to the storyline..except maybe as fodder for the mistake.

Anyhow.. a happy surprise for a blind mage in a dark place:

Whuh??

Holy hellfire, Batgirl! Is March over already?!
Almost.

Yeesh, where's this year going that it has to get there so fast?

I can't seem to draw worth shit lately.  Not enough practice or something maybe.. but there's a definite disconnect between brain and fingers and it is really starting to piss me off.  Especially because there's some work (self-appointed) coming that I want to do and if there's something I want to do, I want to do it well!!

Crappy days at work don't help either, and only a fool believes they can not be affected at home by how their workday goes and vice-verse.  Hard to want to sit and draw when I could veg out after having a day where you're rushed and tense and frustrated.  Day?.. hehn, yeah, let's go day...for now.

As for that funk I'm in.. it's still here, lingering like a torn muscle that refuses to heal properly.

I find I'm longing for my youth.. and what better way to reinvigorate oneself with some kind of something from their youth than music?  In that respect, I laugh at / feel bad for the kids today.. all their music is reproduced crappola with synth and "shock" and "messages" and basically, nothing.  How many kids, 20 years from now, are going to put on that bieber kid's noise and feel all nostalgic for it?
More than I care to think of, I'm sure.

Anyhow.. here's some Ratt - 'Round and Round' inspired quick art.

COWTHULHU!!

So, while strolling through Google+, I come upon this thing, and apparently the folks who do the Kidthulhu books are looking for an illustrator.

I don't think I'm good enough to toss my hat in that ring, but if you are, or know someone who is, send'em a message, yeh?

Also, it turns out that Zombie Roomie is looking for some filler strips as well, so I've had John and George, and for some reason, hindu-zombies, and Cthulhu running through my head for the last 2 days.

So, hindu zombies and something about cows and Cthulhu mixing in my head and I wonder.. would a hindu zombie suckle the teat of terror that is attached to Cowthulhu?  A quick google-image-search shows me not much in the way of  "cow cthulhu" ..so here's my Bovine Star Sleeper or whatever.