New Things & Do-Overs

One of the things that has been on my to-do list for a while has been re-doing my Hello Hotcakes card. It was one of my favorite cards in my shop but I wasn’t happy with the image quality. I learned very quickly that colored pencil doesn’t really scan all that well. As you can see below…

During its run, it sold pretty well. I mean, what’s not to like? It’s pancakes and butter and syrup and butter. But the biggest reason I wanted to redo it is: my work doesn’t look like that anymore. This card is almost two years old, and my work has evolved since then. So I’ve been wanting to give it a facelift so that it would fit with the rest of my work.

One of my serious goals for 2016 is to get more comfortable with digital drawing/painting. Yeah, my degree is in graphic design but I’m mostly skilled in typegraphy, vectors, and shit. Stuff like this was considered too “fine art” or “illustration” to be taught in the department. As if having a wide range of skills was a bad thing. And due to state budget cuts, I was restricted to staying within my major’s curriculum. (That’s the shitty thing about going to state universities, but I could never afford to go to a place like Art Center. But that’s a story is for another day.)

Here’s tonight’s progress with the messy sketch layer turned on so you can kinda see what it’s supposed to look like.

Hand-lettering the final version of “Hello Hotcakes!” isn’t going to happen until near the end. And here’s what it looks like with the sketch layer turned off…

I still have quite a bit of work to do on it, including the final lettering and final line drawing that will give it structure.

Revisiting Old Drawings & Working on New Stuff

A few months ago, I got really into drawing food with colored pencils. It's a really fun process for me and I've always been much stronger with dry media than wet (i.e. paint). Lately, I've been working on sorta figuring out my drawing style. It had been a really long time since I just drew what I like. So naturally, when I started drawing again, a lot of my stuff looked a little bit like the artists I admire. And I was obsessing too much about how I was drawing and what I was drawing. Being in the graphic design world for a little too long, I had forgotten what it's like to work loosely. 

Once I got back into the groove of things, I realized that the food I had drawn a few months earlier don't really fit the style of my work. They mostly looked like studies that you were draw for a drawing class. So I revisited them and found that all they really needed were faces. 

This week I had a breakthrough in how I draw people. For a while, I was obsessing over the texture of hair. Don't get me wrong, when I really focus I'm pretty darn good at drawing hair! But what I found was in my attempt to give hair shape, I was making it look really flat. So I thought, "If it's going to look flat anyways, I might as well make it a whole shape!" That then opened up my mind to the possibility of infinite shapes for hair. Everything from something natural to something that looks like it's from another dimension (or a dream!)

Something else I ended up liking from just playing around: working with just two colors. What I like about working this way is it's a constraint that makes me have to figure out how to make something work. So after a drew a few heads, I challenged myself to figure out how to make this work with a body.

As you can see, I'm slowing working my way up to doing full figure drawings and eventually whole scenes. This is also my way of prepping myself for the Art Walk I'm participating in next month at The Community in Anaheim. I'll be doing live drawing during the event.

Thanks for following along! I'll be posting more works in progress soon!

Lady in the Water

I've just been drawing a lot, trying to create some new work. It's been very challenging for me to just get past the sketching phase and commit to an actual piece. I think a lot of it for me is the fear of failure and the other part is just feeling completely out of practice. It's been a really long time since I've drawn for "art" if that makes any sense. I usually just sketch out ideas for client work, then most of a project will be done and finished on a computer. It's been a very long time since I've created work with analog media. And although I have a digital drawing tablet and a great set of Photoshop preset brushes, I still prefer to work with the physical materials. For me, they're much easier to control but I know for others it's just much faster, easier, and less messy. 

So I honestly don't know where all this is going yet, but you'll just have to keep following along to see where it goes.

New in the Shop: Calico Button

Now available in the shop!

New in the Shop: Pear Drawing

I've been drawing a lot of fruit lately as I look forward to all the Spring & Summer fruits. I'm starting to sell original drawings in the shop in additional to all the prints and greeting cards. All original drawings are one of a kind.

Now available in the shop.

On Life, Currently.

Lately, I’ve been making an effort to draw every day. I’ve been trying to establish a good consistent work routine and also develop new work at the same time. I’ve made it a requirement that I post whatever I’ve been working on…no matter how stupid it may be.

In previous weeks, I was just Instagramming whatever I was drawing and have it post to Tumblr, but I found that a lot of those were just quick, thoughtless doodles. I’ve been trying to work on more narrative drawings and also writing about them, so my ideas are actually put to paper and not just floating around aimlessly in my head.

Sometimes I struggle to find a subject to draw, so I end up drawing dumb looking fruits or veggies. So this week, I started trying something different where I just write little stories or scenarios and then draw them. Essentially, that’s what I want to be doing anyways. I want to create visual short stories. It’s the best way to combine the two things I really love: drawing & storytelling.

New Print Available: Bear Friends Forever

Available as a 5 x 7 print in the shop.

I Love That Angst

I've been forcing myself into drawing more often simply because I haven't been doing much drawing in the past 4 years (pretty much after I changed schools). And from doodling random things, I've realized that I really like drawing angsty teenagers (mostly women). I'm pretty sure it's my way of expressing my feelings through my characters. From this, I have a couple of zine ideas lined up. I just need to finish all my work for the Renegade Craft Fairs before I get to work on them.