Sketches

I'm just planning to yo-yo back and forth between early and late into infinity. 

Well, I say planning...

I know I keep raving about my job, but I'm going to do so a little more. The job continues to be a bizarre combination of stressful, satisfying, occasionally tedious, and often ridiculous and fun. I'm not saying that I couldn't ask for better, because there's got to be some dream art job out there that pays stupid amounts of money, provides a gorgeous apartment in a vibrant city, has a gratis coffee bar in the lobby staffed by cute barista boys, offers travel opportunities constantly, and at which I'm always working on exciting illustrations. 

Google. I think I'm thinking of Google. 

But, overall, my job is pretty much wonderful, especially for where I am right now, and while we may not have cute baristas to flirt with, my boss is totally on board with a plan for us to hire a hot hipster intern that can break my heart, Taylor Swift song style. 

Also, the meeting we had was awesome and ended up including a presentation about design (and cats) performed with swedish accents.

Also, we may be planning to start a Swedish pop band now. 

I also got hired by a local business to do a freelance project that...has had it's share of challenges...but it is still rewarding to have people hire me and end up telling me that they really like what I've done and it's just what they wanted. I need to learn to shut off the snap reaction to always say yes to a job that comes of being a starving artist, but...it hasn't been a bad experience. And I got free coffee out of it and that always goes in the win column for me.

But in my small amount of free time, I have continued to sketch. I've been trying to let my brain just go wherever it wants for a while, though I think soon it will be time to bust out some studies and brush up on some basics. And I have been returning to the point where I have drawn a few premeditated things because I have an idea and want to draw it...and I've had the desire to draw and it's been good and fun. I've also been looking back through my sketchbook and discovering less crap that I thought was in there and a lot more interesting stuff that could be developed. 

I wanted to doodle a forest fey with a garland of mushrooms in her hair, rather than flowers or leaves or branches:

And it didn't come out exactly like I planned, but my best friend said it looked like a Mucha piece and well, I can't be too bummed at a reaction like that. However, I realized that my knowledge of mushroom growth patterns was a little spotty. So then I spent a couple days doing some studies of mushrooms: 

I came up with an idea for my next tattoo and wanted to draw out some sketches:

I am planning on getting this on my left shoulder (the top one with the skull)...but not for a little while, because I actually just started a new tattoo on my right arm that, for the first time, I did not design. I came up with neither the original idea nor the art--I accepted an idea from a friend and went to an artist that she trusts and so far it is gorgeous and I love it and it is huge and I forgot how much tattoos HURT especially if you have kind of scrawny arms. What I'm getting is not quite a sleeve but it does cover large portions of my arm in solid black so it's going to take a little while. But then, once I forget how much it hurts again, I'm going to get my two certainties of life added to my other arm. (actually the forgetting is a surpassingly fast process...after two days my brain is certain it couldn't have been that bad and is eager to get under the needle again. I keep having to remind it that we CRIED and trying to decide how much of a cheater I would feel like if I took vicodin before my next session.) 

I made very rough sketches of a hipster Cruella Deville and a punk Ursula to help lay out costume concepts for what my friend and I are going to wear to a mardigras ball this weekend:

...and then last night before bed I just did one silly little doodle (that made it very clear that I need to do some pose and anatomy studies in the near future.):

I do definitely want to work on some more big projects again before too long, but I had forgotten how much I enjoyed just brain dumping silly ideas into my sketchbook is. 

Oh and for anyone who was wondering about the outcome last week -- the pizza, sadly, got a bit charred before I got it out of the oven. Life is cruel.