A couple pose studies

Just a little work with pose, lighting, color and so forth.  Ref'd from a couple stock photos. 

An update on nothing, really

I felt the need to post a new journal, but got here and realized I didn't have an awful lot to share. 

I finished two-and-a-half weeks worth of illustration for work, and it was glorious while it lasted.  It was exhausting, I responded to my coworkers in grunts or not at all and really mostly didn't interact with anyone (except for the day on which we played with stilts), a couple times I ended the day with my hand in cramped knots after hours and hours and hours of small detail rendering, and a few times I had rather violent battles with my skill level vs. what I was trying to portray, but let's be honest -- I loved every minute of it, and though everything was a little rushed and I wasn't 100% happy with 100% of my work, I got the chance to push myself with style, technique and accuracy, to good effect, I feel. 

But, right before lunch time yesterday, I finished all of the last of the last minute tweaks (until they get sent back for more, of course) and now I'm back to package design.  Which, I still enjoy, of course, but not with the rhapsodic joy I do illustration.  I mean, when I was in school and queried about what kind of job I wanted to have, my response was always that I just wanted to 'get paid to draw pretty pictures'...which package design can include, of which illustration is the pure, distilled form.  

I'm still working on studies and will hopefully have more to post soon.  

I am moving forward with my packaging freelance project, and will probably post some of my thumbnail roughs tonight or tomorrow, while I'm working on refining and expanding upon the direction my client has chosen.  

I don't have a lot more to say or to share.  I've done a few doodles lately but nothing really for posting anywhere but my tumblr.  It's been a busy couple weeks.  Hopefully that will change in the next few days.  

A great tutorial

I stumbled (tumbl'd?) across this tutorial on tumblr.  It is a great guide for making a forest interior.  I used it for an illustration I am working on for work, and...well, I wish I could show it to you because I made one sweet forest...all golden and autumnal.  Anyway, if you want some pointers getting a forest to look awesome, I recommend the following.

Painting Forest Scene Interiors

Busy but productive

Haven't posted anything new in a couple weeks, but I have not been idle. 

I have been facing the perennial artist problem of becoming deeply inspired, turned on by gorgeous works of other artists, and when attempting to translate my passion to paper...or in this case, screen, been stymied by personal limitations of skill.  

Despite my instinctual desire to throw my tablet pen down in frustration and not draw until the magic art fairy sprinkled me with Amazing Art Dust, cooler heads prevailed, and I mentally slapped myself around a little while reminding myself that AAD is VERY hard to come by and magic art fairies are capricious creatures that take great amusement from sprinkling the powder over elephants with paint brushes and cats and dying alcoholics, and that if I want my reach and my grasp to land a little nearer each other, there is another method that is generally considered effective, if sometimes tedious, and it is called practice. 

That was one spectacularly run-on sentence.  And I DONT EVEN CARE.  

So, practice.  The first thing is, try to draw every day.  Which I mostly do anyway, even not counting stuff at work, but I wanted to...focus more.  I have, regularly lately, been getting sucked into larger projects, which, at an hour lunch break at a time, take up a good amount of art-making real estate.  And though I was, absolutely, learning from what I was doing, finding techniques, honing skills, etc., etc., I realized, almost by accident, that there were some very specific areas and in which I was lacking and needed improving, and finally pinpointed the type of practice that would really benefit me.  

The result is a back-to-basics bunch of studies that I have been working on this week.  Poses, movement, faces:

There aren't, as usual, enough hours in a day and I've been getting to bed late all week finishing up studies started on my lunch break...and getting distracted by Sherlock fanfiction (tonight is an exception...a little late, because of this post, but my performance at the gym this week tells me I NEED a little more rest, at least ONE night)...but I got lucky at work this week too...our satellite ad firm needs some more illustrations to go with an earlier project...and of course they want the art yesterday, and are probably going to gripe about the fact that three detailed illustrations with multiple people and detailed environments take me longer than three days to complete, and I don't have the time to make them as good as they should be or fix all the problems I want to....but I AM GETTING TO SPEND A COUPLE WEEKS DRAWING ALL THE TIME, GUYS!  Those are the best work days, in my personal opinion. 

Anyway, my sleep-deprived brain is rambling, and I'm squeeking fruther past my bed time, so before I go, just a couple fun fan art doodles from recently for y'all: 

^Sherlock fanart (with utterly fail perspective).  I'm deeply obsessed with this show.  DEEPLY.  Three episodes a year (movie length or not) is NOT sufficient.  And especially when leaving us on angsty cliff-hanger tinter hooks all that time.  AGONY. 

Some doofy xmen doodles I made the other night while consoling a friend and watching Criminal Minds over at his house.  I'm unthrilled with Jean/Phoenix, but love Logan...and I've decided that Cyclopes regularly insists on finishing his frappachino before fighting evil.  I don't like Scott Summers.  

WHEW!  Okay, much more writing than I intended.  I had planned on just tossing up some art...but I'm not known for being concise.  BED.  NOW.  

Stop SOPA

So, were I properly web-savy, I would be joining the blackout today to protest the SOPA and PIPA bills.  However, I am not and would likely just screw up my website forever if I tried to figure out how to properly input the code.  So consider this a token blackout.  

Protest SOPA and PIPA. 

Damn The Man!  Save the Empire!