Tag Archives: drawing

Big Eyes

In my quest to develop a style that would allow me to draw a daily webcomic, I experimented with a more anime-inspired face. A lot of cartoonists create these kind of guidelines, so they can see how the characters typically looks in various positions, with various emotions on their faces.

This would be me as an anime girl, I guess

This would be me as an anime girl, I guess.

My problem, as it’s always seemed to me, is that it doesn’t feel as if it’s possible to draw the same character over and over. Does she even look like the same girl? Her face is shaped differently in different pictures. Some cartoonists deal with this issue by drawing every character sort of the same, and just differentiating them through clothing and hairstyles.

Darling Husband, in the same style. But what if I want another character with a full beard in a button-down shirt?

Darling Husband, in the same style. But what if I want another character with a full beard in a button-down shirt?

Ultimately, when I start the graphic novel, the kids will probably have to stand in as models. A certain degree of cartoonishness is acceptable to me, but only up to a point. The proportions of the bodies and the faces needs to be somewhat realistic.

Thinking about Seahorses

Seahorses have been on my mind for a while. Who doesn’t love seahorses?

Seahorses at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Seahorses at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, taken June of last month.

They’re adorable, they’re soothing to watch, and they have the interesting characteristic of gender-swapping gestational duties.

Seahorse at Gumbo Limbo, a sea turtle rescue I visited last week in southern Florida.

Seahorse at Gumbo Limbo, a sea turtle rescue I visited last week in southern Florida.

The drawings I summon, whole cloth, from my head, don’t always come out the way I envision them. Sometimes I feel the muse is guiding me (as I did with Athena), but usually I end up with a cartoonish representation of a thing that I can describe better in words than in pictures.

This is what it looks like when I try to draw a seahorse from my own imagination with no referential images.

This is what it looks like when I try to draw a seahorse from my own imagination with no referential images.

A few weeks ago, I had a brilliant idea for a T-shirt, which I ran past my stepkids. They seemed to think it was a pretty amusing idea, and I’m very happy with the sketch I drew a few days ago. For this image, I looked at a bunch of photos of seahorses, but I also looked at the design of a popular cartoon I wanted to parody.

Can anyone guess the name of this noble lady?

Can anyone guess the name of this noble lady?

I’ll be working on the digital version of this image today, and hope to have a good design within the week (if you know what fandom I’m spoofing, you probably realize that her mane is flowing in the wrong direction, and besides which, I didn’t make her head big enough for her eyelashes), but first, I’ll be blogging a bit more. Now that I’m started to get page views and followers, I’m going to attempt to update 5 days a week!

There’s Always Room for Dragons

A wyrm type dragon, very chthonic.

A wyrm type dragon, very chthonic.

These are the other 2 dragons from the set of 4 mentioned in the previous dragon post. While I did enjoy playing with light on the mountains, water, and clouds in the red wyrm image, not to mention the sweet reflections on the knight’s shield, I never liked this image very much. Possibly, I was just unhappy with my color choices. I felt that they couldn’t all be blue and green (by this point I think I had acquired a full set of high quality colored pencils, and wanted them to wear down more evenly) but red and purple, at the time, were very daring choices for me.

Another western dragon

Another western dragon

Here, the princess never satisfied me. She seem cartoony, and I wanted her to look, at the very least, comic booky. The dragon is pretty solid, though. Love that twist at the bottom of his tail. The colors in these images has faded over the years, revealing some of the textural imperfections.

Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian Goddess of the Underworld

Just finished and uploaded a new design to the shop, and I’m pretty satisfied. Ereshkigal is a section out of the Scroll of Wisdom, the second goddess, after Athena, in the Alphabet of Desire.

Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian Goddess of the Underworld

Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian Goddess of the Underworld

She’s a little bit creepy, but she’s an embodiment of death, so, what’s she supposed to do?

This drawing gave me a lot of trouble, both the original and the digital version. I sort of felt like she was watching me with her hypnotic eyes, as if to say, “Soon enough, you’ll come to me.”

I first met Ereshkigal in Alan Moore’s Promethea, where he retells the story of Ereshkigal having her younger sister, Ishtar/Inanna brought low. The goddess of the heavens is forced to give up all her clothes in order to descend into the land of the dead, in much the same way, I imagine, as a seeker of knowledge must shed certain thoughts and ideas that have adorned her in the past in order to unfold new mysteries.