CTNX 2015: Rusty is my middle name

If anyone is reading this that has never been to the CTN art and animation expo, do yourself a favor and get out there sometime. It's an unfailingly inspiring and informative experience, and I plan to attend every year I can. It's a great few days to see friends I don't often get to see, and generally be surrounded by people that do what I do.Below are some of the sketches that resulted from waiting in panel lines or lurking around the costumed model drawing stations. They may not be pretty, but they represent progress!

Please ignore the yellow splotches. I was in a hurry this time and I got a big acrylic ink stain on my scanner during Inktober.

These two were models at CTNX last year as well, they are awesome.

Nerds I saw whilst lurking about in panel lines.

This Sweeney Todd-esque costume was one of my favorites. These two pages also include random silly animals. 

More Sweeney Todd - guy, and a collection of random doodles from panel lines. 

Gotta work on my gesture drawing. 

This lady model had some really great poses that were fun to sketch

Ink sketching is fun because you have to commit. Makes it easy to see where you can improve afterwards

One model and a few fellow CTNers

Experiences like CTN always renew my inspiration and motivation to improve, largely because of the volume of other artists to confer with. Surrounding oneself with artists is a sure way to challenge yourself, and to draw on a a shared passion to stoke that motivational fire. Go forth, and art together!

INKtober 2015!

It's that time of year again, folks - INKtober! Make an ink drawing every day for the month of October - last year I attempted to complete the whole challenge and wimped out at finishing everything, though I did get to do some fun sketches.

This year I'll be taking up the pen once more and making another attempt at completing the challenge. I will be updating this post weekly with new drawings, so stay tuned!

UPDATE: Phew, fell wayyy behind again. Trying to play catch up in these last few days of October! I think instead of trying to do a ton of small drawings to catch up for each day, I'll do some longer ones than I would have otherwise done.

HERE WE GO - newest drawings at the top!

Grumpy Yeti-type guy. He just needs a friend. 

In which I try to get my derpy cat to sit still long enough to draw her

Hat Woman

Old Man

Day 10 makeup - Something. With horns. Tortoise-monster?

Day 9 makeup - Demon skull thinger

Day 8 makeup - firey fairy lady. I guess I felt like drawing some swirly hair today

Day 7 makeup - some sort of swirly fairy lady

Day 6 - How I feel trying to come up with ideas. 

Day 5 - Attempt at making spiders cute. Success? Ehhh., but I do like the ones with little hats.  

Day 4 - Random cat doodles. Tried to use some different shapes. 

Day 3 - Messing with brush today for fun - bard playing a lute by a tree

Day 2 - Goblin Dude. I like his hair.

Day 1 - my friend's dog Bean, and Cthulhu. Naturally.

Get your draw on for INKtober!

More Woodland Park Zoo sketches!

I celebrated my 27th birthday yesterday, so, naturally, I toted my one-year-adultier butt to the zoo. After visiting San Diego Zoo  for my birthday last year, I decided I might start a tradition!

I ended up having fantastic luck with the animals this trip - the weather was fairly gray and cool, which seemed to encourage the animals to be out and about more. In preparation for Inktober, I decided to forgo the pen while I can and go with pencil, while still trying not to waste time erasing.

Tiger pile! These three were technically still considered cubs, snoozing in a big lump together. Dangerously cute.

Wallaroos! So adorable. The beginning of the raptor show here as well

I haven't yet had a chance to see the raptor show at Woodland Park, so I was excited to get the opportunity today. Turkey vulture, pharaoh owl, and a falcon I unfortunately missed the name of.  

The orangutans were very willing to pose for me today; the gorillas too: "draw me like one of your French girls"

More birds - I really need to start writing down the names as I draw them. The one in the middle right had fantastic weird flaps on  its face

The Komodo Dragon was surprisingly mobile, came right up to the glass to say "sup"

Adorable meerkats, an owl and a lazy-ass two toed sloth

Red lemurs and flamingos, and a random swan

Overall it was a really fun day and I consider the trip a success - strongly considering an annual membership even though I don't qualify for the student prices anymore. If nothing else it will force me to get my butt back there more to get my money's worth!

This week I also was able to keep up with my resolution to fit in some fundamentals practice during my workdays. Living in Olympia, there is a frustrating lack of accessible life drawing. I wonder if I just haven't been looking in the right places, or if there just aren't enough artists around that don't already have student access to figure drawing through Evergreen or SPSCC to warrant other sessions being available.

In any case, I've been making do with the SketchDaily life drawing tool online, and it's certainly better than nothing. I've been taking Scott Eaton's Anatomy for Artist's course online (I'll write a review post on this at some point), and trying to reinforce the lessons with life sketching in between lectures, in addition to the course assignments. I've found this to be extremely helpful, and even adhering to the very low bar I set for myself of 20 minute a day has really helped to hammer the lessons home.

I do intend to get back to a place where I can attend true life drawing sessions with a model, but in the meantime this is a decent alternative. So, there's truly no excuse to not be practicing, even if you don't have access to life drawing sessions!

That will do it for September this year - incoming next week is the start of Inktober, which I intend to follow with more dedication than I did last year. I hope someone's found today's ramble somewhat useful, and that you'll join me next time for the crazy fun that is Inktober!

Happy sketching!

Woodland Park Zoo Sketches!

I've been really terrible about posting anything recently, so I'll compensate by posting a few sketchdumps this week of random stuff I've been doing the last month or so (along with some new stuff).

Seattle has seen some really nice weather this weekend, so I decided to crawl out of my art cave and squint at the bright light in the sky for a bit. Got the chance to spend a few hours at Woodland Park Zoo, one of my favorite places to sketch. Really lucked out, several of the animals were quite active during the time that we went!

I recently got an awesome new double ended brush pen, so decided to use this trip as an opportunity to test it out for sketching. Had a lot of fun with it! Here are the results:

This snow leopard was frolicking around and being adorable

Bears, wolves, elk, eagles and...tapir. What are you doing here, tapir?

Trying out the two different ends of my new pen - both give a line quality that I really like for quick sketching

My sketching habit is much better than it used to be, but I've gotta get back in the habit of posting things, too!

CTNX 2014 - Sketches of CTN

This year was my first experience of the Creative Talent Network (CTN) conference in Burbank, CA. It was truly one of the most inspiring events I've ever been to - I've never been so surrounded by amazing artists and animators. I met so many wonderful people, and saw a few old friends I didn't expect to run into, so all told it was a really lovely 4 days. Fairly sad that it's over but I will DEFINITELY be going back next year!

I present for your amusement some of the sketches I did during those four days - most were done using my favorite "lurk in a corner and people-watch" technique, at a nearby cafe or elsewhere around the event. There were also some amazing costumed models that were stationed at a few places around the convention hall for hours at a time; some of the best figure models I've ever had the chance to draw. Still others of these were the result of the random need to doodle. It's been rare lately that I've been able to draw just for fun for such a sustained amount of time. The experience was really good for the soul, and I intend to keep it up!

Random doodles and some people waiting for their coffee

More cafe people. Also, I did the top bird after seeing a character design talk that involved drawing over an inkstain - I used the general shape of the inkstain as inspiration. Then I drew the other existential-crisis bird to accompany.

People around the convention hall. Also owls

Some sketches of the awesome costumed figure models - on this day they donned western getups.

Some more of the figure models, and also more coffee-people. I spent a lot of time at Starbucks.

During my layover at SFO airport on the way home. Also at another Starbucks once I got back to Seattle. I drink a lot of coffee.

Hope to post many more random sketches! Will hold myself to it!

MONSTER MONTH & Inktober challenge page!

Happy October! I'm going to maintain this post for a couple of awesome October art challenges I'll be participating in, so I can have everything in one place. Inktober! And an awesome Monster Month! Perfect for the Halloween season. I will probably combine several of my entries for both.

10/17/2014: Lantern Ghost

Little ghosty dude today. I gouached! 

10/16/2014: Ballpoint Banshee

Love working with ballpoint pens too. This challenge has been great for really just allowing myself to draw for fun and without pressure. 

10/15/2014: Spider Zombie

Definitely Skulltulla inspired. Actually tried to combine some of the elements I found most creepy about Skulltullas and ReDeads.

10/14/2014: BatBird

I...I don't even know. Whatever it is, it's a baby!

10/13/2014: Skele-creeper

Skeleton-devil creature

10/11/2014: Creeper

Some kinda creepy...thing. 

10/8/2014: It's the GREAT PUMPKIN!

Yeah yeah so I already did a pumpkin. Inspired to do this one after seeing a rotten pumpkin in the neighborhood - they start to look all wrinkly and cool

10/7/2014: CAT

Rediscovered a giant box of copic & micron pens in my house and decided to start trying them out again

10/6/2014: BAT CREATURE

Playing around again with ink and water

10/2/2014: SPIDER PUMPKIN!

Messing around with inks n' stuffs on terrible paper

10/1/2014: WRAITH

Scribbly wraith sketch experiment with wetting an ink drawing