Sketches.. on the sketch blog?

Amazing! Yes, Kickstartery sketch times are here!

Today was nothing but unexpected delays, so it took a while to get these sketches down, but here are some! I went a bit overboard with the volume of sketches, but that's a good thing!

Tiffany and Sky sketches! Tiff is going to be sketched in the book, and Sky is the first of what will be many art cards for the stream session. The mission here: Cute.  I can do that!

Sketches are, of course, sketches. They are rough and not super detailed - just showing enough to give you a sense of what's to come.

Joseph and Sydney time! Classy looks for a classy couple. Had to put Sydney in a turtleneck, because the lord commanded me. Couldn't figure out what to do with classy Joseph's right arm. Thumbs up?

I still have some Principal Blessure sketches to make, and one more idea-to-be-named-later.

A great success!

The campaign has ended as an overwhelming success! You have blown me away with your support and generosity. I will reward you with lovely things! Thanks to both those who pitched in, and those who spread the word!

To my backers: The surveys will be heading to your inboxes soon. I need a day or few to write everything out, but keep your eyes open. (And remember which email is attached to your pledge, so you don't miss anything!) This means it's time to start fantasizing. Who will be in your artist edition (and what color theme will it have)? Which original art/comic is your favorite? What Precocious doll do you want to hug the most? Do you really want to be that loony who asks Chrispy to sign their book with metallic or glitter pens?

To everyone else, the Precocious store will be opening soon with some goodies, and you can track me down at a convention this year - check the bottom of the Buy Stuff page for my con schedule - and you can get some sketched books. Books will end up in the store eventually, although artist editions (as well as commissions) will be for cons and Kickstarter backers for a while.

If you have any questions, feel free to write me and I will do my best to answer promptly.

Once more, I thank all those who helped make book two a thing!

Charm ideas.

After hearing Printcess is shutting down at the end of the month, my Precocious charms goals have to be fast-forwarded.  (There are surely other charm-making sites, but Printsess has a great reputation.)

The goal for Precocious charms is not just to make them desirable to Precocious readers, but have extra appeal for those who don't know a thing about the comic. That's where I'm having issues. What you see here is a first attempt, with me turning the kids into the suits from a deck of cards.  (Current setup: Autumn=diamonds, Bud=spades, Tiffany=clubs, Jacob=hearts.) I need something that people might want, that also comes in a set of four - and doesn't require a label to identify, as these are charms.  These things can't be too complex in design. (I could, in theory, also design them as jack, queen, king and ace cards.)

If I was less egotistical, I would design cute charms for the conventions I attend, but I know so many others who could do a better job.  (I'm hoping to set up a deal, where I can have the adorable charms from Becca and/or Heidi with me at Anthrocon this year.)

These charms are my first idea for little table trinkets people can grab at my convention tables. I have other plans that I'd like to pursue, but with my health issues I have to tackle these things when I can.  If I'm on the ball, maybe I'll create a reader survey for Precocious readers and test the market a bit. Every promo I do costs a hefty chunk of change and LOTS of development and drawing time, so I need to pick my projects wisely.

Texas hold'em!

For those who weren't able to spend six hours hanging out with me in the stream, here's the finished version of the piece I colored tonight.  The Precocious kids are hustling poor Kendall, and he's about to go down to Autumn's all-in! (Or maybe cheating Tiffany will knock him out first.)

Pieces this complex are pretty intimidating for me, since I still consider myself a newbie with marker, but I'm happy with how it came out.

11x8.5" piece, Copic multiliners and sketch markers on Canson comic paper. This image has approximately half an inch around each edge cropped to show how it would look framed.  (No one asked, but I want to prove that I did take possible framing into consideration when I composed the piece.) You can find the full image in my FA gallery.

Kendall belongs to SirKain.

Hey, my 1000th blog post!

I'm not counting the 10 unposted drafts - so this is a legit 1000! Woo!  To celebrate this milestone, we have... a regular post-stream art-sharing post!

The card piece in the post below was pushed back to next week, because the client was sick and couldn't attend, so we filled up the night with the badge (will post it later - 1001!), card requests and an increasingly loopy Chrispy. I fought through the pain for you people, because I love you and want to entertain!

The Ursula saxophone card was the night's warm-up. (She has so much in common with Bill Clinton.) Knowledge Huntress Tiff was drawn during a commission break. She must have been playing with the time machine again, as she seems older.  The Kaitlyn and Quincy one is the result of me not paying enough attention - I thought I was playing with portfolio requests, so I messed around with the idea, but it was supposed to be a commission. (It's easy for me to miss stuff when my eyes are focused on drawing, so I encourage you all to yell at me until I notice.)

These are all up for grabs. $10 each!

Kendall's card trouble

UPDATE: The coloring of this piece was pushed to next week, because the client got sick.  Check Precocious' front page for an announcement of when the stream will happen.

I have absolutely no idea how I pulled it off, but I did it! I got the inks done! I can color this tonight as planned!  If you want a full explanation of what's going on, you'll have to come to tonight's stream at 7pm Eastern time. I'll be starting with a badge, then moving on to this piece.

And now I rest my hand as much as I can before 7pm.

Also, this is my 999th blog post.  That's kinda cool.

The Dynamite Jester - painted

Here's the result of my first watercoloring attempt in... man, a long time. It's neat to get back into that habit. Painting was pretty uneventful for this one. The only hiccup was my inability to make a super vibrant magenta with the basic set of watercolors I have. The photo was taken with my iPhone, because I didn't trust the scanner to catch all the lights properly.

The dynamite jester

Here's a sketch for my first commission of the current push. (Note: Plenty of slots are still open, if you're interested!)

Today it's Tiffany, dressed as a jester, juggling dynamite. While the sketch uses colored pencil, the final product will be a watercolor. (I want to take a moment now and high-five myself because I eyeballed this sketch perfectly - the scan is exactly the right proportions for the final piece.) While I used teal and magenta for this sketch, the colors are subject to change. Other sketches used red/blue and green/purple, but I wasn't thrilled with the figure in them enough to bother scanning them in. The layout I've pictured here doesn't have to be a final, but it's closer to it than the other sketches. One last note on the color: The change to watercolors will also cause some variance in whatever colors are selected, but I'll do my best to keep it close.

Edit: Played around with the colors a bit to show another option, just 'cause.

Another edit: The sketch was approves and here's the inked version. Once I get the OK on it, painting shall begin!

My Copic'd Kids

My vacation is over! I am back in Savannah and preparing for some major summer undertakings! There's so much to do, and so much planning needed before I can start doing it. It's daunting, but also exciting. (I'll share more about the plans when everything starts to take form.)

While I had a wonderful time stomping around the country and kicking butt all through June, it is nice to be back to the grind. One perk: I HAVE ACCESS TO MY SCANNERS AGAIN! Well then, let's use 'em!

I present to you, the main four Precocious kids in Copic marker, for the first time ever.

The marker thing was a whim that has turned into a wallet-draining tornado. I loved working on grayscale, since it was nice and cost-effective, but the people wanted color and a timely coupon to Art Supply Warehouse resulted in an impulse buy of a color set. And some extra colors. And then some MORE singles to fill out my palette a bit...

Ok, so now I see the appeal. Copics are kinda swell. I have a long way to go before I become a master at them like Darc or Becca, but I really love the practice!

Without a swatch list of my own, I had to guess which colors would fit the Precocious cast best when ordering. Overall, I'm quite pleased with what I could do with my meager collection. (For the record, both Bud and Tiff's fur colors didn't scan well, so I tried to approximate them using Photoshop. They look better in person.)

If you're interested, and you don't feel like reading the info in the pic, here is what I came up with:

Bud:
Fur: Silk
Ears: Baked Clay
Hair: Light Suntan
Nose: Tea Rose
Inner ear: Pinkish White
Pants: Light Grayish Cobalt

Tiffany:
Fur: Egg Shell
Ear: Baked Clay
Hair/Smiley: Cadmium Yellow
Nose: Tea Rose
Inner ear: Pinkish White
Eyering: Yellowish Beige
Dress: Lime Green

Autumn:
Fur: Apricot
Hair: Vermilion
Inner ear: Baby Skin Pink
Dress light: Lime Green
Dress dark: Forest Green

Jacob:
Fur: Warm Grey 3
Shirt: Lipstick Red
Pants: Antwerp Blue

I can see a few colors that might be improved. I may want to play with the orange and yellow in Autumn and Tiff, and Jacob could probably work with Warm Grey 2, but I don't have that one.  Jacob's pants could probably be a lighter blue as well. I'm happy with all color choices for Bud.  Down the line, I may update the aforementioned colors, but for now I think it's all good.  (I can't afford another marker binge for a while.)

Book sketching tests

The time will soon come when I'll be working on book sketches for the artist editions and those who buy the sketch package at cons.  Sweet!  Now, how should I handle it?

Every artist handles things differently.  I wanted to offer something more than the typical pen and ink approach, so now it's time to find the look.  I've seen some wonderful book sketches Darc of Code Name: Hunter did with monochrome colored pencil, so... monkey see, monkey do.

What you see here are various tries to find the best combo of pen and pencil application. Do I sketch in regular pencil, or no-copy blue?  Should I erase the pencil or show the process lines? What type of pen should I use for the inking?  When should the inking stage occur?

The first try was Tiffany.  I began with blue lines, then inked with the glorious Fude pen that was recommended by Becca of Nattosoup.  It was all awesome until the coloring began. SMEARS! Noooooo!

Darn it!  I want to use that pen whenever possible, so that was disheartening.  The next try was Jacob, where I colored him first and use the pen overtop the pencils. That looks great, but it does make coloring more imprecise.  It should be OK, though.

Autumn is the standard sketch, using regular tech pens. I erased the pencil after inking, so it's a little cleaner. No problems here, but it's harder to pull off line variance.

Bud's inking went the other way.  I left the pencils to show process and used a brush pen, which gives nice lines despite my complete inability to use it.  The downside here is that error potential is high, and I take it a bit slower in drawing.

And then there's the blue. I've been on a monochrome kick for a while, so this should be no surprise. It's also practical.  It's a lot easier on the logistics to keep it in one color family, and I think it's a nice touch.  It doesn't have to be blue.  I just like it, and I can use the blue pencil for sketching.  (Although it doesn't scan well AT ALL. This is an iPhone photo you see.) There's a chance I could switch to toning with markers, but there's a bleed issue there.

The actual book sketches will be a bit larger, of course.  Gotta come up with some scenes to draw, especially since I need to have 21 unique sketches for Autumn.  (Yes, that's out of 25 pre-orders. Dang, guys.)

I know I'm getting ahead of myself.  Most book sketches won't be happening until August.  Still, it's a fun thing to practice!

Commission sketches: The final frontier!

Ok, yeah, I've been watching way to much Star Trek recently. (Just wait an hour for the new Copper Road!) Anyway, sketch work has begun on the final batch of the May commissions!

I was give free reign on this one for Phil, and that is always so scary. I decided to take a proper crack at his fursona. (His look was previously used as a cameo in the strip, but not in-character.) Since he's been having technical difficulties with just about everything he's touched recently, I drew something with him being taunted by a tech demon.  (Blue screen of death demon?) As is, the demon is singling him out as his choice for torment, but an alternate idea could zoom in a bit and keep the demon to a face on the monitor. Yes, he's wearing the SCIENCE! shirt. He said geeky shirts were good, and I chose mine!

Karl wanted a sequel to his Derpy and Bud watercolor piece, with Derpy hunting down the jerk who took the last muffin. Unwitting subject of an impending lightning strike? Had to be Jacob. Instead of making multiple sketches, I just drew alternate Derpy poses in the empty space.  I love the idea of her riding the storm cloud behind Jacob.  This piece could benefit of a shift to a horizontal layout.  It could also be flipped, with Jacob walking the other way. That way the eye would start on him and then move to angry Derpy.  I don't like that angle on Jacob as much, so it may not happen, even if it helps the narrative.

This one started out as Autumn being territorial about her library, but drawing a full library background in the time allotted is impossible. It's a shame, because it was a good idea. (I may have to turn a variation of that into a strip down the line!)  A smaller-scale version of Autumn protecting her books that was suggested was her sacrificing herself to keep a book dry in the rain.  Sounds cute!  If I went with this, I could do regular color or something more experimental.  I think a rain scene would look neat in all blues.  I may have to redraw her to show her a bit more hunched over, but the idea is there.

Here's an alternate take, showing the set-up.

I was given two options for this one:  Kaitlyn and Autumn having fun together, or Kaitlyn making Autumn all poofy paranoid. Since I couldn't think of a good activity for the friendly stuff, I turned to the dark side.  I'm torn over trying to make this a vertical or horizontal piece.

Hey! Wen got a commission! That's right, Roddy, even Wen got chosen before you. The question about Wen was what he does when not tormenting Kaitlyn.  He's a sporty jerk, so I decided to have him playing catch.  Maybe it wasn't the smartest move to make him play American football, since this for a European reader, but you must admit football is a suitably jerky sport for him. Bonus insult:  I swiped this pose from another drawing I'd done... a drawing of Roddy!

Finally, I was asked to bring back Tiffany dressed as fruit, from an old sketch of mine. It proved harder than I thought to find an alternative to the original pear look.  I through inverting the shape and going strawberry would be good... but the pear shape still beats it. I suppose it'd be cheating to make her an eggplant.

There are two more commissions that need sketching, but I ran out of sketchbook pages. (That means I'm down to just two empty sketchbooks! Ack!)  They'll have to be sketched tomorrow.

Giving 'em the business

When I went to the post office today to mail the recent commissions, I had a nice chat about the art I was sending with the lady behind the counter. She asked me for a business card, and I checked my wallet. One left! I handed it over and made a mental note to reload when I got back to the apartment. Once there, I pulled out my box to see... I'm in the market to reorder.

The cards I have now will get me through the next con easily, but it'd be wise to reorder before the next. That means updating the design! I like the "I DEMAND ATTENTION!" idea, and those at the cons seemed amused by it too, so it's staying for now. The art for it is quite old at this point, so today I drew a new attention-grabbing Tiffany.

For the design, I made a few changes:
- I removed the Precocious logo from the front, so I could make Tiffany bigger.  This may or may not be a good idea.
- Fonts switched around. While I kept the Precocious font for Tiff's voice, everything else was upgraded. The new logo font took over the important info, and a non-offensive Franklin Gothic was used for supporting information.
- The Bud and Autumn on the back were upgraded with the recent magnet images. (Poor Jacob remains shut out.)
- The tagline was rephrased to mention the daily updates, and "webcomic" was changed to "comic" so the label purists won't get mad.  (I don't care what you call my strip, as long as you read and enjoy it!)
- Twitter and blog links were added to my information. It gives folks other ways to contact me, and lets them see my personality in action.  (Is that good or bad?) The downside is that the back is now text-heavy.  I do think the black box for my name did a good job of stabilizing everything.
- I made the blue background cover everything.  The original card has a separate white space where the logo and website appeared on both sizes.

I'm liking the upgrade so far, but I'll see what the reaction is before I do any more playing around.  Plus, it'd be silly to order new business cards when the company I'd order from botched my magnet order and hasn't come through with the corrections yet.  (I was promised it'd happen, but I'll still worry until I see the proofs.)

The last family portrait.

Here's a drawing for the final family portrait: The chaotic Et horde.  While the first three family photos were all cordial, I doubt that would be possible for the Ets. Thus, chaos and stressed parents.

Some touchups are needed, mostly on the arms.  Gene, be lucky you have a left arm at all. I was almost done before I realized all I'd drawn was an empty shirt sleeve for him.  Actually, speaking of Gene missing body parts, I forgot to ink his tail. It's in the original sketch, so no worries. But, anyway, this is the foundation for the next step.

Some more book art!

I was moving some papers around and I discovered a few bonus drawings I made for the upcoming Precocious book that I'd forgotten to scan. Allow me to share one with you! (I believe this one was a request from the Precocious Facebook group.)

In other news, the hand is doing a bit better. I can draw with it now, although not as much as I'd like. Precocious shall continue undisturbed, and Copper Road *should* return on the 1st!

Playing with promo art

Here's a draft for an upcoming Precocious banner, for when I go fully con crazy.

It's about time to start upgrading my online banners too. This is difficult, as I don't have much of a feel for graphic design. I don't know what sells, and I certainly struggle to get my oddly-proportioned characters to fit nicely in any of the standard ad spots. That's sketchbook work for the future, I guess.

Watercolors for you!

The photos aren't that great, but the finals of these commissions are super awesome! Enjoy. The pieces will ship out Monday.

Commission inks

Here are the inks for the three watercolor commissions I have going at the moment. I must say, after testing out the new paper I'm worried about the coloring process. It doesn't seem very watercolor friendly, but it's all I have. I just have to be extra careful.

I messed up a bit on the couch for the Autumn commission, but I think I can correct it in coloring.

More Tiffmas

Here's a cleaned-up sketch for the Tiffany commission. The only changes I made from the selected pose was switching the side the tinsel lands on and putting an ornament on the tail. If I get an OK from the client, I will next trace this design onto my watercolor paper and do my inking.

Yes, I said I was going to aim to have my inks done yesterday, but I decided to color comics for NINE HOURS STRAIGHT instead. By the time I finished, I was in no mood to do anything else artistic. Today is commission day instead!

Tiffmas time is here

Here's the early sketch work on another commission: A Christmas-themed work with Tiffany! The original idea was to depict Tiffany atop a tree, but size issues derailed that. Thinking about how Tiffany celebrates the holiday (I have a partially-scripted Christmas arc that might never run) she loves original takes on the traditional tree. Why not make HER the tree this year?

These sketches are me fleshing out how to make this idea work. Ears up or down? How to wrap the tinsel around her? Butterfly ornament or Candy cane in the hand? Regular dress or tree-imitating wide? Arms out or more compact? Looking up or looking at the viewer? Which star is best?

If the client likes the idea (I'm being bad by not providing options this time), it's time to choose the final pose/features and move on to inking. With a little luck, I'll have all three outstanding watercolor commissions inked tomorrow. I'm pushing myself as hard as I can, because my Thanksgiving trip can start as early as Saturday. Still got comics to make in addition to this, so no guarantees.

Tiff and cookies for all!

Forgot to post the third watercolor commission earlier, but here it is now!

I'm working on another Yvette now, and I'd love to have another project after that. Care to help me out?