You want everything to be just like the stories that you read but never write

Spent the morning at the gym with Nick, the afternoon drawing and writing as fast as I can, and the evening visiting Dad at the hospital. Dad's very sick, but has heart surgery tomorrow with a high probability of fixing it forever. Still, it would mean a lot to me if you could think of him tomorrow morning!!

Trying to draw 5 grayscale pages in 8 days. Normally not a hard task, but it's a new subject and I'm using brushes, so it's a bit more difficult than it sounds. Wish me luck! I'll post teasers if they're good~ (I swear, there will be art for you this week!!!) :P

=3=

I use this emoticon pretty often, but a lot of people don't understand what it means. I tried to search for an explanation online, but search engines read "=3=" as "3", and return useless hits.

Basically, I use this emoticon to represent a 'pursed lips, there's nothing more I can do' emotion. I like the way that '3' looks like pouty lips.

Something's always coming you can hear it in the ground

Sketch group pimp time~~
Yesterday, Angie, Emi, and I spent our cafe drawing session rendering each other's characters. It was the funnest sketch group yet! And besides being fun, we all left with gorgeous fanart!!! Check out these drawings of Delilah!!!:

From Angie:


From Emi:


I LOVE THEM SOOOOOOOOO MUCHHHH. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Your tongue is twisted, your eyes are slit, you need a guardian

It's the end of a very long art day. I drew animals and characters from The Second Witch of Wilheim ALL. DAY. This is just a fraction of what I got done. It was a much-needed productive day:






I'm very happy with this project right now! Wish me more productive days~~~

These were all drawn with my new Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, recommended by Angie! I LOVE it!

I looked into your eyes and saw a light

Weezer's new song is nice.

I started looking up reference for a character, landed on Nestor Carbonell, and then just gave in and went off on a LOST hot man photo search. And I'm not going to tell you how long that lasted.


Hot.


Hot.


Hot.


Hot.

Yes, this is my porn. When does season 6 start again?

Under the heat of the southwest sun

It's on it's way! My new laptop will be here in early September!

You guys. I am so excited. I love my Dell Inspiron 600m, but it's 4 years old and technology has progressed in leaps and bounds over that time (not to mention between its invention and me purchasing it). Some upgrades I'm particularly excited for:

1.4GHz processor, 1MB cache ---> 2.4GHz processor, 3 MB cache
700MB RAM ---> 4GB RAM
30GB 5400RPM hard drive ---> 500GB 7200RPM hard drive
ATi Mobility RADEON 9000 32MB ---> ATI Mobility RADEON M96XT 1GB

Guuuughslkdfcmd. My time in Photoshop will be so much more pleasant~~~! (*u*) I spend so much time making a command and then getting up from my computer while it processes it...it takes my computer 5-10 minutes to download my e-mail every morning. I hope the XPS16 meets my expectations.

When she was 22 the future looked bright

This is how I feel today. Despite having jury duty this morning at 8:00, blowing out a tire on the way, being there for ten hours, and taking the wrong bus home (I ended up in Tigard. Street cred FAIL), I had lots of time to think, and I set art goals for the school year that I'm really excited about. Goals are just goals unless you work toward them, but it feels good to pick a direction in which to move.

Have some jury duty sketch dump, y'all:






Lilly Allen's 22 is great, and I like the music video as well.

I wanna be the very best, like no one ever was

I had jury duty today for the first time in my life. Well, to be fair, I've been called 3 times, but I always deferred it due to school. Multnomah County got so tired of it, they actually called me and asked, "When would be a good day for you to serve in the next month?" Ahahaha...
So I went in and waited around for a few hours (coincidentally, Jamie had jury duty the same day in the same court! It was nice to have someone to make fun of the instructional video with), then got called to a courtroom and was chosen as 1 of 6 people to serve from the 20 potential jurors in the room. Though it meant that everyone else got to leave before noon with their sentence filled, a part of me was happy to get the full experience and know how these things really work. Life experience is vital for writing and illustrating comics well!
Also, it felt like anyone with any bit of crazy got asked to leave, so I must be hiding mine well these days. :P Yippee!

ALSO, someone there had the last name Brumbello (sp?). It made me so happy.

I don't have a simple answer

Here's a test page (read: no rulers) from The Second Witch of Wilheim:

It is a slow, steady march toward inking with a brush comfortably.

You know you've got my sympathy but don't shoot shoot shoot that thing at me

I'm working out and golfing today with the fam for our weekly 'Family Night'. Then we may go to a movie. It's so fun, but it takes up most of the day...I need to find little bits of time to work on art today...

It feels good to have Wonder Woman done. I still have a ton to do, though: 3 small projects and 1 big one I aim to finish before the end of summer. On top of that, I'm putting together a pitch for The Second Witch of Wilheim (what else is new?), and that still needs a lot of work.

However, the last month of every summer is very productive for me compared to the others, because most/all of my high school friends are already back in college for the year. Oregon starts so late, I have this weird month between August 15 and September 15 where no one's in town and I just work away and spend time with the family. It gets lonely, but I get a lot done, and it makes me actually want to go back to college, which is good :P

When I rule the world, I'll have...snakes!

Last night, Molly introduced me to my new favorite Harry Potter reincarnation: A Very Potter Musical. College students and recent grads reassembled all seven books into one hysterical musical. Voldemort is Quirrell's gay lover (IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE). Draco casually drapes himself over objects whenever possible and is obsessed with Pigfarts, a wizarding school on Mars run by Rumbleroar. Harry is a guitar-playing douchebag who makes his friends do everything for him. There is so much gender-bending and homoeroticism, I can't begin to explain. Sample the glory:



And now go watch all 3 hours. DOOOOO IIIIIT!

Sing P-O-N-Y-O!

UGH. SO BAD. I was listening to the English version of Ponyo's theme song IRONICALLY and Disney's voodoo magic made me actually LIKE IT.


Wonder Woman Day 4 by ~Tallychyck on deviantART
Here be the finished piece! (A photo, sorry for the quality!!) Please support Wonder Woman Day (on October 25) this year by submitting art, bidding on art, attending the event, or just picking up Wonder Woman and giving her story a try!

To get the galaxy without using whiteout, I tried some 'drawing gum', which I assume is just masking fluid in disguise -3- I tested effects like masking out on scrap from the same watercolor paper to make sure they worked:


Success! On to masking everything!!!




Ahhh, it is a glamorous life, this. <3

Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

Here's a digital mock-up for the Wonder Woman piece. I will watercolor it, but to help myself plan out color and lighting, I need to play around with it digitally first. Someday I hope to be able to visualize things in color, but right now my brain works in grayscale.
As you can see, there's a lot I need to leave white in the background. I'm testing out some drawing gum now on scrap paper to see how it holds up to a medium wash. So far, so good. I guess there's always white-out, but I don't like the bump that leaves...

I could stay forever leave right now it's your call either way

Progress photo for my Wonder Woman Day 4 piece (If you're an artist, consider contributing a piece!!). Overall, I like it so far despite some little quibbles. I have to touch up the inking, make the lines bold and crisp, and add some weight in certain areas, then it's on to color (plus, you know, backgrounds are a good thing). :P
I made one big mistake, though: Art Media was out of hotpress watercolor paper in the weight I wanted, so I went with coldpress. AGH. Too much texture!! My linework looks broken and fuzzy...I can't get the brush to move along without a drybrush effect.

My intentions are good and earnest and true, but under my hood is internal combustion power

Happy second birthday, Nico's blog! xD

Over a dozen artists contributed celebration pieces. Here's mine:


I drove to Eugene and back today to visit my roommate Niha and do some moving in. It was a lot of driving for one day, but nice to see my friend >3<

Anoko to haneru to kokoro mo odoruyo paku-paku chu-gyu

Ponyo came out yesterday, but guess who saw it on Monday? xD There are perks to being friends with this guy. As everyone's saying, it's not my favorite Miyazaki movie, but it is right up there with Studio Ghibli's others in quality and enjoyment. I love love LOVE the two main characters, Sosuke and Ponyo, and all of their interactions, but the rest of the movie was just (well-drawn) fluff for me.
Oh. And when you hear the first bars of the credit rock song, GET OUT OF THERE.

On the Miyazaki thread, take a look at these two gorgeous pieces Terry Blas gave me last week! I was in shock then, and I'm still reeling a bit now. :) Terry is a watercolor and character design master. He did the painting of Sophie a while ago, but he did the painting of Haku in an afternoon!!! MAN. I am still searching for proof that he's not an artbot from the future. Wait...Robopocalypse...yes, it all makes sense...


Also, I'm over on Nico's blog again. (A girl could get used to this! :P) Written by Jamie, illustrated by Nico:

When I saw you on TV, you were wearing a piece of me

Nico sent me fanart this week! I love his interpretation of Delilah!!!



THANK YOU, NICO~!!! XD

There's something in the distance a glorious existance

What else? This is the only thing I draw anymore. xD;

This first one utilized my new 'Beer Finger Painting Technique', honed at the Drink n' Draw at Madison's Grill last night. I accidentally spilled a drop of beer on Delilah's jeans, didn't notice, and smudged the ink all over when I went to wipe off eraser shavings. Someone suggested finishing the jeans with that technique, and what do you know? I kind of like it! xD

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco

Poooooll tiiiiime!!

Please answer in comments or sidebar poll: Which do you like better--brush or nib inking?


(nib left, brush right)


(nib top, brush bottom)

I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest

More sketches from The Second Witch of Wilheim:



And trying to figure out scale--exactly how big is 'gigantic'?



I've decided that she's an ex-gymnast.

If you could flick the switch and open your third eye, you'd see that we should never be afraid to die

Okay first, Muse has released another new song off of The Resistance!!!!


I've been gone for 4 days and haven't drawn at all, so I say this is a great time to pimp some other people's comics!

Nicolas Hitori De
Okay, this one is self-serving, but Nico put up a strip on his blog yesterday about him and me having a conversation about Miyazaki! How awesome is this???! I love it. (Click through to his site--he links the English version)


Marc Ellerby
This Ellerbism made me squeal. And then laugh. I wish it had happened to meeeeee!


Erika Moen
The DAR from last week made me laugh out loud. This week's strip is a continuation of it, so click through to her site and go forward to read more! (Ah shoot...I'm sorry--I forgot it's not safe for work...just click on the icon to see the strip!)


Emi Lenox
Ocean Girl is dealing with a pretty crappy sidekick this week in EmiTown. :-/ But she will prevail, I know it!! Also, I love Emi's expression on the bottom left!


Robopocalypse, Teenage Dinosaur, Jamie Rich + Joelle Jones
Last but not least, tonight is First Thursday in Portland, and I'm going to a dual event at Floating World Comics to see Robopocalypse (featuring friends Matt Grigsby and Terry Blas) and Teenage Dinosaur's exhibit PLUS Jamie Rich and Joelle Jones (I'm sorry, Joelle...I'm still trying to figure out how to type umlauts @___@) doin' another You Have Killed Me signing.

There are many ways to act, and there's many shades of black

Finished the thumbnails and the character piece I showed you yesterday. Whoo! I finally have a minute to breathe, so I'm taking the afternoon to talk new laptops with my dad. He offered to buy me one for Christmas, but I really like mine, and wanted to wait as long as possible before making the switch. Also, I want to do it right, since this next one will have to last a long time, and I want it to be pretty much perfect.

I'm starting to think about the coming school year. I move back to Eugene September 15, and school starts on the 29th. But first...Pi Phi's "work week" starts on the 20th. You guys. It is literally 8 hours for 9 days in a row of practicing for recruitment. Shoot me. From the summer letter:

"Everyday your hair must be done and worn down. If you don’t usually do your hair or wear it down, ask a sister for help."
"NO hair in your face! It can be very distracting!"
"Everyone should wear make-up."
"Plain studs, small necklaces and bracelets are fine, but nothing big, trendy, or flashy. NO brand names i.e. Chanel C’s, and please no religious jewelry."
"...if you wear peep toed shoes you must have your nails done."

*Projectile vomits* I love Pi Phi...but this week is a living hell for me. After 4 years, I just can't muster up the enthusiasm required to enjoy it. We're well-rounded, good people, but recruitment makes us look and act like clones (as if anyone wants to join a sorority like that!! We would be so much better off acting genuine! Then we would get, I don't know, genuine women wanting to join our house). Maybe I'll get an ovarian cyst the day before it starts.

My class schedule looks good--my regular courses are all between 12:00 and 3:00. I'm taking 400 level reading/writing Japanese, which will be very hard but good for me, an honors college elective called "Little Magazines", about the history of small press (sooo stoked!! And it's with a great professor!), and a class preparing me for the senior thesis.

I am also taking 4 art workshops!

1. Fundamentals of Color
2. Children's Book Storyboards
3. Keeping a Visual Journal
4. Watercolor Illustration

Sooo excited. :> It looks like there will be lots of time for art in the morning and evenings, and no awkward lunch hour classes or anything making me sprint back home to eat.

Listening to live Radiohead tracks. They're surprisingly good! I guess it's not a let-down to hear the songs unedited because they don't edit Thom much to begin with. :P