Title: Bettie
Size: 8½ x 11″
Medium: Prismacolor Marker on Aquabee Manga Artist Paper
Time: 1.5 hours
Status: Completed

I am discovering that sometimes.. less is more.  Especially in the case of this current piece.  In previous ones, I had added layer upon layer of markers, but this one? Not so much. I am pleased with the result. Though, the shine on her hair probably needs work. And her skin also seems a bit patchy, but it doesn’t look that bad on the original piece.

I tried some colour calibrating in Photoshop, but I think I might need to tweak it a bit more.  I should also work on my scanning techniques. Hurm.

In other news, I found a bunch  of DIY lightboxes tutorials on the internets yesterday (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).  Most of them seem relatively simple enough. But I suspect I will need to get W to help me with the actual lighting bits.  Once I figure out which one I would like to build, perhaps I will make a trip to the mighty Home Depot this weekend!

Title: Emma
Size: 8½ x 11″
Medium: Prismacolor Marker on Aquabee Manga Artist Paper
Time: 2.5 hours
Status: Completed

So, this is the piece that elicited my upload fail.  I completed it on Thursday night.  I am lame and have nothing new since then.  This weekend was kinda busy.  There was a bunch of Ripley fun on Saturday and then in the evening, W and I headed out to chilly Olds/Didsbury to have dinner with W’s friend (and my ex), JB, and his family in celebration of his birthday. I haven’t seen him in years. He has babies and wives and stuff now which crazy. Crazy good, but crazy.   So it was kinda fun to catch up, especially with his mom and sister.

And Sunday, it was all about cleaning. Well, the living room and kitchen anyway.  And when I clean, I mean, clean.  I don’t think my kitchen has been so clean.  Hell, I even cleaned the fridge.  Admittedly, I am not the world’s best housekeeper so this is a pretty big deal for me.

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Ah boo. I have a finished piece, but I forgot to upload it last night. Fail. But I’ve been sporting a pretty insipid headache for the last few days, so I will blame my forgetfulness on that.

Anyway, its another girl. While I know that these particular portraits aren’t particularly challenging or perhaps even interesting to anyone else but me, I am enjoying working on them. A lot. Mostly because they are letting flex my imagination muscle as well as allowing me to learn a lot more about my Prismacolors.

Plus, they are just fun. I haven’t had a lot of fun with my art as of late so I will take it any way I can get it. I know I will eventually return to the land of the stressful, time-consuming, graphite portrait, but in the meantime, I get to have fun! This pleases me, my friends.

In other news, I have created a brand new blog. It’s a dog blog and it’s purpose is to chronicle my on-going adventures with Ripley and allow me a place to spew my doggy-related nonsense because I really think people in my fleshy, really-real world (Hi, W!) are getting tired of hearing about the dog. Like really, really tired.

If you are interested in my dog ramblings, you can read them here*.

*Yes, LV-426 is super nerdy name for a blog (well, a cryptic super nerdy name). But my blog, my title. So shush.

Title: Penny
Size: 8½ x 11″
Medium: Prismacolor Marker on Aquabee Manga Artist Paper
Time: 3.5 hours
Status: Completed

Lookit! I completed something! Crazy, crazy.

In all seriousness, I am pleased how she turned out.  I took my time with her.  Plus, on Saturday, I did a mini-project.  I create a palette of all of my Prismacolors on the actual paper I use so I could see how they would look before I actually used them.  Not even sure why I didn’t do this before.  Having that reference definitely helped when I sat down to colour her yesterday.

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Here are a couple more (from Wednesday) that I have been prepping for colour.   I also have two more that I finished prepping yesterday. I was busy in the evening so I didn’t get a chance to scan ‘em.

I also started work on a new girl.  She’s a bit tricksy because she’s Russian and the ushanka (thank you, Wikipedia!) is proving to be a pain in the ass to draw.  The Universe is probably rewarding me with this difficulty because I am being stereotypical.

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These aren’t new images, per se.  But I transferred them from my sketchbook to some Aquabee Manga paper and prepped them for colour.  Yay.

I did, however, discover a bit of an annoyance last night.  When I transfer drawings from my sketchbook to really-real art papers, it is a bit of a process. I scan the originals into my computer, resize, print, then I have an elaborate setup of papers, graphite transfer papers and tracing paper.

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Last couple of girls before the holidays.  They are inspired from references that SP provided me.  I am particularly pleased with the curls of the on the first girl. Woot.  We won’t talk about her messed up eyes though. Nope.

Tonight, we are cleaning the house in preparation of having both of our families over for turkey dinner.  It will be the first time (and likely the last) that I will be cooking a turkey.  When I was preparing it earlier today, it made me very uncomfortable.  It was like handling a dead winged baby or something. Did. Not. Like.

Honestly, it made me miss the days I was a vegetarian. Hurm. Perhaps something to consider.

Beyond that, I think I’m going to curl up on the couch with my boy and watch a flick or two.  Tomorrow is going to be a big, busy, crazy day.