friends

I did another portrait as a wedding gift for some friends. One is a comic artist, and the other enjoys herpetology, so I thought this would be cute. (It's kind of creepy, but still cute)

Ssh, if you know who they are. I'm intending not to have Google pick this up for keywords.

I'll admit I'm not thrilled with my ability to capture his likeness as well as I'd hoped. I'm blaming it on poor photo references -- as it was meant to be a surprise, I wasn't going to stop by his place and demand to take some well lit photos of him on short notice (and he keeps a low internet profile imagewise). Luckily I found some helpful ones for her, and think I did a reasonable job. I'm really pleased with how it turned out overall.

Once my friends start catching on that this might happen when they get married, I won't feel like I'm spoiling the surprise to ask for some photos ahead of time. Having a good reference really helps a lot.

My roomates got married last Saturday, and I wanted to give them something as a wedding gift. I had been to a wedding a few years ago at which someone had given the bride and groom a portrait, and realized that this was a good idea to pursue myself. I spent most of Monday last week painting, with a bit of touchup Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I'm fairly pleased with the turnout. Their proportions feel slightly off, and my likeness of DM is a bit lacking from not having enough photo references available on short planning. I had a lot of fun doing it, and hope to do more in the future. I think it's okay that it kind of looks like a cheesy romance novel cover. Somehow it works for them, and they didn't seem to mind.

Went to the beach over Labor Day weekend. I wasn't there for nearly long enough, but I did sketch/watercolor Merc and Josh hanging out in the water.

I've also done some mock ups for what will eventually be my steampunk dress. (I know it doesn't look much like a "dress" yet) I'm working from some patterns I bought, and am modifying them a bit.

I left work early last Saturday to go enjoy @party, and have a relaxing evening. It was a lot of fun. I got there with enough time before dinner was served to just sit back and not have to do anything. Someone was outside gaming, and so I drew him.

And I had a fun time listening to chiptunes and watching demos. It made me want to do hand drawn animation again... and maybe I'll do some for fun sometime soon.

I've also been having fun on the side with my shirt painting techniques (working with fabric markers and a wet paintbrush over my silkscreened outlines).
I did the white shirt first (and have since worked on it a few times) to try things out and see what looked good before doing the shirt I have up on Etsy. The other gray one below is an alternate I don't think I'm quite finished with yet (I want to darken the wing membranes).

The gradients on her skin were a pain that I think I barely recovered into something reasonable. I won't be trying that again. I want to bring some just silkscreened, unpainted shirts to 5Pi-Con, though, and see if anyone wants custom colors.

I feel guilty when I haven't been drawing for a while. I missed Dr Sketchy's this month to dress up at a Ren Faire; and while I had a lot of fun, it was too chilly to sit down and draw anything (plus there was cool stuff to see!).

Luckily, I had a good chance to draw again at a party recently. It was fun and relaxing.