A Blast From The Past - Sketch Dump

Another blast from the past! Sorry wasn't able to come up with a good post so have an old sketch dump! Please don't mind the ugliness and all the head shots for the first two images!

I think these are dated in 2006 or 2007. XD It was before I started dating my images which was around 2008. XD These are another group of really old sketches of my characters. lol I still need to work on my consistency and proportions. XD It's is also about when I started forcing myself to sketch with pen. Just throwing this up here to show that I started from horribleness but am slowly training and teaching myself to draw. :D

This image is newer (2011), just brainstorming composition for a few pieces which you can find here: 

X X X X

Making Time for Comics

How have you guys been scheduling time for comics?

Well I guess I should mention that I work by stages or phases. I do story/script, thumbnails, blue pencils, ink, bubbles, then tone all separately. I don't finish page at a time and post it online since that doesn't seem to work easily for me. I like to do everything at once so I can get a feel of the flow and fix things as I go instead of realizing I made a mistake and go back to fix it after I already finished a page.

One of my biggest problems is that I have the hardest time starting. However, once I get started it's smooth sailing from there. XD I think I've lost that "Get it done" mentality that I had in high school. Well lately I've been getting better at controlling myself and have the "Stop thinking and just do it" mentality. I've been slowly working and getting the things I want done, not as fast as I would like but it's getting done nonetheless. :D

Do you have a ritual that you go through before you start? I do. I fill my cup up with a drink, go to the bathroom, check my feeds, then pull up some music. Once I'm settled I get that "get it done" mentality and I just get up and pull up the files/pages and get working. Then try to take a break every once in awhile. Get up and stretch, get a snack, or check up with the family. I just keep at it until it gets late and I'm ready to go to bed.



I realize that I work best when I give myself a task a day. No matter what page amounts I do. So for example, I would give myself "Thumbnails" for several days and then just focus on those until I finish them. If I don't finish it by a certain date I give myself some lee way and keep working on those thumbnails until I finish. Then for a day or two I try to give myself a break and do something else then go back to the thumbnails to do any edits and fix that for awhile. Once that is done I move on to the next phase which would be penciling/inking and continue from there. You get the idea.

I tried to do the page a week or several pages a week but those hardly happened. It just didn't work for me. For others it might but I like to try to get all the pages done first and then go back and fix things as needed plus it helps my work flow and the flow of the comic.

I understand everyone has a different work flow that works for them. So how do you guys make time for comics? How do you get started working on your pages/story? Do you have a ritual? If not go find yours now! Get up and work on your comic!

Review: Artist Loft World Fashion Journal

This review is about an Artist Loft Journal I bought from my local Michael's and am using as a journal. Started it in Mid-January 2012 and finished in May. I saw the cover and couldn't resist getting it with a 40% or 50% off coupon. Actually I saw it earlier but resisted buying it because I didn't have a coupon and already have too many journals. Ha! See how that stops me! XD

Right. To the review! You can't really tell in the photos but part of the cover is metallic gold so it's reflective and shiny! lol I'm kind of a sucker for pretty and shiny covers. I'm sure I'm not alone. ^_~ The map of the world also intrigued me and I would like to travel sometime in the future so I thought this journal reflected my desire. Although I was afraid I'll never use it for traveling I decided to just use it as a journal. I believe the map is in Latin but I'm not sure. Feel free to prove me wrong. lol Languages are not my forte.

As you can see the journal has 120 sheets of acid free paper. Seems like normal paper to me. Maybe a tad better than copy paper.

The page on the left is written in a BIC Crystal ballpoint and on the right is Noodler's Black with a Lamy Safari EF Nib.

 A close up shot.

It has a slight show or bleed through depending on what type of pen or ink you use. Not great with some heavy liquid pens but the Noodler's Black and Lamy inks seem to work fine. However, the Uniball inks I used seemed to bleed. Probably not good with heavy flowing fountain pens either. Ballpoints and gel pens are fine.

This is my first wrapped journal and I'm not sure I love it. I don't know if it is because the cover is so stiff but when I'm writing on the right side of the book the wrap keeps flipping up hitting my hand as I wrote. That was not pleasant. Although it helped to bend it back a few times to keep it from doing that. The bad thing is that the top of the wrap where I bent it is starting to break. I don't think I bent it that much but it seemed only the top part of the wrap seemed to be breaking. I've tried to be a little more careful handling it since I noticed. Not too pleased having to worry about taking care of it if I ever did take it on the go.

Monthly Sketch Giveaway - #3 July 2012

It's July's Monthly Sketch Giveaway! The giveaways will start the first Friday of the month and will end the last Friday of the month.

June's Winners: 

Azizah Asgarali

Anne Staszalek  

Jose Noyola

Winners have already been notified. If you didn't receive an email please let me know.

I figure this will help keep me practicing and you guys will get free art! :D Mind you, these will be sketches and depending on my time and how I feel will determine the level of detail in your sketch. It can range from simple to more complex depending on how I feel. Sorry about the inconsistency but this should be fun for me and you. :D

You only get one character. The minimum you will get is a black and white shaded bust sketch with little to no background. It can be traditional or digital. I will try to state it, if you want a traditional and want the original sent to you please let me know. (You'll have to pay for shipping and handling.) If I'm feeling inspired I could sketch up to a full body with a background and flat color, again it depends on how I feel. 



Example: (I'll try to come up with more examples but for now it'll be something like this)

The giveaway will end 12:01am on Wednesday, August 1 and the winner announced the upcoming Friday day!

This month there will only be one winner!

However, the amount of winners per month will vary depending on how I feel and if I'm busy!

A few rules (I know. Rules suck but we need them.)
1. No re-adjustments after the sketch is done. (If I mess up something then I will make adjustments, otherwise I'm not fixing it)
2. I have the right to add/omit items to a character's design but will most likely leave it as is.
3. This is original art for personal purposes only. Not for commercial use.
4. I have the right to display the art but credit for the character will go to the creator.
5. I will not draw:

• hentai
• yaoi/yuri
• extreme gore/violence
• lots of buildings/architecture
• extreme mechanical things/mecha
• anything I feel uncomfortable with
• fully realistic people

I have the right to refuse to do a request for reasons that are not listed above!

If the winner does not respond a week after being notified a new winner will be selected.

If you're interested in more than a sketch and am willing to pay feel free to check out my Commission Information on my Deviantart!

Enter the Giveaway below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: Piccadilly Wir-o Journal

I've been using the green and black Piccadilly Wir-o notebook for awhile. I mainly bought it to record my trip to Taiwan in 2010. It worked lovely there and took quite the beating in my opinion. The photos below are current, I didn't take any before because I hadn't planned on reviewing the book. I picked it up from a local Half Price Book Store for about $5. I chose this specific one because I loved the design. Green is my favorite color but I loved the intrinsically designed flowers.

The cover has some dents from being pressed against various items in my packed bag. Also the corners are a bit bent from the abuse but still holding up nicely. Also the wires got a little bent but I could easily bend them back into place. They are holding up well still! Not bad for 2 years worth of abuse. I'm almost done with this journal. For awhile after my trip I just left it thinking I was done but ended up using it as a catch all journal. I used less than 1/4 of the journal for the trip and didn't want to waste the rest.

I used some tabbed sticky notes to divide the notebook up to various sections. One was for my Taiwan trip, another was for my catch all, then some notes for my comics, and then another section for quotes I found that I liked and wrote down.

I didn't get as much time as I wanted to write in it during the trip. I was either sleeping or doing something but I wrote when I could. Didn't help I didn't really know how to spell a lot of the words because they speak Mandarin Chinese. lol

I actually really liked the paper in this book. It was smooth and didn't bleed through when I wrote. It has thin black rulings at 7mm I believe and the paper color is a slight off white, sort of gray color that matched the exterior of the book. Here are some shots of the paper and my writing. (It's actually much brighter than it shows in the pictures below. I just took the pictures in a dark room.)

 

 

The above was written with a regular BIC Crystal ballpoint pen which wrote fine on this paper. The last two quotes above are written in fountain pen. With my Lamy Safari and Noodler's Black ink. I'm happy to say it did rather well on this paper. Hardly any feathering at all! You can see below a close up of the writing.

Just some back shots of the notebook that I thought were worth some close ups. :)

Overall, I loved this journal. Was hardy with great paper and lasted me awhile but I'm slow going through any book. Loved the design and the paper performance was wonderful. In fact, I loved it so much I ended up getting another journal from them a year or so later. However, this one was not up to par to the other....

I picked this journal up thinking it was going to be just like the other journal. I was extremely disappointed. I still loved the cover and design but the paper inside was horrible. I don't know if it was the texture or thinness of it but I definitely do not like writing in it as much. The paper was gritty. The nibs, even ballpoints, would scratch on the paper and the ink would not absorb as nicely as the other journal.

I just didn't enjoy writing in this journal as much as the previous so I don't know if it was in need of quality control or what but I think I got a bad journal...So make sure you feel the paper and make sure it's smooth instead of gritty to ensure you'll have a good journal and writing experience with these types of journals! These types of journals could be great if you like hard back, wire bound, and fairly inexpensive journals! :D