Oddest Illustration Friday topic I’ve seen to date, and my response isn’t exactly awesome, but I’m on Christmas break now. I do what I WANT. Woo!

Pencil and watercolour in my sketchbook. Didn’t plan to take it this far, but I was inspired and having fun and things.

I was trying to find some reference of 80’s punk clothing for something else I’ve been toying with, and I came across this picture, which I found weirdly adorable. So this is sort of a rough amalgamation of those two girls. I’m not sure exactly how rambunctious the result is, but what the hell, “rambunctious”? Really? Could be stranger, I suppose. Apparently one synonym is “obstreperous”.

(Click the thumbnail and lookit the big one… pretty please?)

Final project of the semester, for Visual Dialogue. The theme is Heaven and Hell. Probably still not weird enough for Rick, but c’mon, he’s pretty damn weird. (And I mean that in a nice way, of course.)

I haven’t done a really serious digital painting in ages, and doing one basically all in one day probably wasn’t the way to start again, but poor perspective, iffy lighting, and the ominous-smoke-of-I’m-running-out-of-time aside, that is by far the best hand I have ever painted and may ever paint again.

…And now I sleep.

So we, uh, watched Evil Dead.

Says Karen: “I think that’s the scariest thing I’ve seen you attempt to draw.” Well, thanks, I think. I know, I know, I’m not exactly a master of terror. But as my mother has been known to say: “Well, that’s a bit… dark.”

Besides, you just know it would be one of those stories ending with “…and then her HEAD FELL OFF!”

With all the shenanigans going on in the Canadian parliament at the moment this whole thing feels sort of absurdly moot, but I drew it, I finished it, and up it goes. Current Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been notorious for several funding cuts to arts and culture, saying that Canadians don’t care about art, and canceling the National Portrait Gallery project. This inspired some to fight back with a portrait gallery of their own, and since I still needed a final person for my Interp likeness project, I figured hey, why not take a shot at it. I don’t think it’s as subtly elegant as Rosemary’s (okay every time I look at that picture I laugh for like five minutes) but it’s something.

So NaNoWriMo’s over for another year. Once more, I have finished another glorious trainwreck that no one shall ever read. (Final assessment: Characters lack personality. No plot. Dialogue okay.)

And with curiously appropriate timing, I’ve just finished up these, which are both a thing for Interpretive and a callback to last year’s NaNo, titled “Lines”. It was a fantasy, largely based around the premise that I don’t actually like fantasy, and wanted to write one I wouldn’t be opposed to reading. The characters depicted are, clockwise from the top left, Simon Gable, Farewell Green, the Priest, and Hare. (For any Traffies reading: there’s also a family surnamed Carter, and another main character surnamed Maxwell. I take my obscure inside jokes very seriously.)

Click for fullsize… they’re rather tiny at the moment.

I tried something a little different from the last couple of Narrative projects, in a couple of ways. First, the focus on the panel structure and visual storytelling, rather than spending forever and a half on the dialogue. Second, in the last two cases, I was pretty happy with the inks but by the time they were finished, they felt immensely overworked. So in this case, I tried to just let the inks speak for themselves, with minimum meddling in Photoshop. It was an experiment; I guess it kind of worked. If I do this again, I’ll definitely put more work into the ink washes, but aside from that, I guess I’m moderately happy with the result.

For a bookmark. A promo project thing.

Narrative class is weird. We’ve been getting costumed models in - what this has to do with narrative art I’m not entirely sure (well, no, that’s a lie, but still) but, uh, here’s the result. I’m not entirely happy with any of them, but they were all done so quickly it’s hard to judge them too harshly.

Femme Fatale

CSI Sheridan

Deadwood

Here be the final of that sketch I posted. (For those who missed it, the rather strange title is a palindrome - the phrase is the same backwards as forwards.) I’m still unable to decide whether I like it or not; got a few suggestions in class that I may try to implement when I have more time, but I’ve got a busy weekend ahead of me. For now, have the dapper, dapper Mr Owl and the clockwork bird. It’s real 3 AM logic here. (What’d eat a metal worm? I KNOW! A METAL BIRD!)

So a few days before Halloween, I went out to try to get some last minute bits for my costume. Imagine my surprise when all the major stores were almost entirely devoid of Halloween stuff - but filled to the brim with holiday paraphernalia.

That’s why I feel the need to apologize for these. Yes, they’re Christmas cards. But they’re going to be sold, along with a ton of other peoples’ cards, to raise money for the Grad Show, and thus, they need to be done by now to get printed and sold on time. Seriously, forgive me.

I love how the second one came out; the first one is just overworked. Ah well, practice makes… something.