yiddlenet

These are some sketches for the next Natsuko painting. In her dream, Natsuko is on the moon playing with the moon bunnies. The pink ones were earlier sketches I did with just a ballpoint on notebook paper (meeting doodles), the others I did with my new Copic markers.

self-portrait 2010

I had a prof who told us you should do a self-portrait once a year. quick one. don’t spend a lot of time on it. this took about an hour. getting better at skin tones and highlights, need to work on hair techniques. (ugh, both painting AND my real hair. i’m so clueless about some girl things)

Sketched in Painter X, checked proportions against photo reference in Photoshop, returned to Painter X for painting. Was pleasantly surprised that my proportions were almost right on the first time.

Natsuko and the Penguin

Painting #3 in the Natsuko’s Nap series. In this dream, Natsuko’s found a penguin friend. Haven’t you always wanted to hug a penguin? Scanned origami paper, Painter X and Photoshop CS3.

Natsuko's Nap - Horseplay

I’m calling this one done. I’m still not entirely happy with her hand or her hair, but if I keep going I’ll just keep going and going and going.

This is the super-secret project you may have heard me tweeting about a while back. I wanted to do something nice for my friend @ToddGallina. Todd’s a creative genius, and one of his current projects is illustrating a children’s book called Samantha Saves a Star (watch for it on Amazon…coming soon – I’ll keep you posted!). I fell in love with one of the thumbnails he had done of Samantha sitting on her swing looking up at the night sky and I wanted to turn that into a fun little altoids tin diorama. (continue reading…)

horseplay

Today we went to the aquarium with my niece and her two kids. I was inspired by a bunch of seahorses with their tails all curled around the coral. I thought my little Japanese girl would have fun playing with the seahorses in her dreams while she’s taking her nap. D argued that it’s dumb because the horse couldn’t even fit the apple in its mouth. I rolled my eyes at him.

I’m using the sumi-e and artist’s oils brushes in Painter X and scanned origami paper as the background. I’ve still got some work to do, on the tail and the girl’s hair and the line work and just general here and there stuff, but I think I made pretty good progress tonight.