Practice, practice, practice

*By the way, my title is totally a reference to the Swan Princess. LOL!






Still practicing flash art. The pieces above were copied by hand, not traced over, from my lesson book. I used Prismacolor pencils, a regular Sharpie, and a number of technical pens, like Sakura.




These were traced. The drawings in this post are in latest to earliest order, starting from the top, so the anchors came first. I'm starting to get a handle on where to shade and where not in the designs, reference for when I start creating my own. Also, I've learned that the most important objects in a single design look better when they have a thicker peripheral outline--my vocabulary word of the week. It's very apparent in the "rosy knife" up top there.

Tattoo flash art

So I got my apprenticeship! Yay!!!

This first month I'll be copying flash art for the purpose of learning what makes a good tattoo design. Consistent lines, color and how it's placed, and high contrast all play a part in these designs.

The images on the left of each piece are the ones that I've drawn. I already posted the first on Facebook, and my friends are lovin' it.

Dragon Heel

I'm still practicing. My apprenticeship interview is tomorrow. I really hope I get it!

Still-life of high heels, Toothless the dragon toy, my new sketchbook, and a Tinkerbell glass. Ebony pencil in my old sketchbook. Took me about an hour or so to sketch.

Real bacon!

Just some more warm-up sketching. I need to sharpen my drawing skills as they've gotten sloppy from unuse. So I drew some widows and bacon. And an egg. Don't know why.

Undead Heartbreak

I'm going to start a series of tattoo designs in order to warm up for a possible apprenticeship. I read online that many tats are drawn out in colored pencil, so I broke out my Prismacolors and got to work. It's going to take some getting used to; I haven't worked with colored pencil since I was little. The initial line work took me nearly an hour, the coloring about the same. There's no blood because this heart hasn't been pumping for a long time.

Moist

This is my personal tribute to cute food. Rendered in Illustrator, it demonstrates sheer saccharin cuteness. I might use it in a more layered piece, but for right now, he's just a flying cupcake.

I haven't done a lot of research on the subject; however, I do know that the fad is strong in Japan. Here are some images I looked at for inspiration:

awesome

overachiever

is this even real???

even school food knows it's sad

Death fairy

Been wanting to do a fairy picture for a while. Still, I wanted it to have some depth, not just an excuse to draw an attractive, nude female. I did a little Wikipedia research and found out that some myths actually describe fairies as the dead. So I combined that with the stereotypical image of the fairy (think Tinkerbell) and gave her more insect parts. Her bug side is the carrion beetle, so I put her in the eye socket of a corpse. Pretty dark but fun.

Crayons, India ink on lightweight multimedia paper.