This is what happens when someone who occasionally thinks of herself as a witch takes pole dance.
About an hour of Illustratoring over a messy pen rough.
Tag Archives: art
It Was Inevitable
Really. It was.
For a contest on DA: draw yourself turning into a thing over three panels.
Click for the full image.
Piranha
Piranha from “Jet Set Radio”. Guess who I pretty much always played once I’d unlocked her?
This is a simplified version of her look from the first game, with a tiny bit of her costume in the second.
Edit: Oh yeah. I keep kinda wanting to cosplay as her but keep on being concerned that (a) race issues make it Problematic and (b) white just doesn’t look too good on my pale pasty flesh. Maybe some black edging for contrast would fix the latter.
Hard Bargain
Hard Bargain
Oh hey here’s a commission I took last year at Anthrocon.
After drawing that fake crack screen, I still had the kinds of palettes I used back on the Amiga on my mind. Which were pretty similar to the color schemes the Nosepilot guy used. I did a card for Furoticon today in that sort of space, then decided to knock off another thing that was Not Rita by doing this as well.
Basically the method is this:
1. Pick 3-4 colors. They should have different values.
2. Blend between them. Three spaces in between is about right.
3. Eyedropper those middle colors into new global swatches.
4. Draw lots of shapes under my rough, in the same way I draw stuff for Rita. Try to keep each object pretty much in one color ramp, aside from the occasional accent.
No gradients, no blend modes, just solid shapes in a thoughtful palette. Pretty simple, and a nice place between “really colorful” and “takes forever to draw”. I may have to try doing some more stuff like this for a while; I feel like I’ve been bouncing between the super-abstracted colors of Rita and a way-too-modeled place for too long.
Ultimately, I’m just coming back to a way of coloring I was seeing all the time when I watched demos on the Amiga. I’m back where I began, except a few levels higher; progress is as much a spiral as a straight climb.
I AM THE LAW
Judge Dredd. Inspired by this article on Dredd’s uniform.
some stuff happened
This weekend I decided to put some curtains in the living room. There are times in summer when I just want to sit down for a little video game break, and the sunlight coming from outside is way too intense for my little projector to throw a visible image. I’d been taping up some spare art board but that was (a) a pain in the ass and (b) ugly.
So I did some research online into the basics, and walked up to Northgate to hit Bed, Bath, and Beyond for a double rod, some swirly finials, and some clip hooks, and the fabric store for about four and a half yards of dark purple velvet. I’m planning to add some sheer red behind it once I get things arranged to my liking; one thing at a time.
I just got it up and liked what I saw, then took it down because I was using holes the previous occupants had drilled, that weren’t really up to the task of holding these heavy things up. I’m going to have to slip some screw anchors in there tomorrow for a solid grounding. I’ll also see how well it cuts down indirect sunlight reflecting off the white building next door; I may have to add some sort of lining to make them a bit more opaque. They’re not amazing but for about $300 total they look pretty good, and will likely look even better once I spend maybe a half hour hemming it, sewing some folds into the top of it, and hooking the rings in so they’re hidden by the top.
Hmm. What else have I been up to? I haven’t updated this in a week or so. Nothing amazing: slowly working on the next page of Rita, which includes a crazy background; getting some flowers to put on the coffee table in the studio, going to pole dance classes. I’m still not even anywhere near “terrible” at pole but I’m learning, and getting in shape as well – there will be days when my legs ache all day long, and I just grin, because it’s the ache of shaving stretched them like crazy the day before.
I’m also getting definite results from having that chin-up bar on the bathroom door. Unless I’m completely wiped out from doing something else beforehand, I can very consistently get my eyes up past the top of the door, go up and down a little bit a few times, and then bring my feet back to the ground in a slow, controlled fashion.
And now, some progress shots from that page…
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- Initial rough of library panorama, drawn when laying out the page.
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- Better rough after googling some huge libraries and looking at a book full of staircase porn. Most of this will be cropped out on the page but I’m going to reuse this bg later, and it’s honestly not that much more work to build it all now and get it right.
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- Eventually it becomes complicated enough that Organization has to happen. Floor 1 is the one at eye level; all others are numbered in relation to that. The weird order is so they overlap properly; it may seem kind of OCD to make this many layers but it pays off when it comes time to draw things like “various people wandering around the building” and I’m not constantly putting the railings back in front of them or something.
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- Draw one column, cut and paste!
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- More columns on higher floors.
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- Starting to build out edges of floors and railings (draw one line, create perspective with the width tool, alt-drag vertically, reshape to fit perspective)
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- Trace a cool Art Noveau railing out of the staircase book, use as pattern brush, apply perspective distortion, wonder why the weight’s all screwy.
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- That’s better! I had to apply the ‘outline stroke’ effect to all the lines that made up the pattern brush.
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- Cameo appearance by Marigold Heavenly Nostrils and her friend Phoebe from the second panel.
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- So many railings! So glad I didn’t have to draw them all by hand!
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- Starting to block in walls and the beginnings of bookshelves. Also note the extra copies of the noveau ironwork in white/dark green to provide lighting/shading and contrast against midtone.
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- Quick books: use line tool, slash ’em in. If you want to be more detailed you can make them different widths, and for perspective views you may want to think about the tops and sides, but this is often all you need if you’re not close enough to read the spines.
Hopefully I’ll get this page done tomorrow. Just in time for me to go off to Portland for Furlandia!
is it wrong to draw porn fan art of your own work
My mostly-dormant pornmonger alter ego drew what might have happened at the end of chapter XI if another of Rita’s exes hadn’t shown up [NSFW].
I had to ponder Carol’s skin color for a bit; I’d been drawing her in “midtone”. I knew she was not A Honky but picking exactly the right tone took some time. I’m pretty sure she’s at least second-generation Martian, and haven’t put any thought into what kind of ethnic mix may have colonized that planet. Though I think I’ve also implied that her current body may not be the one she was born in, what with it being a normal Earth human height; maybe she just likes that shade of brown.
Also I think I am now finished with the edits for the second attempt at printing book 2 of Rita. I let myself finish this as a reward for that, in fact. Well, “finish” – there is stuff I could definitely still work on here, but it’s good enough for porn!
some old art going into storage
While I was at the store grabbing those little notebooks, I also got a cheap portfolio to finally put a loose pile of old art into the closet instead of having it kicking around the living room.
College stuff. Cut paper on the left, ink and colored film on the right. I feel like the Thoth poster (assignment: ‘do a cut paper poster for a Mardi Gras krewe’, I chose the one that let me get away with TEH FURREH) may have been one of my first attempts at my current Illustrator style, perpetrated in the unforgiving medium of cut paper. And oh man I was such a Matt Howarth fanboy when I did the one on the right.
Text: “Miss July, 1990 Paul Trauth”. I think it was not insignificant that I allocated this ‘centerfold’ to my birth month. I was still a guy at this point – but the gender stuff was definitely an undercurrent, I think.
There’s like three more pages of this but they really look like I was sick of the story and just wanted to finish it. I really love the way I was so consistent with the Cubist nature of that treasure chest.
Guess what? I didn’t quit drawing her. Didn’t get a sex life, either. From a college-era sketchbook in the same pile. Which is completely full of hesitant pencils and overly-precious inking like this. I stuck this sketchbook on the shelf where all the sketchbooks go – mostly the ones I’ve filled since Katrina, but there’s a few early ones in there as well that I chose as representative of a giant box of the things my mom still had.
There was some other stuff in this pile too – a scratchboard drawing of a lamia in front of a full moon, an ad layout pasted up for an already-obsolete-as-I-was-taking-it graphic design class, other college stuff. Maybe I’ll photograph some of it the next time this portfolio surfaces.
I stuck all the flat stuff in the portfolio, then grabbed a marker and drew this on the outside, and stuffed it into the deepest recesses of my living room closet. I’ll find it in another few years when I move out, giggle at it, possibly post some of it again (I know I’ve posted some of this shit before), then stuff it in the new place’s closet until the next move.
Always label your storage, even if it’s just to calligraph an elegant “WTF?” on the side of a box filled with miscellaneous stuff.
NINSEGOES
I went out to mail a thing. On the way back I stopped at the bookstore and got a four-pack of little softcover sketchbooks.
Now who am I gonna mail this one to…
DIZNEES
I was going through a box of stuff that’s been cluttering up the living room since I moved here. Notebooks, a pretty box, tiny sample prints… and an tiny little empty notebook with Mickey on the cover.
It ain’t empty no more.
When I got bored with drawing DIZNEES, I turned to Brian Harp, who I was IMing at the time. And I said “what’s your snailmail would you like to join in a stupid project”. He said yes. So now it’s on the way to him, with the intent that he’ll draw some more DIZNEES in it and send it on. Perhaps eventually it will get back to me, perhaps not. I’m fine with it either way.