Day Unknown: In Remembrance of a Dear Friend

It's been something like years since I've posted anything. I was hoping to have awesome drawings and wonderful stories to tell. If I wait for that to happen I'll never post again. Instead of waiting I'll ramble about what's been going on with me lately.

With my old computer I'd been working on Photoshop 5.5 (Yes I know, ancient stuff!). I was happy to receive Photoshop 7 from a friend. Unfortunately I didn't remember how evil Photoshop 7 was (colour blending is a pain) so I've reverted back to 5.5. Since I can't get my Photoshop to install on this computer I got out the duct tape and hammers and eventually rigged up something to work. Most people would have given up and bought a new version of Photoshop by now, but I'm too smart to spend so much money on one program (that and I'm too poor).

I'm now at 24 weeks and have gained 5 pounds. I haven't found out the gender of the baby yet. At 19 weeks we went in to check it out but the baby was being modest (the one time you don't want you kid to be modest!). The appointment was scheduled, then re-scheduled because the technician was sick. Friday I went in and the technician said she knew for sure what gender the baby was, but couldn't tell because of policy. Bah them. So I'll know at the end of the week.

I'm moving (again). I think this place will be a more permanent move. It's a nice big basement suite in Surrey. Really close to where Peter works. He'll be living the male dream of living 5 minutes from work. There is a Washer/Dryer room in suite, 2 bedrooms, and a nice big living area (one thing the other places didn't have). We have almost everything we have here, well except for one. I was so devastated about this I wrote a poem:

In Remembrance of a Dishwasher

Oh how I shall miss the way
you did the dishes every day.

I know, the level of my poetic skills is just amazing. I'm available for well-paid live readings, parties and Bar Mitzvahs. 

Day 189: Colouring a Baby

It's been forever since I last posted, and I'm sure a few of you thought I was never going to post again. Even I was wondering if I was going to post again. Though I'm not doing any daily sketches I would still like to share the more detailed drawings I'm working on for my portfolio.

I'm sure many of you remember this one. I did the inks for it already, but I never got around to colouring it. Recently I re-did the inking on this because the resolution was smaller than what I like to use for finished illustrations (I like to keep them at a minimum of 600 dpi for print). This is what the drawing looked like before:

Here it is flat coloured:

Not finished but with more detail:

 I'm still a ways from finishing this as you can see, but I'm hoping to finish it over the next few days. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the background right now. It's maybe a bit too bright, but more than that it's too flat. The only thing that I can think of right now is clouds, but I don't really like that idea. I'll keep working on it and see what I can come up with. If you come up with any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.

Day 179: The End of the Daily Sketch

Sadly, I will no longer be doing a daily sketch. I knew this was something that could happen just because of the pregnancy. Now I have a lot of personal, financial and medical things that I'm dealing with and no longer have the time or energy to work on my portfolio and do daily sketches. My choices basically are to continue doing mediocre daily sketches, or buckle down and work on getting my portfolio finished. As nice as it would be to have 365 images I'd rather have my portfolio done. This is not an ending to my blog, but the post will be further apart from now on. My plan is to post at least twice a week with updates and the like. I apologize that I couldn't finish in the way I wanted, but I do hope there are good things yet to come.

Day 173: Under the Sea

Right now I'm working on figuring out what exactly I'm going to do for my illustration portfolio. I have many old images, some the start of illustrations, others simply nice drawings or ideas of what I want to draw. I still have quite a ways to go to finish setting things up. I must have a thousand sketches to go through. It's not the looking that's the problem, it's the determining if they have potential. After that I have to figure out where they will fit in my illustrations (if at all). 

My other main goal, at this point, is to do as much research as I possibly can for my upcoming illustrations. I have to go through my old illustrations to see if there is anything I need, plus I will be going through hundreds of photos determining if I can use the information of said photos in my work. I know for a fact that I don't have everything I need which will require me to take more photos, and do research on the internet and in books to get photos I can work from. As many of you know it's illegal to copy copyrighted material exactly as seen. Instead I use several references to create one part of an illustration (which can be very tedious). I'm hoping I can take most of the photos, but for underwater scenes I'll be mostly using references and memory. 

I feel like I might be coming across as someone who's complaining, or someone who is overstating what's there. For me it's easier to plot out what I'm going to do in words, and then make it reality. For those of you who are bored by little rant: Look at the pretty fishy!

Day 172: For Marking Cellophane

China markers are fun. I found a green one on my desk and wanted to play with it. It is marked: FOR MARKING CELLOPHANE, but what fun is that? Plus, I don't have any cellophane, so I used the almighty paper instead.

Day 170: Patty and Willie

These two characters are staring in one of the books I'm writing. The one on the left is currently named Patty and the one on the right is named Willie. When I first started writing the book they were Patty Puppy and Will E. Wolf. This made the story seem a little too cutesy and a bit trite. Their surnames have been removed, and it's possible their names could be changed at this point. I've decided against them wearing shoes, but this too could change.  I think the final Willie will have a slightly smaller head, but still be fairly tall. I'm also thinking that I should add a little more weight to Patty.

I'm sorry about the quality of these scans. Normally for character creation of this nature I would use a light box and plain paper. My light box is in a box in storage and may not be opened until the end of time. As a substitute I used tracing paper.

I'm not so sure how long I'm going to be out of the house tomorrow. My husband and I are going out with a friend and her son to the park. We might be out the whole day or, because I'm pregnant and tire easily, we might only be out a few hours.

Day 168: Character Sketches

Sorry I haven't posted in the last few days. I'm even more sorry that I don't have a lot to post. I did have some drawings that I wanted to show here, but they have up and wondered off (or were imagined in my head). In any case I'll be doing some more drawings of these characters in the near future.