2015 Witchsona Week

Bonus post today since I wanted to do an updated Witchsona on time for the week again. See last years post here.

Still a yarn witch. Perhaps a slightly more professional version since I now hand out business cards with my creations. Still have a magic ball of yarn and hook that changes size as needed. Upgraded those gems on the end of my hook to be able to stretch out from the end on a string for tunisian crochet. Still rocking my yarn cutter pendant. My dragon hat familiar is just as lively as ever, if a little annoyed I haven't given him the proper horns he needs. Got my pineapple shawl on today which you might have seen on my Instagram as the post on it doesn't go up for a month or so. Also threw my pup Gingko in there since she's my real life familiar and self portraits don't seem right without her.

It's super busy at work, so perhaps I will get around to coloring and cleaning this up next month, but at least I have my crochet to keep the stress from sending me into meltdowns.

Goblin Week and Witchsona Week

So Evan Dahm started a thing called Goblin Week a few years back. Basically you draw goblins, whatever that means to you, and post it on tumblr. I've been lurking around and looking at it for a while, but have never done anything for it. This year, I really wanted to, but never got off my butt. So I have a few sketches but most are too rough to post. So I thought I would post the one I got furthest on.

Since they live in caves, figured there must be a team that goes out and maps new areas to be expanded into. Girls are smaller than the guys so they get the jobs of exploring the smaller passageways. She's got a colander helmet with a flashlight strapped on and a necklace of glowing crystals. A winch harness to lower and raise herself. A dagger just in case of ROUSes. Hogs-hair bristle brush shoes to gently move down walls so as not to damage the cave. A large glowing crystal dangles below attached to the bottom line to light the way down.

Female Goblin Spelunker

Another kind of "week" recently surfaced on my radar as both Kate Leth and the girls from Chaos Life have participated... Witchsona Week. You draw yourself as whatever kind of witch you might be. Sounded fun so I did a little doodle for it too. Which turned into an inked drawing, which I then colored with colored pencils and scanned.

Yarn Witch

If I was a witch I might be a Yarn Witch. I really loved how in the book Howls Moving Castle that Sophie might have been a little bit of a witch since as she made hats in her shop she spoke to them, and they in turn were sold to the exact type of people she envisioned. It's like her words and hands and focus on creating, put little spells that gravitated the finished hats to the right people. That kind of magic seems very real. Since I do so much crocheting lately, I hope that each item I make carries a bit of the love and time and focus that I put into making it. I would have a magic wand crochet hook that is able to become any size I need, as well as magic ball of yarn that changes color as needed and never runs out. My necklace is pendant yarn cutter I have and some stitch markers. My familiar would be my Dragon Hat come to life. Since I put so much more time into that project than any other, and wear it so frequently, the magic rubbed off onto it over time and now it protects and keeps me warm. Also those are tabi socks, because I love weird socks and am wearing some today.

Anyway, creating objects, where before sat a pile of yarn, is pretty magical all by itself.

FrankenGirl Doodle

So my Plan A costume for this year needs more time. A lot more time. It's one of those that needs to be done right or not at all.

Plan B costume came together this past weekend after a quick trip to a few halloween stores and rummaging through my existing wardrobe. Inspired and excited I drew up a sketch. And then colored it. And then used it for my icons on Tumblr and Twitter.

The photo of the page in my sketchbook.

Cropped and filtered in Diptic. Lazy, I know.

Anyway, I haven't drawn in months and it shows. I haven't crocheted in months either. This is due mainly to the fact that I have started taking a class at a local community college to learn to play the piano. It sucks up my free time.  

Old Characters

I've created a lot of characters over the years for various role playing games with my friends. I've got images in my head for each of them since I usually did some rough drawings during sessions.

Some the the stuff I have posted here early on were sketches of some of these characters: Lin Kohaku and Nori Nori were ideas for a Once Piece based game. Adia was a bard with dueling scimitars from a DnD game from college. Also, Agent Sonar, is another one of my more recent characters for a Cthulhu game. The most recent character I have created is this image of the Tech-priest for a Dark Heresy game.

Other older characters I am kind of annoyed to say that I must have lost the drawings for.  For example, I made this cool x-men character for a game whose name was Lilly, aka Willow Wisp. She had lead shoes because her atoms were turning into helium slowly so she would float all the time and could control a small area of wind around her. Once I made a cleric named Yzma who had a giant hammer and smashed stuff. I also have a record of a 20th level Gestalt, Human Druid Fighter dnd character who had a lion mount. No drawings though. :(

But, I have found a few of these missing sketches today because I was thinking about one of the characters I spent the most time on, Lady Adone. She was for a Whitewolf campaign, it didn't get too far into the game, but I wrote her a 5 page backstory, chronicled each session in a diary format, and even wrote short stories about her house, her companion a raven who could talk, and a special item she had which was a Very Helpful Book. She could speak to inanimate objects. Was dark and lonely, had gold eyes, and was very pretty. So today, I dug out the sketch I did of her.

Lady Adone Ravenwood

While I was digging through sketchbooks, I found a few more drawings of other characters. So I figured I would share. Please keep in mind these are all at least 7 years old...

This one is Chei Mazo, her name means tossed by the tempest. Was going to be a pilot character for a Serenity campaign.

Chei Mazo

This one is another version of something I was thinking of for that One Piece campaign that Lin and NoriNori are from. You can see she has a giant fishhook which she used as weapon. The various versions were all supposed to be a fish girl. The weapon changed from giant fishhook to anchor and back and forth, but was going to be used to hit people with on a long rope. Pretty sure that all of these characters that I had been working on ended up fusing into Lin Kohaku cause she was the most unique looking.

One Piece is a weird anime.

This was an elf hunter from an early dnd campaign. She had a Stag companion. Might have been a druid... not sure. Thinking I might have just seen Princess Mononoke for the first time around then.

This one is an early sketch of the same bard I mentioned before, Adia. At this point in the campaign she only had one scimitar and was mostly a bard. By the end she had a few ranks in just about every class you might think: Bard, Barbarian, Fighter and Dervish... it was nuts. And totally freaking awesome. She eventually had a kid and saved the world and I think she had an airship too.

This was for a Naruto based game. Her name was Black Lotus and was a ninja who could use dances to manipulate the air. Funny thing, her real name was also Chei Mazo, and I liked the name so much I reused it when I needed a name for the Serenity campaign.

Black Lotus, 2006

God this one must be even older, I'm thinking 2004. Still reading a lot of Ah, My Goddess! at this time clearly. Another elf, this one is probably a hunter since druids can't wear mail if I remember right. Wolf companion this time. That is one strange looking dog, and that torso... goodness.

And finally, Khyarete. She was from an Arcana Unearthed game. This character was probably one of the first I ever made. She is the namesake of my Gmail account and twitter handle. She was really cool, had this super special halberd. This game was special since the world had a lot of water and islands and boats were common settings rather than the usual generic landmass and dungeons. Khyarete is the reason that I gave Skyrim a go, since that game had a race of cat people.

Khyarete

Wonder what will be next? Bottom line is, if people ask you to play in a role playing game, you might say yes. I know some people will call you a giant nerd, but they were all really fun and good outlets for creativity.

30DC-MG: Day 22: Feline Girl

I really think the internet is full of enough cats and cat girls for that matter. But at least there is one kind of cat girl that is not just total fan service. I really love The Cat Returns. Wish I could be queen of all cats and just lay around in the sun and take naps and eat food.

30DC-MG: Day 21: Canine Girl

Even though I love dogs... I just didnt get into this one. Looked a lot of pictures of Huskies though, which always makes me happy. They are just so cute when lounging about but then suddenly hear something and are all aroo? I guess I could have drawn her yodeling or something since mine does that every time she hears an ambulance.

Crazy Rufio Spikes

I like to make things for new additions. Makes me feel like I did something a little more than just go get something off a shelf, that maybe only I can do.

So when I see people looking on Etsy for crocheted items, I feel like I have to step in and save them the exorbitant prices that some people charge for a few hours of time and yarn.

So this couple has a thing for silly hats and thought it might be cute to take pics of their newborn girl in a hat of her own. I offered my services. They have these two hats:

They are so darn cute together it makes me nauseous. :P

I thought it might be cute to try to merge the hats... and Rufio's hair from Hook is what came into mind... in rainbow colors it might be even crazier and awesome.

Made a basic beanie following this basic pattern and after learning about the generic measurements for baby heads. After finishing it, I still feel like it is too big, but maybe she can grow into it and they can take a silly Christmas picture with all of their hats or something.

Beanie with braids, sans mohawks.

I switched colors every 5 rows, which I feel now was a mistake since I was trying to get all the colors into pink on the hat, but then it would have been way too long. The purple row is the brim and is one double crochet row, rather than two single crochet. As it is, it might be too long and too wide. Guess I should have gotten a babydoll to try it on or something.

Top mohawk has longer pieces and matches the color rows. Shorter ones are slightly offset color wise.

Maybe I should have made the three farther apart...

Gave it dangly braids kind of like theirs have, and made three mo-hawks on top for the spikes.
Cute, if a bit ridiculous I think. Best part is that I used leftovers of other yarn I had lying about and only about 8 hours of time to save them $40 or so; heck yes.

30DC-MG: Day 20: Satyr

Watched Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 the other night. Mainly watched Fantastia because I had last watched it as a young kid and wanted to see if there was anything new that I might get being older. I did a good job of recalling all the images and songs. Fantasia 2000 was laughable. Especially since they got different stars to do the narration. I liked the closing piece to Firebird (a piece of music I am pretty familiar with since it was Nolan's Band piece this year) but I did feel like it was a touch like ripping off a certain Studio Ghibli film...

Anyway, what if a Satyr sucked at music and couldn't play those silly pan flutes? Guess if it was a girl she would try like mad to make it work to fit in. Course she should just go find some other instrument and rock their sock off. (Hmm, should have drawn a satyr girl with an electric guitar and giant amp..)

30DC-MG: Day 19: Cyclops

Forgot for a minute this was a monster girls challenge. Oh well. So I started doodling the old cyclops from those movies, then thought about Cyclops the x-man, but then remembered the best cyclops ever, Leela from Futurama.

She doesn't take a lot of crap. I like that.

30DC-MG: Day 16: Ghost

First girl ghost I thought of was the ghost of the child Inez in the Chichago Graceland Cemetary. I know of it because of the Dresden files book, Ghost Story. Found a few reference images of the statue and decided to draw the scene where she is speaking to Harry in his grave.

"Monster!"

30DC-MG: Day 15: Dragon/Reptile Girl

Dragon girl. Thought about dragonball z and decided to take the dragon for earth and make it into a girl. Fun to try another style again.

30DC-MG: Day 13: Insect Girl

Based off the description of "Mantis Girl Tessa" from Small Favor by Jim Butcher.

Sugar Rush

Wreck-it Ralph was really good. Kinda wish it had been more video game references, characters and locations, and less CandyLand/Candy Kingdom, but still really good. The reason I don't mark it down for having so much candy stuff is because it is too gosh darn fun and lovable.

From the trailers I really thought I was going to hate Vanellope Von Schweetz as a character but I ended up liking her more and more. Also, I really want to own a copy of Sugar Rush now.

So since a lot of the people I have in my google reader were making their own racers, I thought I would give it a whirl.

Tried to think about my favorite candies... Not sure why I forgot about my favorite, Mallomars, but I was stuck thinking about what is in my house right now... Mounds. Dark Chocolate, coconut and coconut flakes. Thought about the textures and the way the chocolate kind of ripples on the top. Also thought about what I wear in the winter, since all the racers have a winter wardrobe.

I gave her coconut flake cake ball earmuffs, kept my blue hair, pale skin and my freckles. She is dressed in a coconut husk-esque scarf, a coconut cream tunic long sleeve sweater, a short pleated skirt seemed manditory for the girl racers so I gave her one peeking out under the sweater. I made it blue to tie into my hair, but also because almond joy has a blue wrapper, and maybe she can like almonds even though I don't. She has dark chocolate colored leggings inside her chocolate ripple patterned boots. I also gave her fingerless gloves because I like them, in orange, cause I like it too.

Got to figure a name... kind of leaning toward: Almonella Cocowhipple.

Update: Made a mallomar version since it was a good idea and Almonella's first outfis isnt screaming CANDY. Dark Chocolate Beanie, Racing goggles, a marshmallow whip coat, chocolate skirt, graham cracker leggings and chocolate boots.

Update 2: Created three more racers at the request of a certain person, Phil, on facebook.
First up is my hubby. He is based on root beer floats. Has a root beer float hat, a vest and bow tie, pants and shoes. I added the bow tie to make him feel more "Malt Shop".

Next is Phil since he asked for them. I thought Atomic Fire Ball! So he got a firey shirt with an atomic bomb shirt underneath, jeans and an atomic fire ball beanie. Thought his shoes should be converse sneakers or something. And can throw puffs of spicy cinnamon air... I guess.

And I thought to round out the couples with his girlfriend. Not sure what candy she likes, but she is sweet and fresh and I thought candy canes for some reason. So she has a candy cane hair clip and pendant. A lacy candy shrug, a red drop-waist dress with a licorice belt. Candy cane striped leggings and red sneakers.

Always the blue one

Laying in bed last night I was thinking about my blue hair. It needs to be redyed since the roots are showing...  Contemplated going back to brown. But then decided against it for the simple reason that I think blue is the right color for me. Don't care if brown is "natural", blue is me.

It's been my favorite color since I found out that I was a Pisces - Aquarius cusp sign in elementary school while looking through the Big Book of Birthdays. And probably before that. The time while I lived in Missouri, with my two good friends, Marie and Katy, I learned a lot about myself. I'm starting to realize how formative that time was. The three of us shared our favorite shows together and, of course, assigned each of us a character from each show.

Bubbles likes to color. Umi likes to read. Ami has an awesome mini computer and glasses. Ditto to all.

Powerpuff Girls was the first: I was Bubbles.
Followed by Sailor Moon: I was Ami Mizuno aka Sailor Mercury.
Finally, Magic Knight Rayearth: I was Umi Ryuuzaki.

They were all the blue character. Assigned to water. Common traits seem to be that they were smart, quiet and dependable, if a little shy at times. Guess I am happy with that.

30DC-MG: Day 10: Succubus

This one was a bit more fun. Posemanics is always a good place to go for poses to use for templates. Wanted to make her sexy but not too slutty or anything. A little fun lingerie too helps.

ParaNorman on the Brain

Did you see ParaNorman yet? If not, I highly suggest watching your local dollar theaters for its arrival... that's not to say it is only worth a dollar, but rather that it is being phased out of the main theaters as I type this already.

My zombie candy corn t-shirt, purple hair and witch-cat hair clip made me feel very "paranorman".

I cannot give enough praise to this film. Marketed to kids, it is anything but a kids movie. You might have noticed it actually got a PG rating. It sells itself as a zombie genre film, but once again I feel that this "kids" movie is really more of an adult fairy tale. There are some very mature themes in this movie: death, afterlife, bullying, gender stereotypes, public schooling, politics, witchcraft vs. puritan thinking, remorse, murder... I could go on.

This whole package is wrapped up in a contrast of beauty and sheer real ugliness. I dont mean that the characters are ugly to look at, but they are certainly NOT the kind of actors hollywood films hire. The characters are all exaggerations of body types found in the real world on real people.

What also amazes me is the amount of work that goes into these films. And the amount of work done for simply stylistic reasons. There is a scene early in the film that has no characters, it lasts all of a few seconds and it is haunting me. It is a scene of a chain link fence with a trash plastic bag stuck in the wire, flapping in the wind. Now for a regular film thats not hard to make happen... but in this film someone had to create a tiny chain link fence. Weave the tiny wire together in that familiar pattern. Create a tiny pastic bag, rip and age it, paint a tiny fading logo on it. Plant that tiny fence in a small field where every piece of dirt and grass is hand made. Just for two seconds of a feeling to be added to this film. MIND BLOWING.

I have only seen it twice now. Might go again if I can find a theater showing, otherwise I'll be pacing until it is released on DVD. Just so I can pause every scene and watch every detail and marvel at every prop.

30 Day Monster Girl Challenge, Day 1

Lately my webcomics, though wonderful, are not inspiring me to doodle. Or rather, they are funnier than I feel like I can match. So instead I have taken to simply inserting myself in their worlds with my doodles... Guess it isn't bad, but its not the best either. So we will leave off the comics again for now.

Here is the list I found (here) on the internet for a 30 Day monster drawing challenge. From what I have read it seems like the list was originally to draw monsters of each theme, but then someone somewhere said they should all be girls. And I liked that thought.

Day One is Harpy.
Harpy appeals to me because I have already been drawing kenku bird people. I then had the thought that each monster should be doing something girly that might be difficult for that particular species to do... So harpies have big taloned feet. Might be difficult for them to do their toenails. :)

I spent a lot of time doodling and trying to figure out the harpy before I put her in place. Decided she should have kind of a weird half shaved mohawk hair-do.

First doodles. Trying to get frustration on the face and a pose.

Maybe making the harpy younger would help? Nope.

Took me a lot of time and I got frustrated. These were from last week. Today I thought, lets take another stab at it, and came up with something I liked enough to share.

Sitting in a tree, painting her toenails, back to the half mohawk thingy. She wears a kimono top with the sleeves cut off, black capris. Kinda a hip young mall hopping harpy. I guess.

Rosscott, Inc Fan Art

Today's comic is Rosscott, Inc. (aka. the System) by Rosscott.

Started reading this one in 2009. I knew it was one I would keep up with forever, when it spoke to my soul in this particular comic: The Crap Sandwich. Since then it has made me laugh on a regular basis.

Rosscott uses the universal imagery that we see on signs everywhere to make this comic apply to everyone. However, some of the subject matter is rather specific to one or another group: e.g. office worker, graphic designer, bike commuter, coffee drinker, etc. It also has some just plain weird and silly humor in characters such as Jimmy the Murderdog. Puns are often found here as well. Comics also often remark on technology, gadgets, social media, and fonts. If you like any of those things, you might give it a try.

Notes on this doodle: Started as a pencil sketch in my note book and then once I had the idea and panels arranged, I drew the characters in Illustrator from scratch. Didn't feel it was right to just use the icons he does. Text font is Helvetica New Medium Expanded. The dog eyes in panel two are actually the lowercase letter "o" from ITC Avant Guarde Gothic. I use that font in several of the logos and brands I work on. Since I work from home, often there are design decisions that I need to make, but I no longer have the luxury of asking another designer for their input. I hope that it is not just me who talks to myself, and my dog, when stuck on a choice... I do miss having coworkers...

Holiday Weekends and Stuff

Yes, Yes I know. I was supposed to update Monday and Yesterday too. But I haven't. No excuses... Ok.... a few excuses. Memorial day weekend was exhausting; between helping people move, visiting relatives, having people over to the house, working on the lawn, fixing the pool, taking the dog to the vet and getting my hair dyed, I had almost no time to think, let alone doodle.

A hold over for now since the rest of this week promises to be super busy with work as well...

The gimpy puppy to be taken to a specialist.

The blue hair in question.

A new crochet project to work on.

The crochet project will get its own post once the 4 are done.

Thanks for your patience.

Para-Ten Fan Art

Para-Ten by William N. Gibbons (Ashwara)... not sure how I found it. Might have been from Happle Tea, or the other way around. It is complete and no longer updates, but I have not removed it from my reader because I love going back and looking at it. It has a style of watercolor sumi-e ink wash paintings and it is very beautiful. It started out being hand inked and then digitally colored and that was inspiring to me. Shortly after starting the author switched to all digital and it was fascinating to see how the style changed to fit the new medium, which was not very much at all!

It follows the main character, Paveline and as the author states "was washed down a river and winds up far from home. She embarks on a journey home, encountering fantastic things, beautiful things, horrible things, disgusting things. It is an exploration of balance, patience, and courage."

I like best when she was traveling around and thought that maybe once her journey was over that later she might still like to wander around with a new found companion. I tried to capture the colors and feel of this comic in my doodle. It was very hard and I tried to learn new ways to set my brushes in Photoshop to create a kind of watercolor affect. I have a good feeling this is NOT how the original was made. :)

Just fyi, that thing is something from the comic and they call it a Millipede...just sayin...