We Killed the Hubble!

Oh Hey, A Drawing

nem0 — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 05:23:31 GMT

Hey! I've been gone for a while! It's mostly because I wasn't drawing much after I destroyed some of the soft tissues in my knuckles training to be a cage fighter. PROTIP: if you're gonna punch a lot of things? Wrap your hands. Hand wraps exist for a reason. Or, y'know, take up a safer stress-relieving hobby, like drawing. Until you get a repetitive stress injury from holding a pencil all the time. Crap, this plan is flawed! Maybe I should just take some time off and catch up on chores...until I break my nose taking out the trash. Basically, I'm a mobile disaster zone and should probably start living in a bubble inside a padded room.

But now that my hand is mostly healed, I've started drawing again! While I was injured, I started collecting musical implements and subjecting my poor neighbors to my enthusiastic noise making. So, here's a self portrait of me with my shiny vintage Yamaha DX27 synthesizer, hooked up to my laptop so I can actually attempt to program it. FM synthesis is difficult, but the results (when they're not just bweeping or high pitched wails) can be spectacular.

...crap, I totally forgot to draw the keys on the keyboard. You can pretend it looks more like this, if that helps.

smuu — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:08:40 GMT

Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender, mad about something. Man, I am so grateful yaytime sent me some Nickelodeon Magazines with Avatar comics in it, because I hate looking up reference for these characters. And they have such ... exact costumes. But now that I have these comics, hurrah, reference from an official source! It pleases me. Mebbe I'll draw more fanart in the future.

.... and thanks to everyone who commented on the last post. So nice to see people are still sticking around. ^^

Ellsmere + 20th C Boys

smuu — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:01:50 GMT

It is just TERRIBLE how I haven't updated this sketchblog in forever. Ahhg. You guys are still here, right? Nobody's abandoned me? Really sorry about this. Crazy couple of months, but now I'm getting back into regular sketching (or trying to), so hopefully there won't be such an awful lapse again.

Ellsmere, Year Two. Everybody has a growth spurt!

Sketches of Kanna from 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa. If you haven't yet read this series, GET THEE TO A COMIC BOOK STORE! ... or book store, whatever. Book stores stock manga, right? One thing I absolutely LOVE about Urasawa is that while he doesn't have many female characters in his various series (Monster, Pluto, 20th C Boys), what few women/girls there are are well fleshed out, liveable, likeable (or hate-able) characters. They are never "just" the love interest or a female character thrown in because you have to have at least one female characters. I don't know what he has planned for Kanna, but I LOVE her, just as I love Nina/Anna from Monster and Uran from Pluto. I think there's a real lesson in there for writers who work within a gendered genre, writing comics for specifically boys or girls: you don't have to sacrifice characters of one gender to appeal to readers of the other gender. And that goes to both male and female writers. Never have a character be just a love interest, or just the token guy/girl. Make them a living breathing character of depth, and your readers will love you for it.

smuu — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:41:04 GMT

This was my checkout girl at the grocery store and she was so adorable I had to draw her.

I would really like to get a picture of her, but for the moment, these will do.

smuu — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:39:32 GMT

More doodles! Coloured some up while watching Jaws! The Revenge. Which I think would make an excellent musical, actually. Jazz hands!

I used to have an obsession with drawing people sleeping... not so much anymore, which is good. It was creepy.

More attempts at the Phoenix Wright cast. Bit of a fail, but whatever.

smuu — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:27:19 GMT

A couple of sketches. I'm going to try to be better about consistently drawing and posting stuff, as I feel like I've become very out of touch with the fun sketching part of drawing. :P It's hard to keep things fun when drawing is your job.

Watching Lost, I guess.

Bum! A couple people noticed the different inking. I just switched to a pilot fineliner (which I previously inked most of D101 with), as it forces me to pay more attention to attractive shapes in the figure I'm drawing, as opposed to the brushpen, which allows me to be sloppy, and thus lazy. :P

smuu — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:51:50 GMT

Knitting isn't really interesting me right now, but being with a group of people is (considering I work in Artist Solitude), so I sat and doodled tonight while everyone else did things with yarn. Hopefully they won't cast me out! That could almost qualify as a knitting joke...

Outfit ideas... I'm very interested in clothing at the moment. :P

smuu — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:35:34 GMT

Some things drawn this weekend:

Characters from my boyfriend's comic, playing with their wiimotes. Yes, I find flailing about with those little plastic phallic objects very entertaining.

More sketches of my superhero girl character.

Avatar fanart

smuu — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:52:18 GMT

Avatar: The Last Airbender fanart. Katara is clueless. I like this drawing so maybe I'll get the chance to colour it later...

smuu — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:38:08 GMT

Wow, a million years since a sketchblog update. Ahhhg, terrible. I just haven't been drawing much that isn't comics, tho. Anyway.

My boyfriend and I were watching an anime called K-on, which I thought was the most adorable thing I'd ever seen. Some of the earlier episodes have an interesting proportion style with the characters (it fluctuated as the season went along), so I had to give it a try with Jun and Cassie.

smuu — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:30:25 GMT

I've been working on this image off and on for a while ... still not finished. I want to colour it and use it as a website frontpage image ... I very badly need to redesign that thing. Anyway, the characters are from my upcoming book with First Second, which I'm starting to think hard about because my current book is nearly finished. I'm hoping to post some panels on the weekend, so we'll see if I get around to that. ^^

smuu — Mon, 18 May 2009 01:10:57 GMT

Heigh ho, here's some sketches that I managed to scribble out recently... I'm on major crunch time with my current comic (less than a month left! ahhhhh deadlines!!) so that's taking every ... bit ... of energy ... I have ... *ded*

Lol. I was trying to make her look a little more distinct, but now she looks like she escaped from Deliverance ... hee!

smuu — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:36:29 GMT

Oh my god, I totally had a weekend off! I'm still enjoying myself and my non-work! YAY! Didn't do much drawing, but did scribble out this sketch:

Mohawked teens need the most love. As for me, I'm trying to finish the first Phoenix Wright game, which I've only been working on since ... oh, July of last year. It's hard to find time to game. Altho I'm very enamoured with Resident Evil 5's co-op mode... *_*

smuu — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:25:35 GMT

A sketch of Jun and Cassie from The War at Ellsmere, which just got me nominated for a Shuster Award. Yay!

smuu — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 01:05:43 GMT

Hokayyy, I'm going to update the sketchblog with a few little doodles, so I don't feel so neglectful to the internets ('cause, y'know, I can't seem to find time to draw some new Ice pages). Finding time to draw when drawing is your job is always a struggle, and I'm finding it increasingly hard of late. At least when I wasn't working at home I had the ferry to draw on. O WELL. I should shut up, really. :P

yep yep. Anyway, going to go read a book before bed now, 'cause books are awesome.

afterlife inc

smuu — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:54:15 GMT

Morrie, from this story, which I'm a little uncertain what to do with. I've no idea why I'm fretting about my NEXT project when I'm in the middle of one of two and won't have to worry about that for a while ... but I am. I worry. It's what I do. (Unfortunately.)

smuu — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 02:28:15 GMT

Ooh, I have half an hour before bedtime! What shall I do with that precious free time? I know, I'll update the sketchblog!

Just a girl and her ghost. .... sort of a happy looking ghost too. I guess ghosts can be happy. Why not? They could have cheerful unfinished business, like sunset watching or trying every kind of ice cream there is. I dunno. :P

The Hunger Games

smuu — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:10:44 GMT

Katniss Everdeen, protagonist from The Hunger Games.

I was actually trying to do ... something, God knows what, with this picture, then just gave up. Everything is slightly overwhelming at the moment... Truly excellent book, though. I'm looking forward to the sequel. I'd love to do some illustrations of various scenes, since they came to life so vividly in my head, but who knows when I'll have time for that.

D101 sketches

smuu — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:23:48 GMT

No time! No time for anything! ... except twitter, apparently. Whatever, twitter is way easy. Anyway, a few drawings:

Raven's parents. Aaron looks like he's going to hurt someone. Lily has a cute skirt.

Revamped Elspeth, for fun. She needs feet. :P

lloyd alexander

smuu — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:28:26 GMT

I drew Lloyd Alexander for the 'Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!' blog. The drawing was based on this photo, which I thought kind of made him look like one of those carved marble Roman busts you see in museums... Anyway, he died last year, and it was one of my great regrets that I never write him a letter to tell him what his books meant to me. He was the first author I remember writing strong female characters, girls I wanted to be like when I grew up, and that was a really special thing for me. I keep hoping that with all the YA and Harry Potter mania, someone will remake his Prydain series into a proper movie, but that's yet to happen, alas.

christmas update

smuu — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:35:14 GMT

Hey, update! Yes, I'm spending this morning updating things instead of housework! Yay!
Here's a bunch of doodles I did over Christmas. Unfortunately I was working over Christmas, so I didn't get the chance to do really nice drawings ... hopefully you'll be content with these.

House. haha. Hugh Laurie is smokin.'

A hat with ears. And I'm a bit interested in boots right about now ... probably because it's winter and boots make sure your feet don't freeze. Always good in Canada.

Messing around with a pen ... I am not good at inking with pens that aren't brushes. Bleh!

Characters from my upcoming book ... finally got the contract for that right before Christmas. Ah, publishing ... so very sloth-like. :)

My boyfriend is a big Phoenix Wright fan, and has been getting me to play the games. Mia Fey from the first game. I do really love the character designs, but wow, are they hard to draw!

Naruto

smuu — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:09:59 GMT

I'm back from break! Time to start updating the sketchblog...

My 16 year old brother asked for a drawing of Naruto (Me: That's a person, right?) for Christmas. I checked out one of the volumes from the library for reference, and man, that stuff must be like catnip for teenage boys (I even enjoyed it). It's better than Saturday morning cartoons. No wonder kids have abandoned the floppies for manga. I sure as hell would. Anyway, I also gave my brother volumes 3 & 4 of Runaways, and stuck the picture under the books when I wrapped it ... and then he only saw the books when he unwrapped them, and crumpled the picture with the wrapping. Fortunately Mom shrieked "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and the picture was saved. He seemed to like it.

last one!

smuu — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:38:51 GMT

Last sketchblog update of 2008! I'm going away on the big plane tomorrow for Christmas break ... although not really a "break" as I'll be working through most of it.

It's hilarious when you're small and you have giant brothers who can pick you up. Well, not so much "hilarious"...

smuu — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:29:01 GMT

Influenced by all those Jamie Hernandez comics I've been reading lately. Or rather, by that one mammoth collection of all his comics. Love how he draws humans.

Nice boots.

wiiiiings

smuu — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:38:52 GMT

A commission of this guy, who has wings!

Yes, very wing-y. Indeed.