DOUBLE BLOGS, ALL THE WAY!

Just letting you know that I started a second blog for being funny. Not that I plan on being unfunny other places now, but this new one is specifically for funny, and it has arts as well.

I'd like cheese on my entire family!

So far, it has absolutely nothing to do with either my family or cheese, but it wasn't going to anyway.

Check it out, if you are so inclined. =D

Fashion Design- Finals

Here are all the pieces that I submitted to SL's Autumn/Halloween Design Contest. I really enjoyed doing this and am eager for future contests.

Click to see em big!

Fashion Design

There is a contest for Halloween and fall fashions of one of my favorite games on Facebook.
Here are a few designs I have done so far:

All my fall ones are original designs by me. Fashion design is one of my favorite part of painting girls, and is something I considered as a career, though I stink at sewing.  Gladly design clothes for a company who doesn't need me to sew pieces myself, though! 

My Halloween pieces is modeled after Lydia Deets' wedding dress in Beetlejuice, which is one of the greatest movies EVAR!

I should be doing several more in the next week or so.  I am also working on another project that I shall talk about eventually.

DA Contests

I am a member of Deviant Art.  As of late, I have actually been looking at the contests that are offered there.
Most recently there is this contest that I will be entering sponsored by Eve Online.
I entered a contest last month for Resident Evil (which can be viewed here - though I must warn it is a bit gory). Seems I didn't win, but these are great practice for me to do things that are not my normal subjects.
Always great to widen one's horizons... and put yourself in the running for prizes. ;)

Seja

The beautiful and wonderful injunmuffin.  This picture stunned me with its softness and sweetness when I saw it and so I decided I had to paint it- in part because it is her boyfriend's birthday, and in part because she has been really emotionally supportive of me and I appreciate the heck outta her.  I give you:

Seja

I may edit it.  And I hope she likes it and thinks I have done her justice.  I assure you, she is many times more beautiful than this painting represents.

Birthday Faerie

My best friend Tracey's daughter turns 3 years old today! This is her present from me!

Happy birthday, Layla! <3

Aarti's Paarti

I watch the Next Food Network Star every season.  This time, I am smitten with Aarti.  I not only want to learn to cook more Indian cuisine, but OMG, how cute is she!? And so, since I broke the seal with my painting yesterday, I continue on this burst of creativity with a portrait of Ms. Paarti-pants:

Blarg!

I have an aversion to the word "blog."  I shall refer to them henceforth as "blargs."
This should create no confusion at all.




As a bonus, here is a coloring page for you!

Outta Gas!

About every three months I visit Washington, which is two states over from mine.  This time, as I was getting ready to drive back to Montana, there was a problem with my bank account (namely my loving love spending more money than should have been spent) and it took a big chunk out of my gas money for coming home.
My friend, Vez, going above and beyond, sent me gas money (and enough for a tasty lunch). I told her I couldn't pay her back any time soon, and was met with "paint me a pretty picture."  So this is what I painted for my beautiful knight in shining armor:

And no, this is not me.   It is my PT. Cruiser, Eunice.  Really, it is not me though. But of course, it is modeled after styles representative of me .  I, however, have no adorable beauty mark by my lip. ;)

Caspa

One of the cutest youtubers of the atheist crowd, ScouseCaspaXS. I painted her previously and then she got a new camera and I could tell that she had blue eyes, so I had to paint her again.  This one came out much better.

Pictured here with her baby rat. Really pleased with how this came out.  I love painting rodent eyes.

For a bunny.

This is a gift for my friend (and muse) Muffin Von Chub.
Her bunny is sick and she was talking about her eventual departure to the "great garden in the sky."
It was so sweet that I really wanted to paint it as best I could.  The style is fairly different than my normal style but I was trying for more illustrative, like a Golden Book.  I had to wrestle my program a bit to get where I did but I wish to try a few more paintings this way because I like the general idea.

We don't need no stinkin' badges!

It's Cinco de Mayo. I am aware of that.  I am pretty good at recognizing holidays.
So last night, as I was going to sleep after reading Stephen King's Dark Tower - The Gunslinger, it occurred to me that I should do a "black velvet painting" to honor Cinco de Mayo and that it should be a gun slinging kinda of pinup.  And then, I shouted, as I often do, thanks to the movie UHF, "WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGERS!" which startled my husband who was trying to sleep, and I was reminded of the movie "Treasure of Sierra Madre" and then I pictured something close to this painting in my mind.   I must also say that I was inspired by the black velvet world in the X-BOX video game, "Psychonauts" (which is an AWESOME game, all the way, but the end stage is freaking impossible. Like totally.. =[ ).

So here it is, STINKIN' BADGES!:

Look at it big, her face looks wonky all small like.

Gift Art - Hyperbole and a Half

A friend introduced me to Hyperbole and a Half last week. I was having a really bad day and spent the rest of the day (and several of the next days) reading the entire blog and laughing uproariously.  Check it out if you haven't already and you like to laugh. If you don't like to laugh, what is wrong with you?

Anywho, the whole way through, I was thinking I need to be her best friend!!!!  I want to thank her for keeping my loved ones safe from me by distracting me and making me laugh when I just wanted to be a giant stomping destroying monster of some sort.  So I painted this for her this afternoon.  I think it does a good job of displaying my gratitude (and it gave me a good reason to stare at a photo of Brett Favre):

Again, this was painted like the last piece, there was no sketching of the face first, just jumped right in with patches of color.  I like to imagine people can tell the difference. Pieces where I sketch the face first are usually painted much smoother than this, my signature style.

On Break

So I finished up about 21 of the pieces for the art gig that I am doing.  More are supposed to be coming in June. 
I have come to realize that my favorite way of paintings is kinda monochrome and expressionist.  I have done quite a few pieces this way, but while working on this project, I was tasked with the following portrait and man, I loved it.  It just emerged out of me.  Instead of sketching out the face first, I just started with blotches of color and built them up until the image was created. I feel like an "actual artist" when I work this way, whatever that means.  I'm just creating and not thinking about it... and more often than not, it works out, really well. So I give you the pre-production version of the portrait which now belongs to Disruptor Beam, LLC:

Gods of Rock - Ongoing Project

So, as I mentioned, I was contracted to do 30 portraits for an upcoming video game.  I have finished the first 5 portraits in the past three days.  Only 25 more to go. ;)

Here they are:

Paintings by me. Copyright Disruptor Beam LLC.

I had the wrong dimensions on the first one, and I thought to double check but alas, I didn't. *sigh* Thankfully, they were able to stretch it to fit.  Anywho, these are them.  Five tiny paintings. I did them at about 4 times this size and then shrunk them down to the required size.  James gave me the most trouble. I had to employ the help of my friend, Beth, who is also an artist, to tell me what I was getting wrong because I was too close to it to see it. She helped a whole lot!

Well shucks, it turns out I was on the very wrong track. I've taken down the pictures and shall go back to work and try to get it right this time. =)

Migraine Art

I was trying to describe to my friends what my migraine aura looks like (I rarely get them but have gotten two in the past three days) and I thought it might just be easier to paint it. It is a quick sketch, but this is what I see when I close my eyes when I have an aura.  Of course, it moves and swims, so I can never look at it directly, but I always think of it as an Aboriginal lizard. Of course again, it is made of light so imagine this flashing and every triangle cycling a flash between the white, yellow, pink, and blue... there is clear in there too, with white outlines.  When my eyes are open, the lizard flashes and swims and blocks out whatever I am looking at.

Upcoming art

I am sorry for my silence.  I am still here, I just haven't been creating a durned thing.  I shall be, shortly though, as I have been contracted to start a series of mini paintings for a video game.  I shall surely post them here while I work on the 30 pieces I will be doing. I am to begin Wednesday.  Until then, Aloha Makapi'pi!

Block Cipher Video

One of my first forays into video creation and editing was had this week.
Luc needed help with a remake of one of his previous videos and requested my help, and since I like him okay, I agreed.

Basically, I needed to listen to his audio and storyboard it.  Then I created each frame in Painter 11 and edited them together using Windows Live Movie Maker.  My favorite frames follow:

Of course, it was way more work than all that.  For a 9 minute video there was approximately 2 hours of storyboarding,  14 hours of actually drawing, arranging, and creating frames, and then 2 hours of video editing (in which I had to create a few more slides that I found I needed that were not storyboarded.  It was about 72 handmade frames all together.

Check out the video all put together over on Luc's channel on YouTube. =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqgdAy0XjQ

Kate - LOST final

So, now I am done, I think.  I have uploaded it to deviantart and I try to make sure I don't have to reupload there, so let's call this done.  Not nearly as satisfying as the one of Hurley (<3) but still enjoyable.  The source material had great shadows on her face that I really enjoyed painting.

I did make a gif of the process photos but it wouldn't work for some reason when I tried to upload it here. So... I shall post them seperately and you can make your own little flip book. Enjoy!

       

Kate- LOST

I bring you the progress of the painting I mentioned wanting to work on last night that I wouldn't allow myself to work on because I knew my pain would ruin it.  I shall post the final final when I have a little distance to create the final revision. :)

Stalled

I have a hankering to paint, but I hurt my shoulder (while sleeping, der) so I am kinda afraid of how much more it might hurt me. And there is also the amount of pain meds I have taken.  I may just break down and do so, if  the urge doesn't lessen.

I tried working on a special project earlier this week, but it involves tracing (aka inking) and I am woefully bad at tracing my own work; terribly, woefully bad. If I come into any kind of money any time soon, I may just hire someone to do the inking for me so I can finish the project, which I think will be fantastic.

If this muse continues to be so loudly insistant, I shall be sure to share whatever it forces me to do. ;)

Pastry Pinup - Final

Pastry Pinup -Raffle Prize by *Jodee on deviantART

Yup, now it is done. =D

Pastry Pinup -Almost Done

This is not quite the final, but it is getting close.  You can tell because I signed it. ;)

What I do now is look at it for a day or so, then tweak little things I think "look wrong" and THEN I am done. What do you think?

Pastry Pinup - progress 1

Keep in mind -- unfinished progress paintings.  I reserve the right to change this as much as I like. ;)

I foresee that hand changing a whole lot more..  Hands are always hard for me. But I have had enough for the time being.  Good night!

On Saving.

I remember a sign that was prominent in my university computer lab back in 1994:

SAVE EARLY AND OFTEN!

And most of my life, I have. I really took it to heart.  And lately, for some reason (possibly illness and exhaustion) I have failed to save a few things, and it is REALLY making me mad at myself.

So, I just worked a bit over an hour on the commission I mentioned in the last post.  I was creating a script of it which records the piece as I paint it. That is, it records every brush stroke so I can replay it for others, and so, I got much of the detail into the painting, little fidgety things and then I stopped the script recorder and thought, hmm... how will this look!?
Now, I tested the script program before I started and with my original canvas open, it opened a new canvas and drew the painting I asked it to. So, I asked it to replay the script I had just made of the painting I had been working on, and it began painting OVER what was there.  In fact, it deleted 2/3s of what I had there and then painted the work I had done... in just 3 colors... unlike the 20-30 colors I had used before. It was pretty terrible and now, the work I had done is GONE. Gone, gone, gone.  And it is super mega my fault.

Now, it can be saved.  I shall play that terrible script again, so I get the basic outline of all the work I had done, and then I will go on back and repaint it all again.  But for now, I need to watch reality cooking shows until my blood pressure goes down a little. ;)

Perhaps I should tattoo "SAVE" onto my left knuckles so as to remind myself in the future.

Pastry Pinup

I've a new commission to work on.  I had a "raffle" on my website, as I occassionally do to reward my regular patrons and to bring in new ones. Anywho, one of my best patrons, J., won a holiday pinup.  After a while of deliberating, she decided upon the following:


December 9th is National Pastry Day...what I'd like [is] something chocolate as the prop with blonde hair.

Now I get to pour through google image pages full of chocolate pastries to look for inspiration.  Yummy!

I shall post images of this project as they come available.  Stay tuned!

Hurley

I began work on this painting today at about 4pm. 

Backstory:
A few weeks of 2009 was spent watching every episode of LOST.  I just didn't catch it when it first came on, I was teaching at the time, and I just didn't get to it, though many of my friends at the time loved it. So, at some point I added the first season onto my Netflix and I watched the first two episodes and thought it was ho-hum. And then I watched two more and I was hooked.  Through a bout of illness I spent all day in bed for several days watching ALL of the seasons online on Netflix in rapid succession.

And now, I am waiting for the final season... and I read about it and think about it, and generally, I am obsessed. Not like, scary obsessed, but man, I enjoy a good mystery.

So, of all the characters, I am most drawn to Hugo "Hurley" Reyes. Firstly, I like fat boys. I really do! And his freckles are so darned cute. But, also, his personality seems much like mine and I enjoy his interactions with the rest of the LOST kids.  I really think if I were a fictional character as well, stuck on a crazy island, we would really hit it off.

So I captured an image from the second episode (where he is talking to Sayid) opened Painter 11, decked out with Painter Classic brushes, and did a cheaty trace to get his features in the right place. After that, I painted his face first, which is how I usually work, then did his hair and clothes, and then the background.  After things get where I want them in the entire composition, I zoom in and get details on the face done. Mostly it is adding corrected highlights and shadows.  In the background are little nods to Hurley's storyline. Cookie if you get them all.

Of course, a few hours into it, while working on the background, my paint program FREAKED out and closed (AUGH-- save early and often! I didn't). And then I lost my brushes... but I overcame it all.  I actually think losing the background work I had done turned out better for it.  The leaves were much better the second time, if I do say so myself (I do!). And so, after 4+ hours of work, revising and showing my friends to gain a bit of perspective, I finished. And I am very happy with it. 

And I contacted Jorge Garcia (the actor who plays my imaginary bf) and gave him a link to it, 'cause that's just how I roll. =P

Welcome!

I've been journaling online privately for almost 10 years now but thought I should have a public blog where I talk about my art, share process pictures, plan out projects, etc. I will do my best to update each time I am working on, or planning something new. 

I create sporadically, so at the moment, there is no set time when I shall be updating, but hopefully I will be entertaining enough to keep people around. =)

So welcome, thanks for reading, and cheers!

Jodee