My Illustrative Life

This is the secret handshake, internet. Let us sort the msties from the chaff.

You see, Ironside really likes chili. He feels it is “the only food fit for man”, because it has all the right nutrients! So, chief.. what’s your recipe? What goes IN this amazing chili? We’re all dying to hear.

The first picture was referenced, the rest were referenced from the first or from memory.

OK OK I’ll give you this one for free! Because I like y’all.

Every now and then my sister comes in and says, essentially, “I’m going to a birthday party, I need you to draw me a card, I have to leave in two minutes”. So, I do it, because why not? It is a challenge.

All her buddies are turning eighteen this year, so, here we go on the one this time:

I don’t know why I am so RUDE

Well, yes I do, I just like drawing nude dudes. Non srs powermuscles ones, I mean. I find it cheerful.

Here is the old (”Classic”) version; ‘the bathing suit’:

Here is the new (”boring”) version; ‘the Chick in early 90s gritty cartoon’:

And here is my (”I just drew this in Pixen whilst waiting for my communication technology to work”) version; ‘wrestling is a Greek thing, right?’:

Yesterday my sister was watching a movie where someone went “It’s– it’s so beautiful!” and she said, “haha did you hear that? She was talking about..” And I said, “a peen?”

That was wrong, but I decided that actually, it was right.

So I drew it.

June theme: Festivals! Featuring: anecdotes of my teenaged adventures; leather; Noel Fielding. Click the picture to enjoy!

I was in London last Friday to see the Ife bronzes at the British Museum - actually I was planning to see the Renaissance sketches with my Dad, but I’m a sucker for a good sculpture and African history is really interesting and awfully neglected.

But I don’t have any pictures from that (you’ll have to visit for yourself, or google! Of course). I have pictures from the train journey there! My sister and I played the ‘make a picture from a squiggle’ game. It’s fun! Here are some of mine, from her squiggles.

And my favourite: Poopin’ man!

Some of hers:

And here’s her with a shadow-boner, and me being Hilary Swank the Next Karate Kid.

I’M TIRED

CLASSROOM ASSISTANTING IS TIRING

x_x

Today it rained, and basically all I did was help my sister revise, reward her revision with blueberry-banana fritters and readings of Dracula, and watch Film Brain & MikeJ reviews. It’s half term!

Not wearing anything new, either, though it’s in different formation.

I also drew a really old version of Prince Valiant.

Well, why not?

Why do I keep drawing my head so small?

Some days I just don’t feel like taking a photo, you know?

I hope you can read my writing. If it’s too small, click to zoom!

Just submitted another blog post for Waterscape - it probably won’t get approved until Monday. I don’t think the editors work over the weekend! You cannot fault that, of course. Oh no wait, not until Tuesday! It’s a bank holiday, of course. Anyway - look out for it next week! It’s another illustration; the second in my “good and useful times I have spent by canals” series. Because you know - I have spent a lot of times by canals (I typo’d that as CABALS, quite different!) or other waterways.

But, the picture above! A good way of showing Wot I Wore, or no? A decent way to catch up when the weather’s bad for photography maybe? There’s no colour, obviously.. The skirt’s kelly green and black (it’s featured here before a whole BUNCH of times), the jumper had a whole post to it last year - that was before it shrank, of course! Funny how much change of fit means change of meaning. It’s mostly grey, anyway. The hat’s grey with faintest hints of lime, the boots are purple, the tights black. Belt: brown.

How do you feel about the bracelet? Personally, I feel that it is SMASHING. My mum gave it to me earlier, fair out of nowhere, and it is just the right weight. And it looks like leaves!

Leaf-bracelet and green suede and grey wool, I feel I should start waling over hills and through forests and beside rivers. But instead? I shall be watching the Eurovision song contest.

I have two posts I planned to put up today - Clueless’ Makeover Movie Madness and some thoughts on posture in character design, fashion and “celebrity culture” - but they are both currently long and unfinished. Bummer!

So instead, here are some pictures that I took but don’t need for the posture post, an illustration of two, and a picture of a Victorian corkscrew. The latter is my Dad’s birthday present - the brush is to rid yourself of cork crumbs. Smart, huh? Those Victorians. If it existed, they could make it fancier.

Page one, page two, more to come;

Corkscrew!

Watching Ironside, talking to my gent about Bloody Roar, we came to thinking what if they had new outfits, a bit like outfits from the sixties?.

Bloody Roar actually has some really good character design; I like it a lot. Google Image “Busuzima” sometime. Actually no! I will show you right now. This is great work! It’s plain engaging to look at, I want that jacket, it’s an unusual fashion sub-genre to exploit, it telegraphs “this guy is weird”, it works with the fact that he can turn into a chameleon. It’s a pleasing counterbalance to his lab-based scientific career:

So anyway - I drew a couple. Simples. Tiny sketchy fun! Please try to enjoy.

Protip: Don’t paint with inks over fountain pen lineart. Because, this happens! Bleeding.

Gado (Gadeau!):

Busuzima:

Jenny, again (she is my favorite, because we have the same haircut. Yeup).

Today what I did, was I sat in the garden watching Sweet Valley High and writing up blog posts for Waterscape and getting lightly sun-altered. Then, I removed a very young blackbird from my house,

..and let out a full-grown one from the living room. Which was exciting! And then, I watched some more Sweet Valley High and did drawing practice.. with some X-Men fanart. Including the below!

This is the series I want to be reading right now. Well, actually, I maybe want to be reading the new vampire X-Men arc? I do heaaaaaart Marvel vampires, generally. But I am unkeen to touch modern Rogue/Remy interaction, because they won’t let them be happy aughhhhh.

BUT MY POINT. My point is, my favourite type of Wolverine is kid-mentor Wolverine. Growing up with the 90s series — [pause for most excellent intro]

– I always subliminally knew that Wolverine was There For Me. Or, you know, would be if he were “real”. Jubilee was a character I resented and disliked at the time (love her now!), but she served her purpose for child-me - Logan was protective of her as a girlchild, and I was one too, so I related to the character of Wolverine as a protector. When I meet or walk past muscular hairy grouchy older dudes, I have in the back of my mind, he’s looking out for me rather than eee he’s maybe scary. That’s good. That makes me a more secure person.

So it makes me sad, and eye-roll-y, that Wolvie’s biological son (I’m not forgetting the adopted daughter, she’s there too, she and Laura are just out getting groceries in the pic above) is not someone with whom he has a loving and healthy relationship. I really want that to be so! I want all of Logan’s kids to be able to look up to him and live in some great hand-built cabin and BE A FAMILY, DARN IT. People are bored as shit with xtreeeeeeeeeeeeme on-every-team Wolverine - lets bring him back to his roots (kind of his roots). Just some guy, struggling with his past, trying to make the world better for the children who depend on him.

Also I just really enjoy Daken’s design (remember how I approve of Mohawks?), feel that bisexual characters need a wider and less evil-creepy representation, and HATE CHARACTERS HAVING “RAPE” AS THEIR SUPERPOWER.

He has pheremones, you know. That he manipulates people with. Sexually. Vom.

I just want my favourite characters to be HAPPY. Is that so much to ask?

GOSH IT’S SUNNY!

When it is warm enough for shorts and my mum getting sunburned in April, something feels off. But something also feels that it is necessary to spend weekend days in the garden on one’s belly.

So, I did. More on that, and the shorts situation, later. I had.. let me see.. four books and two newspaper supplements to read Garth Nix’s Lord Sunday (thank you, beloved!), Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s New X-Men “ultimate collection v.1″ (because I only have spotty issues here and there from the Morrison run due to not always being able to get my hands on Essential X-Men, but what I have is SO GOOD), Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years (birthday present! Excellent!), Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: Calvin & Hobbes Collection (because my sister’s school was THROWING AWAY TWO HUGE COLLECTED C&H VOLUMES, CAN YOU BELIEVE, ARE THEY CRAZY), supplements from the Independent so I figured I would be doing not-much on the outwardly creative front. I figured wrongly, though.

I mentioned on twitter that I drew a princess doing carpentry earlier, and that I liked it a lot. I can’t show you the one I meant then, because it’s on a birthday card for my cousin (I don’t think she reads here.. D:), but I can show you the ones I did afterwards. It’s so pleasing! Fancy calm dresses and destructive physicality. Yeuhhhh.

I gotta look up non-euro-fairytale style princesses. I would like to make the Princess’ Woodcutting and Carpentry School open to international students, very much.

Third princess referenced from a shot of Mohammed Ali Chopping wood; the two-princess saw’s from a picture you get if you google image “two-man saw”.

Sometimes, you notice patterns.

And even if you don’t mind - or even like - the individual examples..

The trend (inclusivity and exclusivity) can really get your goat.

When this happens to me, I foight tha powahhh by setting up the H.M. Armed Forces: Enemy Fighter I gave my sister for christmas and doin’ this.

All I’m asking for is a little equality, world. I realise I shouldn’t have drawn him white.

—

Doodlebugs! Idle pen-movements whilst watching the StarTV Transformers dub and my X-Men VHS tapes.

For some reason I can only draw moomins if I make them really old and sinister!

“Life drawing” hahaha NOT EASY FROM VIDEO

So what happens if you’re drawing someone whilst gaming..

And then they start to be DEFIED by the controls and endess credits in place of story?

They like you to stop drawing, that’s what. :]