Sarah's Sketches

I don't usually post Sundays, but I'm going on vacation tomorrow! Yay! I'll try to keep up the daily post regardless, but since I'll only have my laptop with me and not all my other computer goodies (scanner and so forth), it may not work out. Since I don't like to post drawing-less, but I also have to get packing, here's some old work from my background painting class at Sheridan College. Posting this seems to hint that I may be heading off to someplace with warm sandy beaches, but no, this is more likely the chilly water of Lake Ontario. Brr!

Another story page! (Click for bigger images.) Since it's a holiday, I feel like I had a hard time focusing on drawing this properly, but oh well :) It will do for today. Now it's time to go see movies and have fun! Also, there was supposed to be a post yesterday, I quickly scribbled something as I was running out the door with a casserole and whatnot for Thanksgiving dinner, but then my computer was acting up and I didn't have time to fix things. It was our cat Winter's first Thanksgiving and he responded by not knowing what to do, skittering about our place cooing and generally being crazy. Here is the scribble so you can imagine the ruckus for yourself.

Here's November 13th's post painted.

(Click images for bigger versions.) More story! Yay! Fairytale scary! I'm trying to get these up every other day so it's easy to follow along.

Since it's about time I start doing some photo studies to better my sense of colour and whatnot in general, here's one of my younger sister at my wedding. It's based on one of my favorite pictures of her... the original snapped by the amazing Leanna Bates . Most likely I'm doing neither the photo or how pretty my sister looks in it justice, but it was a good exercise. To remove the temptation of eye-dropping the colours, I put the photo album beside my computer... rather than pull up the digital photo :) I'll hopefully do more of these quick studies in the future.

(Click images for bigger versions.) More of Dragon Girl! If you have missed parts #1 and 2, they were posted on Nov 7th and 9th. I forgot that I was doing this in a square format, so it took a bit of working to get everything in frame once I scanned it :)

Sometimes werewolves need caffeine to stay awake and be evil all full moon long. For drawergeeks tomorrow :)

The very talented comic writer/artist Mike Maihack is putting together a collection of his Cow & Buffalo (check em out!) comic strips for publication. Here is some guest art I did for the book! While you are at Mike's site, be sure to check out all his art and comics. There's a whole slew of cool stuff.

I was going to draw the next page of the Dragon Girl story today, but then as I was looking up the text of the story in my computer, I checked yesterday's comments and realized it's Jessie's birthday today! Because I met Jessie through mutual appreciation of Jimmy Neutron, I thought I'd draw something Jimmy-esque to celebrate :) The Jimmy Neutron TV show was the most fun show/film/whatnot I've ever had the chance to animate on. Even though the hours were pretty brutal, I loved how we had so much creative freedom and I loved how I got to animate so many ridiculous things. Happy Birthday Jessie!!!

So over the next couple weeks I'll be updating my portfolio... which means occasionally I'll be posting drawings/paintings that I will have spent more time on than my usual posts. Anyway, here's the line drawing for an illustration I'm working on. The image is based on one of various stories I have in the perpetual works :) It was fun to do some circus poster research for this too.

I woke up this morning feeling uninspired blog-wise, so I asked Stephen what I should draw. He made some suggestions and I drew him as he was suggesting things. It's sort of a messy painting, but it'll do for today :) Yay 100th post!

More story! Again, click the images to see a larger version :)

When you full-moon transform into a werewolf, all your clothes would probably tear off.... but maybe not your watch. (For drawergeeks this week!)

And finally, the new story! I'm trying a different format with this one, putting the text on an opposite page rather than on the drawing. Click on either image to see a bigger version. I won't have a new installment every day, but most likely every 2-3 days :)

So the last little while I've been knuckling down on a project and I'm happy to announce it's pretty much done! Yay! So be sure to check out my short story, "The Forever Box" in the fourth volume of Flight, which will be released by Ballantine Books next summer. It's my first ever contribution to the comic anthology (or any comic anthology for that matter.) I'm very very excited about it and still feel so fortunate to have been given the opportunity. If you've never read any of the Flight books, I highly recommend checking them out (here is the link to the official site.) It's been a wonderful experience, not because I adore writing stories, but I was able to work with some of the crazy talented (and very nice too) Flight authors. Now that I'll have a bit more time on my hands, tune in tomorrow for the first installment of a new blog story :)

More messing about with colour today. Could have put more detail in the hands/apple probably, but I need to get back to other work :) Stay tuned for the new blog story I promised a while ago... it's all written and ready to be illustrated. Just tying up my big project loose ends today.

(Click on image for bigger version.) So my husband Stephen was playing this game Titan Quest with some of his friends and he thought it might be fun to network our computers and play together when we felt like being lazy at home. At first I was disappointed picking the character, my choice was either an oddly thick legged roman woman or large roman man. You couldn't even change their hair colour. Boring! But then it got better... as you run about fighting zombies and medusas and the like, you pick up shmancy armor (never mind that none of it actually matches... my poor girl looks like she got dressed with a blindfold on) and you get points you can put towards special powers. I put all my points into getting summons... creatures you can magically summon to follow you around and fight with you. So I have a wolf, giggly nymph girl and death king. I imagine if real life came with magic summons it would be pretty neat. The wolf could keep the cats in line, the death king could take care...

Watch out for the vampirate, he's out for blood.