Sarah's Sketches

Thank you Stephen for distracting the kiddos so I could color and post this. :) Hope everyone has a great holiday!

So yes, this is sort of me, because at the moment I'm nine months pregnant with baby #3 and not nearly this slim. But like the picture, I DO need a haircut. I painted this for my illustration profile for the New Leaf Literary website , where I'm now represented by the awesome Suzie Townsend . If I don't get the chance to post again before Christmas, I hope everyone has a great holiday!

My kids are in love with Miyazaki's Totoro. Lately, the Catbus is all my daughter talks about. Here's something both Totoro and Fall-inspired. :)

I like to attend my writing group with a sketchbook and handful of sharp pencils. Here are some doodles from the last few meetings.

I drew this after seeing Brave and finally got around to adding color last night. Wish my hair was this curly and this red.

After looking through some old Comic-Con finds, I drew this Chris Sanders inspired girl. I love how he makes things both solid and pudgy (especially feet!) and how delicate and confident his line work is.

I'm back! We've finished moving and my studio is all unpacked. Here's a quick sketch I did today. Hopefully a lot more new art will follow... :) Also, Austin Broder created a free rig of my 2007 caveman illustration! You can download it here.

We've been busy attempting to sell our home and buy a new one since May, so pretty much everything else in life -- including working on new art -- has been put on hold. But since I miss updating my blog, I wanted to share my sister, Laura Mensinga's amazing short film, which she shot, directed and filmed with Kirsten White . It features their bike gang/art collective The Deadly Nightshades and toured with the 2011 Bike Film Festival. I think it's awesome, and I'm excited it's now online. Enjoy. :)

Pencils for an illustration I may or may not finish. One of the challenges of parenting for me is maintaining enthusiasm for creative projects. I begin with a lot of energy and excitement, but where I used to just sit down and work on something for several hours/days until it was done, I now must work in small increments, stopping and starting over and over. After stoping and starting five or six times, it feels (even if it's not true) that the art is going nowhere and I should probably just start something new. Writing seems to be the one exception to the rule, thank goodness. And I think it's because even if I can only sit down for a half hour, I can still knock out a couple of pages and create something that, even if needs polish, still feels complete.

Don't pay attention to this first version of page five. It's horrible. But my post makes the most sense if I start with this image. Last week I was really lucky to hear Glen Keane speak. If you don't know who Glen Keane is, it would be worth your while to do some googling. He's the incredible talent behind many iconic Disney characters and his beautiful artwork has been a huge inspiration to me and many many other artists. After Mr. Keane's talk, my husband asked me how it went and I said, "Meh." At first I couldn't pinpoint why I was disappointed, I mean, Glen Keane did a great job speaking. But then I realized that a silly part of me thought that by listening to one of my art heroes speak, some of his awesomeness would rub off on me and I'd be magically transformed into a better artist. And another equally silly part of me thought I'd leave that lecture with some powerful art secret I never knew before. Ridiculous. I know. But a...

Kapow! A bat!

Recently, I had to wait in line for two-three hours to enroll my kids in preschool. Luckily I brought my sketchbook and a fistful of sharp pencils. (And some snacks and my kindle...) Not sure who this girl is, but I like that she doesn't have a traditional comic-book shape and is still pretty sexy. And here are my feet. Who needs shoes? ... and then I decided that I should probably draw my hands, because I still kind of secretly hate drawing hands. And here's a stab at a Belle sketch, to possibly follow up that Little Mermaid painting. I wish Disney marketing focused more on Belle's love of books, rather than her poofy yellow dress. Here are some random dragon creatures. And here's an unfinished fairy, because at that point I got to the front of the line! Hurrah!

Dilynn Dumlao did this cool walk-cycle of my  Egyptian Girl  design. To see more of Dilynn's artwork and animation (including some awesome My Little Pony art... a great show) go here and here!

I haven't posted a painting in a while, but I actually have been painting a lot since last summer doing freelance concept design. It was fun to sit down to paint this and realize that all that freelance work has upped my confidence when it comes to digital painting. I've done digital paintings that I've liked in the past, but I always felt that they were 20% deliberate design and 80% unpredictable blind luck. I felt entirely in control painting this. It's so nice to be at that point. Two revelations that have helped me paint better... The first: Chop the painting into a few (but not too many) logical layers. In this case, I worked with half of Ariel's hair on the top layer, her face and body on the middle layer and the rest of her hair on the bottom layer. The second: This one might be a little more complicated to explain. But here goes... and I stole this theory in part from someone at DNA Studios, but I can't remember who now. I'm sorry! Thin...