Drawing with the Mouse





1. Draw stuff
2. Post on internet
3. ?????
4. PROFIT!

Step one and two: check and double check.

Here's the fatty sitting riiiight outside the door to my room. Because he wants attention, but not cuddles. HOW CAN HE NOT LET ME CUDDLE. HE IS SHAPED LIKE A MEATLOAF. I WANT TO CUDDLE THIS FREAKING ADORABLE CAT. how dare he be so snobbish.

Appendectomy Card

Travis's brother had to have his appendix out :( I made him a card. Thought it was creative enough to share.

The little inflamed appendix is perforated so you can tear it out. PRETTY CLEVER HUH?????


And here's a quicky paper doll of Travis.


As good as the real thing! Maybe better! I'll be making more paper dolls. They are funsies.


UPDATE
To all the soa computer lab users:
Are they REALLY trying to make the sign-in sheet work? I thought only inexperienced freshmen cared enough to sign in. I mean... do we even have a lab monitor? DOUBT IT.

Black Friday is Boring

Yesterday was black Friday. Which means it was SO BORING. Because on black friday you have two options:
I kid you not, the line at Tyson's mall for the Urban Outfitters wrapped from one side of the mall to the other. I should have taken a photo, it was ridiculous. And mind you, this was for the MIDNIGHT OPENING. AND IT WASN'T EVEN 11:30. For those of you unfamiliar with Tyson's (is your home under a rock comfy?), here is a picture to help you visualize:

The smiling sun is the store that apparently sells Nirvana (now at 50% off!!). The blue dots indicate the line. At point A it wrapped around that corner then back, and at point B, the line continued from there to the doors near the exit (which is about two stores down from what is visible in this picture). RIDONK.

So today I drew mini comics. I had more scraps of paper lying around, and I figured the most non-committal way to draw stuff is on tiny bits of paper so if I mess up I won't feel like throwing things. Here are a few. The rest will come tomorrow.







Victorian Girl


Based on an image I found on Flikr. 

UPDATE: You should go check out my older sister's blog. She made the three Smelloff sisters (I included) necklaces based on our future sister tattoos. Sounds lame, looks jawesome. CHECK IT.

UPDATE UPDATE: It's a sad day.
My favorite socks...... ;________;
I thought this only happened in cartoons.

"late" "night" movie "list"

Let me tell you a story. I had a comic all lined up for today. I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (ugh) on TV and was like "JEEZ, Kiera Knightley, why that pinched expression? Aren't you enjoying your time swashbuckling on a boat?" So I decided to make a comic about her face. HILARIOUS, RIGHT?

I even drew it out! But the last panel, which was just going to be a close up of her duck face, made me realize something. She is VERY. HARD. TO. DRAW. Especially in just black and white. I could not get her nose right (which is a very vital part of the duck-face expression). And every time I tried to fix her lips, she ended up looking more and more like a mustachio-d Angelina Jolie.

YEESH.

So I'm sparing you all from this atrocity of art. So here's a list of movies you should watch instead of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. (see them after the cut)

The Godfather

Um.. I really have no logic behind this. It was supposed to look like the horse head scene, but I'm not sure you can even tell the dude is in a bed. woopsieeeee P_P
Also, I'm trying out a different way of drawing my comics because I was getting bored LOL

Mini drawings

Here are a couple drawings that I put on those little scraps of paper. They are the same size in real life as they are on screen. More to come when I cut more paper!



And in this one we see the face I made when I saw how many views my Birthday Pony comic from yesterday got after my friend Drew posted it on Reddit:

(My head is not usually this pointy. Only when I am surprised.. it's a safety mechanism.)

Cards

Yeah, yeah, I'm late. Again. Sorry :( But I had a legitimate reason for not posting! Here is what I've been making all day:


Business cards! They have the (hand carved and stamped) web address for my Etsy shop. I'm going to be part of a local craft fair, so I figured I needed something people could walk away with even if they didn't buy anything. What better way to deplete my art supplies than by making tons of business cards from scratch?! I carved the stamps and that took the most time to do. The little url was a bitch to carve... the letters are so tiny.

But I am darn proud of these!! Look at the little fish skeletons! LOOK!
 Also, the paper scraps created from chopping the paper were these adorably sized things that I feel compelled to use somehow. I'm thinking itty-bitty drawings? Maybe I'll try to sell em when they're done. Would anybody want one for like, 4 dollars? (1 1/2" x 2")

Influence Map

I'd seen this meme floating around and thought it looked like fun. And since I spent the night quietly ignoring the immense amount of work that had to be done, I figured I might as well be productive while I procrastinate (oxymoron?!). The artists are not sized/ordered by level of influence.


1) Judy Love
She illustrated the best book I have ever read: The Treasure Tree. It was pure ink drawings with watercolor washes, and they were beyond dazzling. This is the art that made me want to become an artist. Nothing I've ever made has been able to compare to how beautiful I found her pictures when I was little. She made shiny things look SO DAMN SHINY! I still can't figure it out.

She's an artist I found around the interwebs years ago, and I just fell in love with the way she draws lines on figures. Everything is curvy and exaggerated and in constant motion. I study her drawings to get a grasp on how to make arms and legs stay believable while being distorted.

Another internet find. Her comics are beautiful. Touch Food is by far my favorite, just because of how easily she makes it creepy. She is also a GOD at drawing fingers. If I ever draw a graceful lady, it is because I want to draw like Jen Wang. Her older stuff (IMO) is her better stuff.

She's a comic artist (who actually went to school for it!) I found on the web. She has this clean, almost stiff way of drawing that I wish I could mimic. She's not one of those messy drawers (guilty); even her sketches come out looking tidy and easy to understand. Lucy's ability to draw environments in comics makes me so jealous!! It's something I'm always trying to pick up from reading her stuff.

Hm, I'm sensing a pattern. Yet another artist from the internet! Vera does drawings of the absolute daintiest ladies and outfits. Her stuff is all really stylized and cutesy. Utterly adorable. She is why I love to draw pudgy girls and legs. (I really, seriously do not intend for that to sound creepy)

My hero! After noticing she has found such fame with her hastily drawn comics and SPOT ON facial expressions, I got waayy more comfortable with my sloppy art. I always wanted to draw nice and clean (see #4), but that does not, unfortunately, come naturally. So besides the fact that Kate's comics are smart, witty, and have perfect comedic timing, I feel a bit of camaraderie in the style department! Messy comic artists, UNITE.

7) Gustav Klimt
A master, plain and simple. He's kind of a cross-over influence between my comic-artist side and my fine-artist side. His lines and stylization are always perfect. He can render the female form with barely any value changes or lines, but still retain a sense of realism. He's also who I look to for color advice. Orange, gold, purple and aqua? Klimt says "GET IT GURL"

8) Pauline Baynes
So I read a lot, and the Narnia series of books were my favvvvvvorites when I was younger. Mostly because of the pretty pictures. Even the little tiny doodles that were done of the nymphs or of Tumnus were lovely! She was a master with pen and ink, and I hold her in as high/higher regards as I do Aubrey Beardsley (yeah I said it).

Liberty Meadows was the all time best comic in the newspapers. He could draw realistic women as well as that dumb pig and chimp and I loved him for it. The best strips were the ones that would have no storyline, just an intricately executed drawing (usually of a busty woman in some sort of flowing dress; typical) and the words "breaking in the new pens". For some reason, that was a source of inspiration. Go ahead and ruin your new pens if it's fun! Draw the things you like to draw, and draw them alot! You can never stop learning about technique!!!

10) Marissa Moss
Okay, if you were at one time a female child and read even one issue of the American Girl magazine, you know about Amelia's Notebooks. They were SO. COOL. If I hadn't given them back to the friend who loaned them to me, I would keep a stupidly tall stack of em in my room to read over and over and over. They were basically the illustrated diaries of "Amelia", a very typical 8-11 year old girl. But she drew in her diaries. So each page would be brimming with clumsy illustrations of the stories she was telling, or diagrams explaining her predicament of the week. They were brilliant. Most memorable page? Amelia "taped" a pot of lipgloss to one of the pages. The illustration was so well done that I would have given anything to have torn that lipgloss from the page and used it everyday. The illustrated journals I've kept for years are intentionally influenced by Amelia's Notebooks. Touche, Marissa Moss. TOUCHE.

11) Gary Larson
He so funny. I only appreciate my lardo of a cat because of Gary Larson, and I consider the Holy Grail of comic writing to be his one-panel captions. Cow Tools is the story of my life.

12) John Singer Sargent
Possibly my all time favorite artist?? YES MOST LIKELY. I don't know what to say except he's The Master. I hope my fine-art talent can one day exist somewhere in the same galaxy of Sargent's talent. (P.S. I consider him the biggest advocate for muted color palettes. So subtle! It's highly effective!!)


Weelllllllllllll that was my longest post ever! I hope there's a new artist on this list for you to look at :)

toot

true story. just happened.

monday, monday..


Sorry, this is a bit later in the day than usual! 
I'm getting tempted to chop off all my hair again. Someone convince me not to...

NEWW was awesome!! Got to see Kate Beaton, Dylan Meconis, Erika Moen, Lucy Knisley, and the minds behind Abominable Charles Christopher, Dinosaur Comics, and Bobwhite! I didn't get to see John Allison (Bad Machinery).. even though he was suppooosseedd to be there... no matter! I got a picture with Kate Beaton!!1!

Meet the Artist

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Northern Virginia, United States
My name is Rachel. I like cats, bagels, reading, and the Oxford comma.

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