Monster Tea Party revisited.

So lately I've been putting most of my time into a piece that I started quite a while ago, and then set aside for... oh, life, and all that grown-up stuff. It's coming along nicely, but I don't quite have a finished piece to post just yet, so instead I thought I would show a little of my process work.

It started with a little doodle in one of my sketchbooks (it was so long ago that I have no idea which one it is, so at this point, I won't be posting it) that I enlarged, topped with some tracing paper, and tightened up. Then I scanned it, dropped it in Photoshop, did some minor editing, came up with a couple of color studies, and picked the one I liked best.

The last time I posted about this piece (back in January.... yipes), I had just barely begun to lay down the color layers that would (will) become the finished work. It is much, much further along now and its neat for me to see the progress that I've made on it so far. The image I posted in January was this one:

But now, after picking the project back up and working on it off and on for the past couple of weeks, it looks like this:

It's almost there.

Works in progress...

So it's a new year, and my resolution should probably be to keep up with the artistic side of my life more, and it is... somewhat.  I'm currently working two jobs and attempting to maintain a fairly decent social life, but I will continue to mash in as much art stuff as I can.  I've got a couple of projects that are in progress (they may or may not have been in this state for a while...) but I figured I would post some of them to prove that I still do artwork, despite my currently very busy state.

I started this one traditional, just as a silly doodle.  But then something happened and I decided I rather liked it and wanted to push it a bit further.  I wasn't satisfied with how the traditional one was turning out, so I decided to start a digital version as well and let it turn into whatever it would turn into.  I might try to re-do the traditional one, too.

This next project is one that I'm pretty excited about, actually, but being that it's still in just a rather fancy color study state, it's got a while to go before I'm going to call this one complete.

The time has come to talk of many things, of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, of undersea monkeys and glittery things.

Oh boy… this post is long overdue.  Life has been a bit… overwhelming as of late.  But so it goes… and, at long last, another update!  And it's more birthday presents (really, really late ones…) this time, for my littlest sister (she's 6 now).  I like to call her a Sea Monkey.  I'm not quite sure where that one came from, but then again, I'm not quite sure where most of the things that pop into my head come from.

Anyway, I fashioned a brand new monster in her honor: ZeeZee the Sea Monkey Monster (it kind of has a ring to it… right? right???).  She is the princess of alllll the Sea Monkey Monsters (there are quite a few of them, if you didn't know).

I also decided to use this as a reason to embark on one of my many new adventures: learning how to sew felt plushies.  Overall, I think she came out pretty successfully.  My seams definitely need some work, but I'm attempting to transfer my loose, slightly messy line work into my sewing… I'll get there eventually.

And one last thing… another new monster is in the works!