Published on
July 28, 2010 in
Cartoon, Plain Paper, Requested and Sketch.
Tags: adorable, animal, bear, biro, crosshatch, Cute, hatching, kawaii, panda, pandas, pen, Sketch, Sweet.
So here is a quick panda I drew for a friend of mine, Andel Rhiadra! I asked her what I should draw today; I am not surprised that ‘panda’ was the answer. She is obsessed. I think if she could have a pet panda, it wouldn’t take long until she stole one from the zoo and set it up with some bamboo in the guest room, with much fawning and petting. I’m not even sure if a panda would let its kidnapper pet it… but… I’m sure she’d try!
Today, alas, is more studio/house cleaning, along with much-needed work on my site. I know that nothing can be seen of it yet, but things are a’changin’! So far though, it has been upgrading and updating all the back-end stuff before getting to the fun things. No point in painting a house all pretty if it is going to fall down in the next gust of wind, right? Right.
One of the things that I’ve updated which will have an immediate effect on those visiting the site is that I have installed a captcha device on comments. I know it is a pain, but my spam filters are getting hundreds of comments trapped in them per day… and it is just way too much effort to try and go through them all to sort out if any are legitimate comments. I know it is an extra half-step, but I hope it doesn’t bother you too much.
If someone could post a legitimate comment to test it out, that would be awesome. If it continues to deter spam postings, perhaps I can turn off the need to manually approve comments altogether! Yay!
There is a badge press in the mail, and I am going to have sooooo much fun with it. I can make a badge for any occasion! Husband a little stinky? That could be a badge. A friend does something awesome? I can send them a badge to celebrate! My sister aces a test? I can write ‘Accounting Genius’ on a piece of paper, cut it out, and pin it to her shirt to show her just how proud I am rather than saying it just like everyone else.
So I’m going to go ahead and start doing a little designing before it gets here. I have a feeling that this is going to be the basis for my first badge. For some reason I just feel the need to be all cute and couplesie by having a badge featuring a cartoon version of my husband on it. I can put it on my bag!
So yes… if you happen to see a few roundish sketches over the next few days, do not be alarmed: I have not suddenly found myself lacking the ability to draw in a non-round format, I’m just floating ideas for cute little badges for most any occasion!
Published on
July 25, 2010 in
Cartoon, Jenny, Plain Paper, Portraits and Sketch.
Tags: bows, Cute, hair, Jenny, kawaii, mother, mum, sour, Sweet.
Hi Mum!
So this may well be the first time that my mother has sat down and read through some of my blog. If she decides to go through post by post, she’s going to be reading for quite a while. When this post is finished, it will be number 347! That, to me at least, is a lot of posts!
Oh, and don’t worry, Mum… Jenny is just pretending to be sour. She isn’t really.
That got me to thinking – what is my mother going to think? What is she going to be faced with, assuming that she has at least a brief look through all 347 posts?
Flies. She’s going to be faced with flies. And faces. And owls, and rats, and most definitely bunnies, too. There will be dandelions, daydreams, and random musings on characters which have only really ever existed in my head and on the piece of paper scanned in for that particular post. She’ll even be faced, on more than a couple of occasions, with Jenny. Honestly, I think she’s going to come to the conclusion that I am quite random indeed!
Does your mum read your blog?
Today’s sketch is somewhat of a sneak peek at something that I am cooking up… sorta. It might take a little while longer until the finished product is ready!
I am trying to get into the habit of creating more ‘finished’ work. I love sketches – adore them to bits… I think that there is a wonderful immediacy, sense of movement and style that comes with swift pen-strokes, guide marks and all the little errors that go into making a picture. I believe it to be an art of its own. That said, I’ve neglected doing anything really ‘finished’ for quite a while.
I think, in part, it has to do with the fact that I love sketching – and I also love the finishedness (that totally isn’t a word) that comes with completing a truly great sketch. You know, at that point, that the sketch is the best it is going to be. Perhaps it could be further enhanced by doing something derivative from it, but the reality is that putting it into any other form will change it.
For today though, I am going about it differently. The idea came first, the internal visualization came second, the sketches were actually only a nutting out of the final product because I work better with a good solid base (it lets me sort out some of the bigger problems ahead of time and sort out the general foundation of the picture) than starting from scratch trying to work immediately on the vectors.
I think that going into the sketches knowing that they are really only a rough guide for another work makes it easier to detach myself from them. When I sketch to produce a… well… ‘finished sketch’ it is different from when I am sketching to produce something else. I don’t know exactly what it is that defines that difference though – perhaps a measure of investment, or an understanding of the clear potential it has as a product in another form. Either way… hopefully the finished pictures for which this sketch was a quick study for will be up in a few days.
I had to sketch some chicks for a little design I was working on, and this was one of the ones that I didn’t actually go ahead and use.
Can you believe it? He’s so darn cute even I can’t believe that I didn’t use this one… but hey, I’m sure I can come up with something for him later. I might post the design I did actually come up with at another time, but for now I am still putting final touches on it. It’s a picture inspired by one of my darling husband’s recent (and not so recent, really) catchphrases.
I think the reason I didn’t actually use this little guy is because one of the others was significantly more chirpy (pun intended). This little chick seems somewhat more… hmmm… sad, I guess. Either way, I still love him to bits!
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