Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Exile Master Post



The Exile is unweildy to read on blogger, so I thought I'd gather it together in one master post. Now that it's finished, it's not too horrible. If you'd prefer a traditional webcomics interface, try my comics tumblr.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Uniform Fitting



This is a piece for 1879. The brief called for a woman being fitted for a British lieutenant's uniform. I wound up doing more research on the seamstress's dress than I did for the military uniform (which was fairly easy to find). I also kind of queered this up, given the expression on the soldier's face. Nothing overt, though.

Brush and ink and Pitt pen on Bristol board.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Britta

Britta


This is from the life drawing session I went to yesterday. Watercolor on 140 lb. Canson watercolor paper.








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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Ivanna and the Wolf sketch



A warm-up watercolor sketch this morning for the Ivanna and the Wolf project I'll be starting soon (I hope). Plus, I just bought some new watercolor paper that I haven't tried before and I wanted to see how it fared. It's not bad, though my watercolor chops are reallllly rusty right now. Also feeling out the style I want to use on the project. I think I'm going to go a bit more cartoony.

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Sci-Fi Illustrations



These are a couple of illustrations I've done for a science fiction novel. I'm on the hook for five of these and the cover. Here are the two I've scanned for the client so far. I should have been done with these last week, but I suffered a blow to the head last month that scrambled my ability to draw for a week or two. I think I'm better now.

Brush and ink and Pitt pen on bristol.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Miscelaneous Life Drawings

I've been going to life drawing sessions the last few weeks. Here are a couple of the drawings I've made there.


This model was extremely pregnant. She gave birth two weeks after the session.



Both of these are of the same model on different days. Pitt pen with no underdrawing on the first. Red col-erase Prismacolor pencil on the second.










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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Girl with Umbrella

Girl With Umbrella by Christianne Benedict

I've been having a bit creative block recently. Every time I've started drawing, what I'm drawing has turned to crap on the page. This drawing is an attempt to move beyond that. It's nothing in particular, based on a photo from The Sartorialist. It's mostly a intended to demonstrate to myself that I haven't in fact forgotten how to draw. This is brush and ink on Bristol board. It's for sale at my Etsy store if you like it enough that you want to own it.

Meanwhile, my comics Kickstarter is entering the long middle slog until the end. Check it out here.






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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Shameless Self-Promotions: The Long Delayed Exiles Kickstarter

So after months of foot-dragging, I've finally got this going: I have a Kickstarter. I'm trying to fund a collection of my transgender-themed comics (some of which you can read here). If it seems like I'm trying my level best to avoid doing nine-to-five work between Patreon and this, well, you would be correct. Ideally, I'll never have to go back to the capitalist employment model ever again. In the mean time, I have to sell myself to you, dear potential patron. Anyway, I've put a lot of work and love into this comic. I don't think you need to be trans to enjoy it (I have it on the authority of my cis friends that it reads pretty well). It IS pretty sexually explicit, but hopefully not exploitative. Anyway, check it out and back it if you like what you see.


Monday, August 25, 2014

Exiles Cover

Exiles Cover


This is the cover for my forthcoming comic. Kickstarter to follow sometime this week, I hope. Adobe Illustrator.












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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Euphoria

Euphoria by Christianne Benedict Page 1

Euphoria by Christianne Benedict Page 2

This is slightly autobiographical. For the first two years I was taking estrogen, I usually got a wave of euphoria as it hit my blood stream. I still get that feeling occasionally, but it has tapered off some over time as I've gotten used to it. In any event, this is brush and ink on bristol. Mostly hand-lettered, too, because I'm a glutton for punishment.








Patreon Logo
I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Monday, July 21, 2014

The Courtship of Doctor Doom


This was done for Tenebrous Kate's Dream Dates with Fictional Villains 'zine, which is coming soon. The working title was originally "Bah! Doom Does Not Engage in Foreplay!" Brush and ink and Pitt pens on Bristol board.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Nat and Alex


Here's a watercolor I did this weekend to get back into practice. Damn, I'm rusty.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Dream Date With Doctor Doom WIP




I signed up to participate in a zine wrangled by my friend, Tenebrous Kate. The premise is "Dream Dates with Fictional Villains." I picked Doctor Doom. The original title was to be "Doom Does Not Engage in Foreplay," but I also thought about "Foreplay is for the Fool, Richards!" The title is still in flux. Anyway. This is my elaborate scripting process. This is actually more than I often do when scripting comics. A lot of the time, I use stick figures. Anyway. This is pencil on a stray comic book backing board, which I find is the ideal surface for doing thumbnails for comics.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Ragdoll



This is a long delayed continuation of my drawings of Gail Simone's Secret Six as if they were Archie characters. I'm not entirely sure if this is Jughead cosplaying as Ragdoll or Ragdoll cosplaying as Jughead. Either way, it amuses me. Brush and ink and Prismacolor markers.

Friday, June 13, 2014

Long Live the New Flesh, part 2



Welp, here's the James Woods half of this equation, the companion piece to Debbie Harry. Adobe Illustrator CS4.

This is available as prints or on mugs and t-shirts and iPhone cases and whatnot at my Society 6 store. Also available without the text. I put both portraits sans text on one mug if you want to economize. Here's the link to that.









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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Exile Page 15


So, after being waylaid by plagues of insects, pestilence, penury, and self-loathing, this is finally done. There will be another page of this eventually once the forthcoming Kickstarter resolves because I need a filler page to make the double-page spread on page 7 and 8 printable as such. It doesn't affect the story at all, so if it never gets funded for print, it'll never get drawn, either, and no one will be the wiser. There will also be a related piece of art--probably a watercolor painting--for a cover for the print edition. But that's all for the future.

Many thanks to Katie Zall who was very patient with this process given the various disasters that befell me over the last year. Many thanks, also, to everyone who read this story and offered feedback. In particular, thanks go to Shelly Jarenski, Renee Knipe, and J. Luis Rivera who all contributed something to the project.

As always, you can read the entire thing at once on the Exile master post, or, if you prefer, I've set up a webcomics tumblr if you'd like to read this and my other comics in a common webcomics interface. Entirely up to you.  If you'd like to support my comics, consider pledging to my Patreon. If you're intimidated by all the stuff I post every month, you can cap your pledge at whatever is comfortable for you. Regardless, this story will remain free to read on the web given that my target readership is as destitute as I am.

Next? Hell if I know. I have some ideas...





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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.



Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Exile Page 14


This page has been done for a bit. I've been holding onto it like an idiot on the assumption that I can get better value out of it depending on when I post it thanks to the way that Patreon works. I'm an idiot, because it doesn't freaking matter. If I posted this when it was done, it would have kicked one of my other art posts into this slot. So Katie can get a check from me and all will be ducky. There's one-ish page left of this story and I should have it done in a day or two. As usual, you can read the entire thing at once here. This page is a return to explicit sex, so it's behind the cut.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Creepy Crawlies


Here's the last batch of creatures for my big commission. I'm finished. Finally. These last ones tended to be creatures I had no real grasp of. I don't know how closely these match what the game developers had in mind, but this is what they got from me, barring any unforeseen revisions. As usual, these are brush and ink on bristol. By the time I got to these, my inking style was beginning to become a bit more design-y than on the earlier drawings, but it works well enough.

The creature at the head of this post is based on a scorpion and a centipede, but it's a fantasy creature at its core. I had a hard time envisioning this one, even after I was provided with some older concept drawings.


This was an excuse to draw a human being after drawing so many creatures. Another creature based on a centipede, though one that spits acid.


This is an amalgam of a number of different creatures, mainly crabs, spiders, and scorpions.


Finally, a plant. This turned out better than I expected. All those years spent drawing botanical illustrations pays off.







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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Creatures and Textures


Here are more creatures. By this point, I was exhausted, so some of these aren't all that I want them to be. All of these are examples of me working out how to create certain textures with pen and ink. India ink is such a binary medium, sometimes.

The beastie at the head of this post is a kind of anteater whose hide is covered with rocky scales. I tended to approach drawing this guy as if he was Ben Grimm, the Thing, from The Fantastic Four. I envision this guy as being orange for some reason.
This is a fire-breathing lizard. A salamander in the classic sense of that word. Based on a couple of different monitor lizards, including the Komodo dragon. Drawing the scales on this was an exercise in tedium. Creating art is a job, after all, and all jobs have long periods of tedium. I'm sure I spent way more time on this than I probably should have.
The brief for this was for a six-legged cross between a boar and a horse. Weird. Not entirely unsuccessful. The game this is for is partially a miniatures game and I've seen the green for the miniature this corresponds with. While I was drawing it, I thought of this guy as a hipster boar for some reason. I think it's the beard.
Finally, something legitimately alien. These beasties are a land-based coral that create gravel around themselves. Another drawing where I spent a lot of time on tedious details. This one indulges in pointilism, which is always a chore to draw. I like the end result. I sometimes like the idea of being an artist even when I hate creating art.

Only a few more to go after these, and then it's back to comics.







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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.






Monday, May 12, 2014

Beware the Jub Jub Bird...


Some more creatures as this project grinds toward its end. I'll have a couple of more creature posts in the next day or three. The image at the head of this post is a winged carnosaur. Fanciful. In the game, it's called a Jabberwock, which I guess I can see. Fun to draw in any event.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Send in the Cavalry (More creatures)


Here are some more drawings for my current commission. The piece at the head of this post is a saurian cavalryman. The one below is a British cavalry man on an unconventional mount.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Creatures de Jour


So my inking brush crapped out and I had to buy a new one. The piece at the head of this post is drawn with the new brush, and it's been a life saver. I hadn't realized how miserable I was fighting with the old one to get a good line. The art store was out of the brush I wanted, so I settled for a Loew and Cornell brush. I'm having the damnedest time finding Winsor and Newton brushes right now. Grrrr....

Anyway, I'm finding a groove with these drawings. Brush and ink on Bristol board, as usual. The drawing in the pole position is described as a giant spiky insect. It has other effects in the game, but those don't really influence the depiction.

This is a variant of a bombadier beetle, whose poison actually ignites on contact with the air. A dangerous beastie.


This is a horse that's bred to be more like a pachyderm, with feet that are more like those of a rhino than a horse.


And another flying dino, one that is described as "storklike."



Enjoy.




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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Another Creature Post


More creatures. I'll be working on this commission for a while. There are 47 drawings in the project and I'm only half-way through right now. Once this is done, it's the end of the Exile and then a couple of other projects I can't talk about right now. Anyway, these are ink on Bristol board as usual. I've been fighting with my inking brush, which is probably on its last legs. I don't think it has much life left in it, unfortunately.

The image at the head of the post is a sabertooth, of course, in the game itself described as having stripes. I've gone for more of a bobcat look than a tiger look, but it's hard to avoid the comparison. Stripes and all.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Even More Creatures and Such



My partner and I went to see Tim's Vermeer this weekend (a film I wrote about back in March after seeing it at True/False). One of the things that the film does well is demonstrate that even when you're using mechanical shortcuts, making art can be incredibly tedious. In the film, Tim spends over a week painting dots to represent the weave of a carpet. I can sympathize with him. Art is hard, boring work sometimes. Some people romanticize art, especially if they themselves are accountants or actuaries or some similarly mundane profession, but let me assure those people: my job can be just as mind-numbingly dull as yours.

A case in point is the above drawing for my current commission. It's a lizard. Sure. You would think drawing a lizard would be fun. But look at what I've done to represent scales. Nothing but dots. I don't know how Drew Friedman did it for all those years without going bonkers. Fortunately, I like the end result.

In the game mechanics, the lizard lives in this bush, which is based on an aloe plant.



And just to assure you that art is also often fun, there's this. It's an exploding ant (which has some basis in nature). This came together really fast, in part because part of it entailed splattering ink on the page, which is always a blast. I know a lot of people roll their eyes at the artistic worth of Jackson Pollock, but his methods are a gift to artists of all kinds. Seriously.




Anyway, enjoy.




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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.