Christianne's Art and Comics

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Late August Art Dump

I've been making a lot of art this month, but a lot of it is stuff I can't show. That hasn't stopped me from going to my regular figure drawing sessions, though, and here are a bunch drawings from those sessions I attended this month. The drawing at the head of this post is pencil and almost dry Copic markers on sketchbook paper. Dry copics have their uses, but I think I need to refill mine.

More Recent Life Drawings...

Star, graphite pencil on watercolor paper

I've been posting a lot of life drawings lately. The reason for this is twofold: first, the stuff I would ordinarily be posting--stuff for my current illustration clients--is under a non-disclosure agreement until publication. Second, I'm really digging my life drawing sessions. Anyway, here are some recent ones.

Still More Life Drawings

Some more drawings from my weekly life drawing sessions. Col-erase Prismacolor on Blick sketchbook paper and pencil on Blick scetchbook paper. Pretty scribbly. I tend to be an impatient artist.

Creative Process (or "Stealing Like An Artist")

I'm deep into an illustration gig right now, and unfortunately, I can't show much of it. I'm gonna show this piece, though, because it's got a fun story behind it.

The description for this drawing wanted a Chinese man, dressed simply, kneeling in front of a shrine and cutting away vines that had overgrown it. Behind the shrine was to be a plague demon. The shrine was easy enough to think up. This doesn't have any photo references. I just drew it from my head. The plague demon was another matter. I didn't want to step on the toes of a certain very litigious game company who have a prominent plague demon in their IP, so I asked my client for some guidance. He suggested I look at viruses. So I did. I looked at Ebola. I looked at streptococcus (which is technically a bacterium), I looked at HIV. None of them really fired my imagination. But then I remembered this thing, which I ran across for another project last year.

This is the penis of a bean weevil. The bean weevil, like many insects, reproduced by "traumatic insemination," in which the penis penetrates the carapace and spews reproductive materials all over the insides of its "partner." Basically, they're rapists. Insects are fucked up. Serious nightmare fuel.

In any case, this photo accompanied one of the wikipedia articles and I knew I had to save it for my morgue, because that's a Lovecraftian horror, right there. I wound up flipping it for my drawing. Flipping images is a common practice among artists who want to disguise their source, but for me, for this drawing, I flipped it because I already drew the other main figures and I wanted it facing them. Besides, I'm owning up to the swipe right here, and it's an image in the creative commons of wikipedia anyway, so I don't need to disguise it. I'd feel bad about it if I hadn't run across a blog post about the great French cartoonist, Moebius, and his use of photo references. I'm not in his class, but, hell, if it's good enough for Jean Giraud, it's good enough for me.

Anyway, my drawing is brush and ink on bristol.

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Friday, June 5, 2015

Male Nude

After months of female models, we finally got a male model for my life drawing group. I was pretty happy to be drawing this guy. He had great muscle definition and it wasn't a reclining pose for a change.

Pencil on sketchbook paper.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Dark Dungeons Redux

This is a commissioned piece for a card game about conspiracies (the game itself is in the early stages of funding). The conspiracy in question here is the religious right's panic over role playing games in the 1980s, which they foolishly deemed Satanic. The brief suggested that I design this as if it was going to go into a Jack Chick tract, and also suggested I include some signifiers of role playing games. This was fun to draw. I love drawing horror-ish things. Brush and ink on Bristol board.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Always with the Negative Waves, Moriarty!

This is a piece I did for one of my Kickstarter backers. Very different from the other Kickstarter art, but the backer in question is a very dear friend and wanted a piece with Oddball from Kelly's Heroes. I'm torn between wanting to ink this and sell prints and the sure suspicion that I'll screw it up if I try. I'm really happy with the likeness on this piece, which is something with which I often struggle. This is going out as is, per request of my backer, who has seen it and likes it this way. You may not have seen the last of this, though.

Pencil on Bristol board.