Secondlina's Panels

So, let's start with the artness!

I drew a picture of Princess Serenity and Sailor Venus looking badass. Well, Venus looks badass anyways. She looks a bit too... butch-ish. But I kinda wanted her to looked bigger and stronger then in other fanarts (I Xena-fied her or something). Plus, in their past lives, she and the other senshi are a bit older then the princess, which might explain the height difference. Anyways. It's not the great art, but I do love it so...



( Sketches and lineart below cut. )


In other news, oh god oh god, why is there so much crap on my computer? I'm slowly trying to re-build my online porfolio. It's hard to find images and decide which ones to take. I'm also in a bit of a pickle, since I seen to be lacking recent "original" art I can use. Lately, I seen to be drawing a lot of fanart or comic pages. I don't seem to be taking the time to draw original non-comic-formatted things. I really should get on that. My portfolio needs more originals...

Maybe fairy tale stuff? and some pretty ladies?

So for the next few weeks, I might be focusing on drawing some cool, non-fandom related things! If you have suggestions, let me know!

It's crazy cold today. I wish I was home in my warm bed...

- Isa

I think 2010 was a good year for me. Not the best, but good. I grew as a person. I went thru some good and bad stuff. I made new friends, lost old ones, kept good ones. But even the ones I lost are good people. I'm just not compatible with them anymore. there's no hatred though. I've got friends that love me, support me when i'm grouchy-mc-grouchypants and I got to talk to amazing artists that I adore... I even got to talk to some of my heroes. It's been a good year for me for that. And I got really better at inking. And of course, I have the most amazing significant other and parents I could ask for.

For 2011, I want to do more. I want to see all my friends. I want to develop as an artist like never before. I want to try new things. I want to get away as much as possible from the dark spot in my brain. I think i'll never get rid of the depression. It's always there. Like this black spider spreading thru my cranium, and everything it touches rots. I think i'm too much like my father. I'm going to get foul moods and be disappointed about life as much as he is. But i'm going to try to do my best to drown it in love and happiness.

In 2011, i'm going to publish books, and read books, and be the person I want to be. Because i'm tired of being my own worse enemy. And i'm buying an agenda to keep track of things and make sure I talk to everyone regularly. So, once again, thanks guys. Even if all you do is silently check out my art, I really appreciate it. I appreciate your kind words, your hilarious encouragements and that fact that you people, and many other people in "real life" are helping me become a better artist and person. Those of you in close proximity? We are SO going to have coffee together this year. At least once. WATCH ME DO IT.

I feel all my posts lately are "I'm doing this, and I love you guys". But this is really how I feel right now.

I will not be useless.

One last cool drawing before I go! I really pushed myself inking and coloring wise for this, and I have a ton of fun drawing it. It's foxikun's characters Nor and Harriet, a fairy and an orc. I love their colorful, imperfect designs. So I went nuts. See the lineart here.

 Today was brutal. I was pretty much as unmotivated as I could ever be. EVER. So yeah. I pretty much did nothing all day. Answered calls and emails from worried clients who worry about their system. Then I cleaned for a bit and ate. I my brain just started working again when I sat down at the drawing table. Today, I inked two Namesake pages and designed/sketched/inked/colored the cover for Psychopompes. Yay! I was pretty blocked about what to do with this cover. Sometimes the idea really doesn't come to you. I went thru a few cover ideas...

And ended up with this one. WHICH I ADORE.



What is it with me and skulls? characters seem a little small. I might still modify it... But it's a good start and then some. At least, it serves as a great temporary cover.

So yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't answer any emails today. Or really looked at my f-list. It was a"blah" day. 

Change is needed. Or something.

Blah. Sleep now.

*goes to her blanket cave*

- Isa

Why is this so fun to draw? I don't even knoooooow. It makes no sense!

When Vladimir Nabokov wrote "Lolita", I bet he wasn't expecting to inspire Japanese fashion movements.

I'm pissed off. My carpets are now all smelly. Due to the leaking, yellow water. I want to go complain to my landlord and pin the cleaning bill for the carpets on him. Oh, my beautiful middle eastern carpet! Noooo! I'm really hoping nothing is dripping on my drawing table while i'm away. My fury will be limitless. Link thinks the elak is due to them emptying out the radiators upstairs and doing a half-assed job. Awesome.

In funner news, i'm going to go see Inception this weekend.  Seems like a good trippy movie. I want to see it.

In just occurred to me that, since I don't have cable, I won't be able to watch the new Futuramas or the new Avatar episodes when they come out. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I think there's a few places I can find them online, but most of those places don't allow you to watch if you are in Canada. *sniffles*

- Isa

Once more, it takes other people's eyes to get me to see obvious things *laughs*

In the last post where I whined about my coloring, the following points were brought up as a list of ways I could make it better :

- Fill backgrounds with lines, background elements or textures
- Work on the mood rather then exact coloring things (aka my sky is blue because skies are suppose to be blue)
- Keep shadowing discreet so it doesn't overpower the inking
- Dark ink lines should be associated with darker colors, or at least surrounded by darker colors (if the character is pale)
- work in various shades
- If the drawing is mostly white, do strong color accents.

I tried applying all the things you guys said in a test. Here it is!



I'm quite happy with the result. The drawing looks nice and the coloring looks nice too. What do you guys think?

I shoudl have seen this before. My "How to train your dragon" fanart that everybody adored was composed of dark colors. I basically need stuff to look balanced in relation to the strong, gritty, inked lines.

I still want to learn how to color the "painterly way" so that I have more then one coloring style. With more then one coloring style and more then one drawing style I will be UNSTOPPABLE !!!!! (MWAHAHAHAHA)

*************

This weekend, I went to a convention meeting and friend's birthday. I'm going to be working at a Montréal convention called geek fest. Hosting a little drawing activity. It was a fun meeting. A lot of my suggestions were very appreciated!

The birthday party was for a college friend called Julie. It was also fun. The food was great! Thoguh it made me realise why I never eat in restaurants anymore. I can barely finish half my plates. I'm just not a big eater anymore.

During the con meeting, sketches were made. Behold :

( Sketchiness )

Okay, so i'm like... very positive right now. Thank you guys. You are all made of awesome.

- Isa

Reh. Yeah, that solution seems really obvious now. The thing is, I usually use traditional mediums (read : watercolors and inks), so I kinda usually color by hand in between the clean pencil lines and the inking step. So I never really used blue pencil, only normal pencil, because you don't really want blue lines behind your watercolors. However, this would be a great time-saving method for digital art, such as the Namesake comic pages.

I guess it takes someone who draws and models on a computer to point it out.

No, I never learned animation or comic-drawing, so I think this is an honest mistake. And a great discovery! Good god does this ever make things faster! The finished pages look less pretty on paper (plenty of blue and ink) but since they are designed for the computer...

On another subject, I discovered Florence and the Machines 's cd "Lungs" which as really interesting music! The singer is intense and puts a lot of energy in the song. You can really feel the beat and the emotion. My favorite songs are "Cosmic Love", "Howl" and "Drumming song". Most of her songs start off slow and get really dynamic at the end. I really like that! Look her up, you guys!

-Isa

p.s. I tagged everything on the journal! I did! I've only got half a year to tag left. I tagged about 300 posts up to now. And I plan to finish. So enjoy the tags :D

Mwahaha. Just for you, Link.
You know, If I was really cruel, I would have resized this comic.

Yes, I love you too XD

As for this next drawing, I blame a certain someone. That's right. A certain someone who writes certain things of a certain nature. A certain someone knows who she is, her and her lemony ways. Her and her bunny, lemony, fangirly ways. Her and her bunny, lemony, fangirly ways that distract me from work.

I blame her.

It's cruel. 

But at the same time, I think she enjoys taking the credit.

Behold


Aside from that, I hate university homework. I takes forever. I worked all day and I din't finish anything. I got ONE thing almost finish though.

aaaah, the days where an essay could be written in 3 hours. I miss those.

-secondlina

Truly, this is a good name for this post, because it's going to be about a lot of things past.

Well, I haven't posted in a while (I blame my education *laughs*) and I though about posting something for Valentines day but I din't because of lack of time (exam to prepare, volonteer at a valentines day party to get money for stuff) and also because I didn't have an idea.
Now I had one, here it is :


Yes, it's two people kissing. I found these two pictures while goig through the pile of stuff on my desk. The interesting thing is that the colored one is a really old picture and the other is fairly recent (a few weeks back). I remember when I did the colored one, I was about 15 or 16. Maybe 17. Back then I hated drawing people kissing. I was no good at it, for one thing, and also I felt I was invading the character's privacy (yes, I created them, and yet I felt that way. Weird huh?) Nowadays, I don't feel quite so shy towards my characters. I believe it is due to my own life experiences and also to the fact that I've done a few naked drawings, some of them with a naked model before me (horray for life drawing classes) so...Drawing people kissing just dosen't seem so bad anymore. I've also practised drawing people kissing a lot to the demand of my friend and partner in crime who designs comic bok stories with me. I think I got better. The second drawing is clearly more dynamic. I still like the first one a lot though. Back then, that was one of my absolute bests shots at drawing kissing (that drawing took for ever!) and I also really love the characters in the colored one. It's and angel and a devil, and in the storyline actually illustrated here, the demon goes back to hell and the angel, with the help of an half-angel, deguises herself to go find out why the demon left her and their friends on earth. They eventually meet in hell, and the demon confesses his love for the angel, and tells her he left because their relantionship would never work and he just could not take that. 

The second drawing is a couple from a series we are working on now. It's a couple that hooks up fairly early in the story while the other couples don't hook up before a while. However, they may be cute and cuddly, they won't have it easy! When you're a wizard couple, hell thends to get in the way of alot of stuff. I rather like that coupe too.
Both drawings have a very different tension in them. One is very dynamic, and the other more painful. Hee. Like'em.

Other then that, on valentines day, my antivirus went viral. I kid you not. It was designed for windows 98 and I have xp, so it started going coo-coo this week and decided to give me the full blown insanity on that day. After a lot of effort and help from people with better computer knowledge then me, we finally managed to delete the evil anti-virus (it was hard and long) and I downloaded a temporary trial version of another until I get down to buying a new one. I've got 3 months to do so...

On a final note, i'm an idiot, and I'm very sorry. I was supposed to spend valentines day with someone I really wanted to see, but instead I called the poor guy up and told him not to come by since it was stupid because it was snowing, and a long bus trip for barely any time together. I also felt sick, had homework and school in the morning and so did he. I realise now that was stupid, because I ruined my day (and his) and got really nothing good out of it. I also lisened to a few people I know compain about valentines day and I realised that hating that day on the account of bad memories was an awful reason. It's easy to cure that with good memories after all, if I wasen't such a stubborn, prideful, idiotic woman.

*ahem* Well, if your reading this, do you forgive me?