puppy

puppy.

I'm starting to slow down, like way down. I'm in the last month of my pregnancy and I was already prepared to accept that I probably wouldn't be pumping out weekly illustrations anymore, but the change is even more dramatic than I had prepared for. It's hard to get work done right now, REALLY hard. I'm doing my best, but it's slow going, and I think May and June are going to be very slow for work. I'm freelance and I'm not really taking maternity leave, since I work from home, but it seems to be happening naturally.

dogs

doing some sketches for a new project for a friend of mine.

dragon knight

A little dragon knight for my wednesday warmup. I saw that myths and legends was covering gawain and thought "I should draw a knight" and this is what happened.

Dog

The border collie is unsettled by the depths of the ocean.

Tuesday fox

warmup sketch for today. The blossoms are all blooming around here.

Juicy water reflections

working on the kids book

Happy monday

Sketching to start off the week. 

kids book progress

It's slower going than I'd like, but still, I'm happy with the colors so far.

Ronaldo

My husband started a new job at Nike. In his office, there's a huge poster of Ronaldo from when he played for United. He's my favorite soccer player to make fun of. I like him, but as a Barcelona fan it's too easy to make fun of his expressions while he's in a game, and I found the super serious "look how cool he looks" poster funny considering how he usually looks on my television. So I did a sketch.

kids book spread progress

I'm sick guys. It's the worst. Being 7.5 months pregnant and having a head cold is not highly recommended. BUT! There's still work to do, and I have to do something while drinking a crazy amount of tea so hopefully I can get this spread done this week. Rough start to the week.

me

caught this girl at a soccer practice last year that my son was at. As I was going through photos looking for something else, I felt I related to her overall displeased expression, especially paired with the flower crown. 

Today's sketches. The first are a set of dragons I did while at my son's jiu jitsu class. I'm kind of happy with one of these, and may turn it into an illustration.

Also went to my husband's soccer game, so I got some gestures in. These are always tough cuz the players are actually moving around kinda quick, so I have to try to remember the position and get it down before I forget what they're arms and legs were doing.

And I'm doing spread 2 for the kids book. This one I'm excited about because it's a lot of detail I think will be fun.

Sketching

Sketching while my kid is at jiu jitsu

new painting

new painting! I did this one right after Emerald City but it ended up taking me slightly more than 2 weeks due to my mom getting here, lots of doctors visits now that I've hit the third trimester and just general prepping for baby stuff. I tried a new technique based on kevin wada for this piece but found it didn't feel comfortable and didn't really work for my style. This is why the colors in this piece are a bit different than my other ones. Still I'm happy with it. I like the theme of it, I like the concept of this kind of warrior/tiger energy moving forward in the face of doubt and fear, maybe I'm trying to channel some of that now that I'm about to have a kid and all of that. Enjoy!

french town

Just a little building sketch today. Enjoy!

Crocodile gardener

It's SPRING!

It doesn't entirely feel like it yet, but still... I'm excited. I'm ready.

I was trying to straighten out my backyard, and then saw a reddit post about some guy who got attacked by an alligator. Also my mom is driving to me from my home state of Louisiana (which has lots of alligators) and somewhere in my head a cocktail formed when I sat down to sketch and a reptilian gardener came out. Enjoy!

Legion fanart

Today was crazy. My dog had dental surgery, I had a doctor's appointment, I had to pick up and prep prints to mail. It's one of those days where I'm driving a lot, out of the house a lot, and not making much art, which can feel upsetting but... you know, it happens. I did find time to get a sketch done, and I caught up on the most recent episode of Legion, so I thought I'd do a piece about the show. 

General update

I'ts been a minute. I have so much to get done lately sometimes it feels like I'm drowning. I've hit the third trimester, which means baby prep needs to happen soon, and my family is starting to all migrate to me as it draws closer. I also have a lot of followup correspondence to do post ECCC, and I need to start thinking about Rose city now, and whether I can do it after baby is born.

Then there's the current painting, and I've been thinking about new youtube vids and stuff like that... I'm still not working fulltime, and although print sales are nice I want to start doing book covers, so I've been brainstorming ways to get my name out there and get the ball rolling on that.

But for now, here's a little bit of the new painting, still in process, which is really coming from a personal place of strength, determination and fighting self doubt right now.