keeping busy.

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Hey everybody,

  Well, I've been kinda busy of late, but I'm finally putting something up here on my blog.  I did have a nice little assignment for a small publishing house the other week.  It looks like it might be leading to some more work too--yay!

  Here's the illustration:

  I was excited to do the finished piece entirely as a digital painting.  It's for use in a reference/educational kind of book.

  In other news, I'm really enjoying my new animal drawing class I'm teaching at OCHSA.  Such a fun class and I'm learning a lot myself, of course.  This week we're headed to the zoo!  Fun.

Cara

Back in SoCal

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  Hello all,

  Well, I'm sorry I've taken so long to post a new blog since my trip!  I guess I'm still in denial about being back to "real life" after my trip.  AND school has started back up again so I'm plenty busy with that.  This is week three of the semester.  But before I get talking about school, here's a sampling of photos from my trip!

 Big Ben!

Super delicious fish & chips in Bath!

Sheep at the B&B in the Yorkshire Dales!

Abbey ruins in York!

 Cream tea near Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire Dales!

Hobbit-ish tree near Bolton Abbey!

Typical charming pub in Stratford-Upon_Avon!

The real "Lady of Shalott"painting at Tate Britain in London!

  Yes, the trip was so good that I felt compelled to use exclamation points after each of those photo descriptions.  Sigh.
  For further details feel free to ask any questions about my trip:)

  Other than that, as I said, school is back in full swing so that is keeping me busy.  I'm teaching an Animal Drawing class for the first time at OCHSA.  Pretty cool!  Also teaching beginning figure drawing and the art elective class, as usual.

  I also have an illustration assignment for a small publishing company that I've been working on.  I've given them the rough and the final is due in a couple of weeks.  Maybe I'll post something from that next time...

Post-Comic Con thoughts & Vacation plans

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First off, I wanted to say that I probably won't be posting new blogs for the next couple of weeks because I'll be on vacation in the U.K.  Woo Hoo!  I leave tonight.  I'm a long time anglophile and this will be my first trip to England, so I'm super excited!

As for how Comic Con went,  wow.  Lots of craziness!  I showed my comic sample around, but I don't think that anything really solid came out of it.  I think that the San Diego Comic Con has just gotten too big for a little person trying to break in at that event in particular.  I did have a lot of fun though.

The highlight was probably getting to talk to Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, at his table in the Artist's Alley section of the con.  People who have followed my blog for a while know my love for The Last Unicorn movie.  So cool to meet the author of the original book!  He was super friendly, and signed a copy of the new graphic novel of the book that came out in 2010.  I was kinda star-struck.

My next goal for my Snow comic is to show it around at the Long Beach Comic Con that happens around Halloween.  I just got notified this morning that I was approved for professional free passes, so I'll definitely be headed there!  It's a much smaller event, so I'm hopeful that I can have some quality networking opportunities for my work there.

After that, there is another event called the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank that I'll be headed to with my stuff.  That one starts November 18, which just so happens to be my birthday.  Perhaps that'll make me extra lucky there!

Alright, gotta get going to catch my flight.  I'll bring back pictures :)

Cover design mock-up

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Here is a mock-up of the cover design I think I'll use for my comic/eventual graphic novel.  I got excited to finally design and use a border pattern for this project since that's one of my favorite things to do:)

I looked at some examples of manuscripts dating from the middle ages as reference for designing the border and the font for "Snow."

On Thursday of this week I'll be heading to the San Diego Comic Con and look forward to having samples from my comic to show!

Wish me luck!
Cara:)

Another comic page!

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  Hey everybody,
  Here's another page from my comic.  What could be happening??  I will be adding text boxes eventually, but you can fill in your own play-by-play for now.

  I plan on showing these sample pages at the San Diego Comic Con and it is less than two weeks away!  Ready or not!  (that reminds me, I wonder where I put my Galadriel costume...)

  In non-art related news, I just have to give a big shout-out to the U.S. women's national team for their un--believable win over Brazil this morning in the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup in Germany. Definitely one of the best soccer games I've ever seen.  Really.  Now they just have to carry onward and upward to win this thing!  (sorry to gush about this on my art blog--I played soccer in college and have a deep love for the game).

  'Til next time...

Some Comic Progress...

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  Happy Independence Day everybody:)  Right now it will be July 4th in exactly 10 minutes.

  Well, here is some progress on my comic.  This is from the same story I posted a page for a few weeks ago.  I'm happy with them but hoping I can gain some speed and really start to roll these out faster!

  Are you wondering what is happening in the story??  Well... there are dwarves... and that looming shape in the last panel is a wolf!  That's enough to tantalize you for now:)

  Oh, also I thought I would show you more of a peek into my process.  I posted thumbnails of all the pages for this opening portion of the story last week.  Well, as I take these to the finish, I just blow up the thumbnails, put them on my home-made light table, and draw the tight drawings on top.  Saves time and helps me keep the compositions as strong as they were in the thumbnails.

  Here's the blown-up thumbnail for the tighter page above that I just drew on top of:

  That's all for now... enjoy the fireworks tomorrow:)

How baby comics are born.

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  Here's a page of my thumbnails that I did this week for the comic I'm working on.  The thumbs are actually about 2 1/2 x 3 1/4" for each little double-page spread.  This is the first excerpt of my longer story (graphic novel).  Proper planning is such a timesaver in artwork & writing, and I can't imagine trying to tackle this story without it!

  I'll probably blow these thumbnails up and actually draw right on top of them over a light table.  This helps keep the compositions as dynamic as they are in the thumbnail stage.

  Still an intimidating amount of work to be done in the next few weeks... but it feels good to have my basic layout and compositions sketched out.

  I need to figure out the cover artwork... and I want to have at least some of them painted/colored as well.  We'll see!