Gato

Very very infrequently, my cat takes a break from shredding my tracing paper, knocking my ink bottles onto the floor, and attacking my ankles to let me draw him.

Yes, my cat is actually named Frodo.

Yes, his nickname actually is "Fucking Frodo".

Companion

Had a rather quiet holiday weekend as I hunkered down on some prep work for my next big project...so, I spent most of it indoors, with the TV on for background noise. Happened upon "Serenity" on TV, and once it was over, I realized it had been actually about six years since I'd watched all of "Firefly". Marathon time!

I always had kind of mixed feelings about the series (totally prepared to lose half my following just for saying that), but I'm enjoying it more this second go-around. Still have an issue with Joss Whedon's female characters and kind of wish they'd had the budget and a better production design team to maybe blend the space and Western aesthetics a little better. But if it were still on, I'd probably still be watching, and if they ever make another movie, I'll probably go see it. And when I wrapped up for the day and had some time to do a fun sketch, I drew this scribble of Inara.

Pizza Spider

Probably one of my most random posts yet. Hey, sometimes I can be silly.

Rua Barata Ribeiro

Missing Rio a little this morning, so I dug up some sketches from one of my last days there. I had this mental image that my time there was going to be spent in cafés and bars, with my sketchbook in hand, drawing all day. These drawings are from the one time I actually did sit in a café and draw. (As for the bars...yeah, forget about it.) 

Portrait of the artist

Some pretty exciting news over here today, at least for me. As of today I am officially signed on as the illustrator for Issue 2 of Run By The Gun...and what that means is that for the next month and a half, comics will be my full-time job, instead of that thing I try to do when my full-time job isn't consuming my life.

Not too shabby, considering it was just a little over three months ago that I quit said day job in order to pursue comics more seriously (with a nice little monthlong buffer of "fuck everything" time in Rio in between). I can't say everything in the last three months has gone according to my crazy plan, but, I can say I'm figuring it out, and so far I'm excited. 

About to get very busy over here! 

The Amazing Spider-Man

A fun little scribble from last night's post-work drawing session...for anyone who thinks I don't love or ever draw superheroes! (Spidey is one of my personal favorites to draw because of all the crazy yoga-like poses...)

Smash!

An older sketch this morning. No reflection whatsoever on my mood today, although apparently, on October 12, I was NOT a happy girl.

Favela 2

Mais uma! 

Saudades

Saudade is my favorite word in Portuguese, and one of the first I ever learned. It has no direct English translation, but it's a feeling we've all had at some point or another..."a nostalgic feeling connected to the memory of someone or something absent" (my translation of the Portuguese definition). You feel saudade for home, for family, for loved ones who are far away, for something as silly as a bar you used to go to in college or a kind of food you had on vacation and can't get where you live. It's less the feeling of missing, and more the feeling you get from the thought of that someone or something that is far away or absent.

Brush pens and lip gloss

A few of this week's random sketchbook doodles. A lot of exciting projects in progress or ramping up for next month, and that on top of the occasional in-studio day have kept me super busy, but I still try to find time to sketch every day.

Cute dog! 

Fellow artists...is anyone finding that as amazing and
indispensable as smart phones are these days,
they almost never read as "phone" when drawn?
All my characters seem to talk or text into little flat
nondescript slabs...

The Book of Love

Wrapping up another busy day of work, and feeling a bit sappy this evening, so I thought I'd share a couple of romantic little drawings from my sketchbooks.

An older couple I spotted in Arpoador on one of my last days in Rio.
Yes, they were actually reading Voltaire. 

Árvores

Whew! Been too long since I updated. It was a very busy week working in-studio, picking up a new gig and trying to crank out the first round of work for that to be approved, and trying to catch up on a comic page for a SCAD anthology. I only just wrapped up work for the day, there's more tomorrow, and then it's a whole new busy week again...

So, sorry for the half-assed post, but you guys just get some goofy sketches of trees today. (At least they're trees from Florianópolis! Does that make them more exciting?)

Treasure Map

An older sketch from the archives (read: the depths of my external hard drive) today. A couple of pirate characters a friend and I sort of accidentally created a few years back.

"I think the cat's got the right idea. What do you say we
skip the adventure?"

Game of Thrones

I was a bit of a latecomer to the whole "Game of Thrones" madness. I still haven't read any of the books, I don't have HBO, and it wasn't until my trip to Rio that I got a chance to watch the first season...I was sick and housebound for most of my first week in Brazil, so I spent most of my time camped on the couch in my friend's apartment, hijacking his DVR and curling up with a glass of suco de maracujá to watch season one. I was hooked pretty quickly. So of course, soon after followed fan art (some slightly NSFW after the jump)...

Ahh, Jon. So pouty, so pretty!

Rainy Day

After a lovely few days up in Monterey, supporting/driving/carb-loading my roomie as she ran the Big Sur marathon, I'm back to (surprisingly gloomy) LA, the grind, and the sketchbook.