Have Your Cake And Eat It Too

I've been drawing this character, Will, for over 9 months and 100 pages now. And yet this panel might be my favorite image of him I've done so far:

Sometime Around Midnight

Happy New Year everyone! Thank you for all the support in 2012, and you can look forward to lots of exciting new artwork and BIG news announcements in 2013!

Feliz Ano Novo a todos! Obrigada pelo apoio em 2012, e vai ter muito mais arte e boas notícias em 2013!

Cosmic Love

Random sketchbook doodle today...it's a little bit classic Star Trek, a little bit classic sad Megan girl. 

SDCC

Comic-Con! My Twitter feed and Facebook page have been lit up with news, events, and photos from San Diego already this week. This is actually the first year since I moved to California that I haven't gone to SDCC.

There's a lot to love about a gathering of like-minded geeks and talented artists in one space. I always somehow talked myself into going year after year because I knew I would see friends there that I almost never see otherwise. Comic-Con, for me, was a big reunion, and for that, it was worth the crowds, the smells, the angry pen-wielding Harry Potter fans, and spending a year's vacation budget on a hotel room only to sleep on the floor.

This year, it just got too big, and all of those people I went every year to see decided not to go. So this was the year that I stayed home too. Especially after the extreme drama of last year's event, I'm relieved to be at home and in my normal routine.

But, in the spirit of Comic-Con, here are some of my sketchbook entries from last year's tumultuous SDCC weekend. :-)

Happiness Hit Her Like A Bullet In The Back

Sometimes, a wonderful thing can actually just end up nearly killing you.

You Can Stand Under My Umbrella-ella-ella...

This has been a backburner piece for a while, but I finally finished up the colors for my "Only Happy When It Rains" illustration.

Home

I just got back from a few days visiting my parents back home in Missouri. It was my dad's birthday, and I needed a change of scenery before LA made me crazy. (OK, crazier.) I never do much drawing when I'm home, but I managed a few sketches of some of the wildlife during this last visit.

WIP: Copacabana

Finished inks on a piece I've been sneak-peeking on Twitter and Facebook. In what passes for my free time, I'm revisiting my story "Somewhere In Between", and this image is intended to be the cover. Brazilian readers, or anyone who has been to Rio, will recognize this as the sidewalk pattern along Avenida Atlântica in Copacabana. (My friends will recognize it as that crazy wave design that Megan draws whenever she's feeling homesick for Rio.)

Color coming soon!

The Artist

Tonight's wind-down sketch is one of my favorite images from the movie "The Artist". You never realize how few neutral tone markers you have until you try to do a scene from a black and white film...

Lost

Another birthday drawing for a friend. These two might be the worst pirates ever. I think I've drawn them in various stages of searching for treasure for about three years.

Birthday Presents

For some reason, it seems the majority of my family and friends' birthdays are in June, and there's an usual concentration of them between the 16th and the 23rd. As a fun sketch after a long day doing storyboards yesterday, I scribbled this one of Joan from Mad Men for one such friend's birthday today. 

Samba e Amor

So, Tuesday (June 12) was Brazil's version of Valentine's Day, Dia Dos Namorados. As a little nod, I collected a bunch of sketches and art of the two main characters from my webcomic "Somewhere In Between"...hopeless romantic gringa Molly and her Brazilian love interest, Marcelo. Then I got a call that afternoon to do some storyboarding work which kept me busy for the past two days, and is going to stretch into today as well.

This is normally the part where I make some joke about this post being late in classic Brazilian fashion, but seeing as how one of my carioca friends managed to get a birthday gift to me before anyone else (including my own mom), I think it's more accurate to say this post is late in classic Los Angeles fashion...meaning, it started out early to arrive ridiculously late. Blame the traffic. 

Favela 3

Crazy week! But I had time during the "Mad Men" season finale to unwind with a new favela drawing, which I wrapped up last night. If it looks familiar, that's because it's drawn from the same photo I posted in the last entry!

Eu Te Amo, Rocinha

A little bit of fun news about my artwork! DJ Zezinho sent me the link today of a great video that Brazil's largest network, Globo, posted featuring his Spin Rocinha DJ school. I had the chance to meet Zezinho, DJ Ramon, and some of the students while I was visiting Rocinha, and I designed some t-shirts for the students. This video is in Portuguese with no subtitles, but you English speakers can clearly see my t-shirts being worn by the students, and you can see the enthusiasm everyone at the school has for music and their community.

Desde que eu tenha seguidores no Brasil e Portugal também...hoje o DJ Zezinho me mandou esse video sobre a Spin Rocinha escola de DJ na Rocinha, no Rio de Janeiro. Na minha última viagem ao Rio, eu desenhei algumas camisas pros alunos da escola, que vocês podem ver nesse video! Tô com orgulho. :-)

Here are the original drawings I did...Aí vai os desenhos originais que eu fiz:

Beijos!

Zou Bisou Bisou

Today's warm-up sketch. With apologies for getting that song stuck in everyone's head now. 

Uncanny

A little bit of a slack day today after a long weekend of working. I had so much fun drawing Wolverine yesterday that I decided to unwind tonight doing a few quick marker sketches of some of my other favorite X-Men characters.

I can't wait for my brand new scanner to arrive, and I hope it picks up colors at least a little better than this obnoxious thing. 

Someone Like You

After finishing the day's work on page layouts and character designs, and inking two pages of another project, I settled in with the last pages of my sketchbook to watch some TV and scribble. This is what happens when I'm stuck between the end of a special on Adele and the beginning of "Mad Men", and all that's on is "X-Men Origins: Wolverine".

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.